As has been reasonably obvious, I haven’t contributed much to the Catallaxy Collective of late. Only part of that is due to work commitments: much is due to me putting my writing energies elsewhere. I’ve long since given up completing Our House before commencing at Oxford, although I’ve been stunned at just how much I have written.
The novel is in many ways a farewell to Australia, as I contemplate a move away that (this time) is probably permanent. Some people do not feel much in the way of rootedness in a particular place, and I have to say I envy them their footloose existence. For me, I am irreducibly Australian, and I also know that to take my Koori partner away from this country would be to sentence both of us to a life of some misery, although even he commented the other day ‘there’s nothing for you here’.
I want to blog about my weirdly ambivalent relationship to Australia in the week before I go, when I’ve worked all the ideas through. For now, I’ll leave you with the Prologue from Our House. It’s a reasonably polished piece of writing (I’m always whittling away at my work, trying to make it leaner). I hope it’s some compensation for my failure to contribute to Catallaxy in other ways.
Benny Morris noticed the company Kingswood had developed a distinct wheeze in the valves by the time he cut its motor in front of the house. Long grass brushed against his shins as he swung himself out from behind the wheel, slammed the door and propped himself against it, feet on the footpath. He squinted into the sun and ran a finger around the inside of his collar, debating with himself as to the wisdom of his proposed course. Just front up and ask for the stuff. Or payment. The front door was bolted shut and the windows clearly shuttered. The house was in shadow, dwarfed by a backyard mango tree that had bared the ground around its roots and greened the tin (silver? blue?) roof with foliage and mould. Maybe no-one home, he thought, hopefully. Too hopefully, it seemed. A tyre hanging from the mango was swinging back and forth, rhythmically, on a windless day.
‘The house’, the Boss called it. 98 Digger Street had a deserved reputation for danger, not because of its location, but because of who had come to live there. The company had chased the Dorsey family all over Cairns, Innisfail and Ingham trying to repossess a quantity of goods or – less likely – obtain payment. Somehow, Pat Dorsey had gotten wind each time, and the big white van with the letters COLLECTION AGENCY painted on each side returned to the depot empty. Once, the boss had entrusted the job to a specialist firm of debt collectors from Brisbane. Unusually, they’d managed to surprise the Dorseys at home. Then they started to throw their weight around. This was a mistake.
Four heavies from one of the local bikie gangs should have made short work of two teenage boys and their reprobate of a father, but all four wound up in Cairns Base Hospital. Benny and the Boss paid them a visit two days later. One had his leg winched above him with skewers through it. Another’s face was so beaten he looked like he’d lost an eye, so buried was it in puffy, suppurating flesh. Ya shoulda seen em mate, blue like boongs, oldest boy can box like Aussie Joe. Not boongs, but. Bloody look like it. Ya seen that big kid? Only boongs got hair like that, mate. Took me fuckin chain off me e did, finished up round me neck. Thought I was gunna die, I did. The old man, too. Musta shown the kids. King hit ol Trev, the bugger did, put him in intensive care. Shoulda told us they was fightin types.
The Boss slipped out the back for a piss and a smoke, grumbling under his breath, leaving Benny to listen to their excuses.
Benny’s missus spotted Nick Dorsey not long after in Sheridan Street. He wore the tail end of a beaut shiner, but nothing else. He was clearly trying to grow his boong hair long, like those bloody protesting hands off Veetnam types down south, but it wasn’t working. He looked like Jimi Hendrix. He was chatting to a girl – well, a couple of girls, actually. Talent scouts from Balmain had picked him up, and he’d suddenly acquired social cachet. That morning, there he’d been, straight as lances, a dazzling smile, with what Benny knew was an orange footy jumper in his hands. On the front of The Cairns Post.
Benny pushed himself away from the car and walked heavily across the street. He fell under the shade of the mango tree as he climbed the stairs. He trod carefully; the treads were rotten in spots. Paint slivers on the handrail shivered with each step. Powdered undercoat came away in his hand.
‘Don’t come no further, Mister’.
He looked up to knock and saw that the screen door was wide open. A woman with pale skin and coarse red hair in sponge rollers – she must have pretty, once – held it back. Behind her was the famed Nick Dorsey, his arms folded across his chest, the shiner faded to scraps of yellow above one eyebrow. Not thinking, Benny took one more step.
‘Don’t come no further, Mister’.
Her voice was tired, but there was an edge to it. She pulled her shift around her. Benny noticed it was new. Behind her, in the gloom, was a nearly new television set, a nearly new sofa-bed, a nearly new coffee table. The glowing furnishings stood out against bare floorboards and fibro walls. A toddler (two? three?) emerged from the gloom and leant against Nick, encircling his leg. Christ! I didn’t know there was a littleun! The girl had her brother’s hair, except it was fair. Straggly mats hung over her eyes. She picked her nose and then sucked her fingers, oblivious. Benny felt his gorge rising, and sat on it sharply.
‘Is Mr Dorsey home?’
‘You’ll be wantin the money now, won’t ye?’
The voice caught him, the soft rhythm of her brogue. He was reminded – fiercely – of his grandmother. From the same county. County Cork.
‘Yes, Mrs Dorsey. If you’ve got it.’
‘I’ve not got all of it’.
‘How much have you got?’
‘About half’
Benny saw Nick shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other. The little girl began to whimper.
‘That’s the moving money’. His voice was flat.
‘Hush, Nick,’ (Nana’s brogue again) ‘I’ll not have this any more. Not if I can help it’.
Benny caught a glimpse of life with Pat Dorsey in that moment. (A feckless charmer). Who conned goods out of every store in Cairns. Who had tens – hundreds – of unpaid hire purchase agreements. (Kissed the Blarney Stone). And he’d conned cunt out of almost as many married women as white goods and electrics out of Chandlers and Radio Rentals. He had curly hair that he slicked with brilliantine, ruched back from his forehead. He dressed in light dapper suits and shiny shoes. He was brown, but not boong brown, although people argued on that point. His most notorious caper involved a punch-up with two coppers who were selling ‘white lady’ to the mission blacks. Probably why people think he’s a boong. He’d surprised them behind some scrub on the road out to Yarrabah, smashed up every bottle they’d had stashed in the back of their ute, smashed up the ute (rumour had it that the vehicle was still buried somewhere in mudflats off the Esplanade). Then he’d gotten to work on the coppers, an appreciative audience of local blacks looking on by now. He’d gone to gaol for that one (got a letter of thanks from that Charlie Perkins bloke, though), two years or so. His missus framed the letter and he stuck it up on his cell wall.
There was more movement from within the gloom, perhaps in response to the little girl’s whinges. These were getting louder, heading towards real tears. Benny saw the older brother – what’s his name? What’s his bloody name? Charles, that’s it, but people call him ‘Chip’. Chip picked up the toddler and began soothing her, flicking the matted hair away from her eyes with long fingers.
Chip Dorsey was widely regarded as a menace. Taller than his brother, he was lean and wiry, with a whipcord muscular efficiency about him. He’d been responsible for the biker’s broken leg, and was a dirty scrapper. Got im down, twisted his leg up like some karate expert an stomped on is bloody knee, Trev had said during the hospital visit. Never said a bloody word, they was all shoutin an carryin on, but not im, just bloody merciless e was mate. Bloody broke im into bits e did. Chip had started small, putting M-80s into his enemies’ mailboxes in Ingham and blowing them sky high. He’d flick penny bungers up under streetlamps in quiet areas. The cane toads would read them as fireflies, there’d be a split-second time delay, then an exploding toad. Chip found this hilariously funny. Locals would complain about the stench from rotting toad guts coating poles and streetsigns.
An Innisfail cane farmer who’d decided that the oldest Dorsey sister was an easy root when she was serving in the Exchange Hotel wound up with his entire crop destroyed months before harvest. Chip had systematically circled the cane paddocks, burning off so that the flames met in the middle. When the coppers had gone to round him up, the family had pulled their usual stunt and disappeared. Maybe Townsville. Maybe Ingham. Maybe Cairns. No-one knew. In contradistinction from his brother, Chip sheared his curls close to the head, a crewcut (but not quite). His hair was too unruly for that. His skin was pale, like the toddler’s. But the hair was blacker, blacker than coals. He stared at Benny, his eyes lifeless.
‘Whatchyer want, cunt?’
His voice was soft, almost melodic. Benny felt sweat prickling between his shoulder blades.
‘Mrs Dorsey’s just fetching it now, Charles.’
‘Chip’.
‘Sorry. Chip’.
From somewhere behind Chip, Nick handed his mother a tobacco tin. She prised it open and began counting out notes, slowly, laboriously, struggling with the decimal currency.
‘You’ve got enough to pay it all there, Mrs Dorsey’.
‘Some’s for moving, like Nicky tells ye’, she said. ‘Some’s for you. Ye can’t have it all, or there’s not enough for us’.
Her brogue clothed the words in a cloak of inexorable, driving logic. Of course. You’re poor, but want to live. You pay what you can afford. Everyone else can go to buggery.
Only Mary Dorsey had turned her back, taking up nursing at Cairns Base. Probably has to patch up the dicks stupid enough to take her brothers on. Every bloody day, too. She’d once knocked off some makeup from the chemist, but that was years ago. It was a standing joke around town that she could still serve on a jury. No other Dorsey could, although the littlun with the matted hair might one day. One day.
Mrs Dorsey (does she have a name? People just call her ‘the Dorsey woman’) placed the notes in his hand while the two boys looked on, Chip still and quiet, Nick shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The girl reached around Chip’s cradling arms and grabbed a handful of Nick’s hair.
‘Ow! Stop that’.
‘Thankyou, Mrs Dorsey’.
‘There’s that cunting truck’.
Benny turned as far as he dared, waving the COLLECTION AGENCY truck away. He saw the look of resignation on the driver’s face, saw him flap his hands (well here we go again) and shrug his shoulders in irritation. Slowly, carefully, he backed away, smiling at the odd triptych gathered at the top of the stairs as he went. Chip stared at the truck until it vanished out of sight down the street. Benny crossed over into the sunshine, sweat now pouring down his bum crack and soaking his pants. Look like I’ve pissed meself, it will.
Bruised clouds gathered out to sea it’ll be raining at Yarrabah by now and he felt a chill as the sun ducked behind a towering purple cumulus. The first spackles of rain exploded on the windscreen as he shut the door. He inhaled. Once. Twice. His breath came in great ragged gasps. The money was still crumpled in his hand. He shoved it into his jacket (what idiot said we should wear clothes like this up here?) beside his chest, controlled his trembling by sheer force of will and – after some difficulty – started the car, engaged the right gear and followed the truck through teeming rain down the street.
A week later, Benny went back to the well. But the Dorseys had gone.
48 Comments
The lyrics
http://www.stevesbeatles.com/songs/shes_leaving_home.asp
The story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She’s_Leaving_Home
With sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2mFfP1q50o
Yep, it’s a classic.
A very engaging read, as usual. I can’t say I’ve ever understood why people - especially literary people - have an “ambivalent” relationship to this country. But I also understand that others’ sense of belonging, identity and dreams are beyond anybody else’s ken. I wish you luck, SL - as I’m sure I’ll have occasion to do here again before you leave - and I hope you both find what you’re looking for.
Thanks CL. My relationship to Australia didn’t start out as ambivalent - everything was fine and dandy. The ambivalence came later, and has never really gone away.
i couldnt pass up the opportunity of making my debut comment on Catallaxy here on this post!
Wow i didnt know you knew cairns!
My kids were born there, we still have a house at kewarra beach.
We spent not quite 7 years there, but they were without doubt the most intoxicating, intense, turbulent and exciting years we lived through…
.
How old are you SL? Early 30’s? It’s a strange feeling going away not knowing if you’re ever getting back here.
You made me think back to my time away.
I left when I was 28 and dreaded ever second of it at first. It took me 12 months to get OZ out of my system and then I was fine. It was my wife who strong-armed me into leaving suggesting that we had to do it once in our life when given the chance. Wow how time flies. We were meant to be away for only 2 years and then that became 16.
Look I wish you every happiness and success. You’ll get over your ambivalence about OZ. I actually think most people who leave and stay away for a time all share that same feeling. It goes away and you will end up missing the place terribly. Even the littlest things make you feel homesick. We all end up coming back you know.
Good luck.
All the best.
But pleeeease, don’t become like Germaine Greer.
Here’s my musical tribute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhzDz981TUY
Mental As Anything - If You Leave Me (1981)
Promise not to become like Germaine Greer, Steve. Of that you can be guaranteed
Bit sad to hear you are going permanantly SL. Altough it doesn’t really matter to those that only know you through the internet so long as you still contribute to Catallaxy!
Still all the best in merry old England.
I’ll still be here, don’t worry, Steve - you’ll get something once a month at least - weekly tutorial essays tend to do that to you.
I’ll just pick out the best one.
All the best SL although to be honest you will pass easily.
If you are going to OxFord then go over the CamBridge
I hope it is not permanent - you would make a damn fine federal Attorney General or High Court justice. The usual path sees to be one to the other. We could do with someone who actually believes in things like the separation of powers, individual rights etc.
Maybe one day.
SL
You will find a huge market of Australians with the same ambivalence about Australia you have expressed. I have one friend who hates Australia so much he did not attend his mother’s funeral. Then there are those who when something goes really tits-up jump on the next plane back here.
As for the Germaine Greer comment, I have fantasies of you morphing Germaine and Margaret Thatcher together!
Ultimately for somebody with your talent and drive it would be a crime against humanity to stay here, or even dream of returning to, in the Land That Time Forgot.
“weekly tutorial essays”
And students here bitch and moan about submitting one or two essays in a semester.
Oh, and I second Andrew’s idea, #13.
SL
I think the Oxford system sounds great. Most of the undergrad degrees are only assessed once. 7 or 8 three hour exams at the very end of the degree. The weekly essays are all just preparation for those 7 or 8 exams, and do not count for even 1 mark. God, imagine the collection you’d have at the end.
I imagine that system must produce superb writers.
is this germane to the topic?
Indeed it is. After all, we are all Thatcherites, now.
No your thinking of the Blairwitch project
Homer, pleeeeeeeeeease stop with the bad puns
In the BCL you have to do essays fortnightly (based on the course material I’ve been sent), but with four subjects, this works out at two essays a week. Apparently they can use the essays to make a call if you’re right on the borderline for a distinction, but apart from that, it’s all exams.
It does mean that Catallaxy readers will get exposed to a whole range of legal/jurisprudential topics - I’m ‘offering papers’ (that’s the term they use) in Evidence, Jurisprudence, Crime and Penology, and Constitutional Theory.
My thesis (in the second year) will probably be in jurisprudence (establishing empirical links between abstract, end-independent law and social mobility). I do have a strong secondary interest in the effect evidence law reforms have had on crimes against women, though.
I hope that the inclement weather of the Dark North keeps you indoors and hunched over your desk so that Our House advances in giant strides. I suppose it will be just your luck if the sun shines and there is a pleasing village green close by where you are lured by the sound of leather on willow and cognate attractions in jar and tankard! Oh well there is always the winter, and plenty of it too!!
helen
you really are a shameless exhibitonist aren’t you? You’re going, you’re staying, you’re giving up writing, you’re writing a novel, you’re blogging, you’re not blogging, you’re a leftie then you’re a libertarian, you’re bound top australia, you’re leaving forever.
Going on previous form you’ll be back in six months, announcing that you’re staying for ever. The one continuity is your desperate desire to publicly perform, which seems to be the only way you can convince yourself you exist.
Politically, personally you move from one state of certainty to another, the one constant being an utter conviction that your opponents deserve libel and abuse.
So why not, for once in your life, try and be a bit less mad? then you might make a real contribution.
Some lovely people on the intertubes, aren’t there.
Who AREEEE you Mr Simon Smith?
Do we know you?
Simon Smith hey???
Thats not really a name that stands out from the crowd.
Are you Famous?
Simon……… “SMITH”?
Have you done many outstanding things in YOUR life????
Simon……….Smith?
May I call you Smithee?
Lets get to know a little about you Smithee.
Simon Smith hey.
Thats going to be a hard name to google.
I’ll cut it short by going for Simon Smith disambiguation at the wikipedia.
Who is this Simon Smith character?
Wouldn’t have a clue, Graeme, and I don’t much care.
I know you wouldn’t be interested but I’m really kind of interest. I’m actually getting more and more interested each minute.
And I wonder if she/he isn’t famous.
And if he or she IS-IN-FACT relatively well-known what does it say about he or her coming on here under the name SIMON SMITH and trying to put the boot in after all this time?
Like that many years after the leftist witch-hunt and he-or-she comes here, effectively in drag, or in disguise, and still wants to be part of that witch-hunt.
And I wonder if it is some well-known person… I really wonder if he-or-she wants everyone to KNOW that he’s down here slumming it, under an assumed name….. still trying to be part of a witch-hunt from that long ago.
You are a worthless little worm Simon Smith.
Well I didn’t mean to scare you OFF Simon Smith.
I wanted you, Simon Smith to hang out. So we could find just a little bit more about YOU Simon Smith.
Its YOU I’m interested in Simon Smith.
You INTRIGUE me Simon Smith.
Please, please hang out. Lets chew the fat for awhile. And find out what sort of a girly-man you ARE Simon Smith.
I note that tone of jealousy Smith. I sense that note of envy that it’s always other people who have all the luck.
Listen you loser douche bag, Sl is saying good-bye. It’s almost like a private letter to people she sort of knows.
She’s always been a decent kindhearted soul and no amount of venom or poison will change our mind.
So die of envy, douche bag, because she will do well and no amount of sticking pins in dolls is going to change that.
Is she boasting about what she is doing? No but she ought to be. That’s because she is only one of the few people who can actually get a scholarship to one of the best universities in the world. That’s like being an Olympiad who has won a gold medal. I’m pleased for the gal. We all are, so fuck off and die of envy you poisonous slug.
There’s no such person, GB. It’s an alias seeing poisonous slugs like that operate in the dark.
It could anyone of Fyodors acquaintances.
Shucks JC.
I was trying to coax SMITHEE (may I call you SMITHEE…. SMITHEE??) out of her shell.
And now you’ve gone and scared her off.
Or him off.
I’m picking Simon Smith is a Woman or some bloke with the gay gene.
And as we all know all male leftists in 2007 have the gay gene.
All leftists and Humphreys.
simon
you really are a shameless exhibitonist aren’t you? You’re going, you’re staying, you’re giving lip, you’re commenting on catallaxy, you’re misunderstanding, you’re not commenting, you’re a wanker and then still a wanker, you’re bound to Catallaxy, you’re hopefully leaving forever.
Going on previous form you’ll be back in six minutes, announcing that you’re staying for ever. The one continuity is your desperate desire to publicly put smart people down, which seems to be the only way you can convince yourself you might not be a moron.
Politically, personally you move from one state of certainty to another, the one constant being an utter conviction that your opponents deserve libel and abuse.
So why not, for once in your life, try and be a bit less mad? then you might make a real contribution.
It’s shiela… I think you’re right Bird.
Sorry GB. I didn’t mean to scare chris off like that.
SkepticLawyer:
Might - only might - be going past your place late Sunday morning.
Good luck. Good hunting. Have a comfortable trip ….. and have fun!!!.
All the very, very best, sl. Stay well and don’t forget us.
SkepticLawyer [further to 35]:
L-O-L. ] Sorry, we’re over-dogged here so can’t help you with taking canines. 
Do you need any packing boxes? A hand with a garage sale or anything like that? [Here's you hat and coat; what's your hurry?
Happy sorting/chucking/packing.
If you’re around on Sunday, Graham, swing by for a visit. We’re not selling up - the two places we’ve got here are still going up too much in value. Rob’s staying around until Christmas, as he’s got jobs to finish and chippies are in seriously short supply.
All the best, SL. I hope it all works out well for you and you get as much out of this as you hope.
SL [38]
Right.
[i]I hope it is not permanent - you would make a damn fine federal Attorney General or High Court justice. [/i]
That would require her being given a fair go … something not likely to happen in Australia.
Sorry, wrong brackets.
Did SL mention that she’ll be starting her UK trip with a jaunt up to Edinburgh to beat the crap out of Lynne Seagal at the Book Festival? Couldn’t get tickets to Germaine Greer.
(pssssst. sorry about those horrid insults d.e.m……. i was feeling putupon so went for a 360 headbashing on it….. skeptic dragged me over the coals about it… hope you are doing well)
Actually that reminds me, I’ll try to do some Edinburgh Festival reports for the Cat as well - on the stuff I know about, anyway. DEM can do the opera reviews
Unfortunately the limit of my reviews would probably be “Andreas Scholl is GOD…” (I am so stoked to have got tickets, I’m quivering like a teenager at her first rock concert.)
No harm, no foul, Graeme. Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me!
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me!”
Love that, Deus Ex.
DEM [46] and Rob [47]:
Fair crack of the whip! Your comments aren’t linked to SkepticLawyer’s departure. [L-O-L]