The secret son, p.1
The Secret Son, page 1
Jenny Ackland is a writer and teacher who lives in Melbourne.
The Secret Son is her first novel.
Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright material. If you have any information concerning copyright material in this book please contact the publishers at the address below.
First published in 2015
Copyright © Jenny Ackland 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the
National Library of Australia www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 92526 616 0
eISBN 978 1 92526 808 9
Internal design by Christabella Designs
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Cover design: Christabella Designs
Cover illustration and photo: Shutterstock
CONTENTS
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part II
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part III
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Acknowledgements
To Anthony, thank you for the time and the space.
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY, Invictus
That the effort failed is not against it; much that is most splendid in military history failed, many great things and noble men have failed.
JOHN MASEFIELD on the Dardanelles Campaign
There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours . . .
ATATÜRK
It was April 1990 and two men drove east in a ’53 Eldorado Cadillac. There was a taxi sign on the roof and the chrome was perfect, the trim intact. The car was flanked with long fins, shaped like a woman’s thigh.
Istanbul was behind and a package of cheese and parsley pastries lay between them on the bench seat. Cem Keloğlu didn’t know much about Harry Forest other than he was a retired historian from Australia and travelling to the same village as he was. They’d met on the plane from Melbourne.
Nothing had been said for the last two hours other than ‘Do you want the last piece of pastry?’ (Cem) and ‘No thank you, you have it’ (Harry). Then, a minute later: ‘What do you think Saddam’s doing?’ (Harry), followed by ‘I don’t know’ (Cem).
‘It’ll be something about oil, I suppose,’ Harry said, but Cem didn’t respond.
They’d left Miriam in Izmir hours before and the sun was setting behind them as they crawled the final few kilometres up a steep mountain road, a road that had narrowed to a small, rocky, barely-sealed stretch. In the near distance Cem could see a village, a random scattering of buildings, blue-doored white-washed houses. The place seemed deserted, but there was a central square with a lit-up hall that glowed dull in the dusk.
Harry asked Cem to pull over.
‘I have to tell you what brings me here,’ the older man said.
In the paddock nearby were some small dirty sheep, and down the road towards them loped a dog, haunches higher than shoulders, its glassy eyes fixed on the car. It drew closer, a spiked iron collar around its neck. Both ears were cropped.
There was snow on the ground and the heater didn’t work and their breaths showed in the air. Cem was tired and cold and, at first, when Harry leaned in, he thought the other man was going to kiss him and he pulled back, but instead Harry started whispering, the words tumbling from his mouth.
Cem listened and tried not to smile. He reached out a fingertip and touched the blue glass charm that hung from the rear-vision mirror. It was there for luck, to protect against harm while travelling. The dog sat on the road, watching.
‘That’s crazy,’ Cem said when Harry stopped talking. ‘I mean, no offence, but you know what it sounds like you’re saying?’ He reached for a cigarette. A new smoker, he was trying to persist with the Maltepes, but they were rough. He lit the end and tipped his eyes back out of the smoke. Across the road was a forest with closely-packed trees, dense and black. The dog got up and moved nearer, walking sideways as if it had an itch in its rear.
‘It sounds like you’re saying Ned Kelly fought at Gallipoli and stayed behind in Turkey.’
Harry shook his head emphatically. ‘You’re not listening.’
‘Yeah, ’cause what you just said is impossible,’ Cem said.
‘Not Ned.’ Harry inched closer on the seat. There was a manic energy about him. ‘Ned would have been too old, and besides, he died in the gaol like everyone thinks. No, I’m talking about his son. I believe Ned Kelly had a son who fought at Gallipoli and settled in a small village in central Anatolia—the village we are about to drive into.’
Even Cem Keloğlu, son of Turks who had migrated to Melbourne, a boy who grew up in an environment severely lacking in Aussie traditions and stories, knew that Ned Kelly had died childless. They sat as the chilled air wrapped around them.
‘But Ned Kelly didn’t have a kid,’ Cem said.
‘Ah, but are you sure about that?’ Harry Forest replied.
Cem stopped smiling and his heart drilled inside his chest. The dog got up and shifted towards the car and from up the hill a whistle sounded. The dog lifted its head.
I
The lies we tell ourselves are far larger than any others can say to us. You may not believe but there is truth in all of it.
AUNT BERNA
Chapter 1
I
In the mid-1880s, the Victorian town of Beechworth was mostly flat with some undulations of broad, green hills, and enormous boulders that lay about as if scattered. James lived there with his mother, Madela, and when he was little she told him stories about giants throwing the huge slabs of rock.
‘They go crash,’ the small boy said.
‘Yes.’ His mother went to the stove, wondering whether they needed more wood. They did, so she went behind the sturdy house to the pile and carried in a few armfuls.
‘I’ll help you when I’m bigger,’ James said, trotting beside her.
He often went to stand in the bull paddock, to find a spot and stay there, wiping his shoes through the grass, looking back to the house. Sometimes, his mother came running from that direction, waving her arms and shouting. When his mother came running at him like that, he said he was searching for a four-leaf clover.
‘Looking for you, Mama. For luck.’
Sometimes it rained and sometimes the sun was shining, but often, several times a week, whatever the weather, his mother would find him in the paddock and come running at him across the grass to gather him in her arms and take him inside. At night, after she kissed him and before she snuffed the lantern, James asked again about his father, even though he knew she didn’t like this question.
‘Who was my dada? Was he a very big man?’
‘The biggest.’
His mother took his hand in hers and told him it was time to go to sleep. She kissed him again.
‘Was he very, very big?’
‘As big as a tree.’
‘And a bull of a man. That’s what you said.’
‘Is that why you go in the paddock, love?’
‘I think the bull can tell me.’
‘Tell you what?’ His mother sat down on the edge of the bed again.
‘Where my father is.’
He looked at his mother and knew there were secrets there. She didn’t like to talk about the man who had been his father, about what his name was or where he might be now. He asked and she was patient with him but never said much. It wasn’t fair. All the boys at school had fathers and sometimes, when he and his mother went into town with their horse and cart, he saw other boys carried up high on men’s shoulders, being taken into the sweetshop. It made him sad, but his mother didn’t tell him much and the bull hadn’t told him anything at all.
‘He had my freckles, didn’t he?’ A skinny arm crept out from under the rough blankets. Two dark spots on his arm above the wrist.
‘No, my love, you have his freckles.’
‘But they’re mine.’
‘They belong to both of you.’
‘J ust one more story?’
James never wanted his mother’s stories to finish. The Thousand Stories he called them, about the angry man with a beard who wanted to cut off his wife’s head and the clever girl who kept telling him stories until the sun came up. James would like to listen to those stories all night, until the sun did come up.
‘One more?’
His mother said no and he breathed her in, smelled the smoke that caught in her dark hair, the scent of lard. Sometimes he could see flour on her nose but not tonight. Baking day was not today. He turned in his bed and went still. Madela looked at her son and saw the softness of his white scalp shining through his cropped hair. He always went to sleep quickly. She felt tender and scared for him as she blew out the flame.
II
James and his mother were known for the bees. They lived on a property out of town a way, on land that was edged along three sides with forest, with enough trees to lay out an extensive run of hives.
The bees were his friends. As his mother said, they were easy to hold if you loved them. James grew older and wandered between the boxes, reaching out a hand here and there to touch the wood. He felt the thrumming hearts within, the centre where the queen sat fat and glossy. He never got stung and his mother said he was lucky that way. When he handled the queen, the bees flocked to his fingers, but no matter how much he sniffed his hand afterwards, he couldn’t tell what it was that drew the others. He stood at the edge of the forest, trailing his finger-tips along the trunks of the eucalypts, inhaling their greyish green, closing his eyes as he wandered, breathing in the smells. He noticed the drops of water beading along the fence, and the way the grasses lay either this way or that. He heard the sweet ringing of the birds and the drip of rain. The patterns of nature were all around him but especially in the bees.
If he wasn’t with the bees he went to the bull, and his mother kept finding him in the paddock.
‘Come out of there,’ she called. ‘It’s dangerous.’
He stood, facing the animal. It watched him from the furthest corner. He turned his back and counted as high as he could go. He thought about stomping hooves, round, flaring nostrils and long sharp horns, but the bull never came near.
‘I’m not scared,’ he told his mother as she climbed through the fence and ran across to grab him and march him to safety. ‘I’m lucky.’ ‘Why do you keep going there when you know it’s dangerous? I’ve told you to stay out.’
Back in the kitchen James reached for the jar of honey and ladled it onto his bread, golden strings lacing the wooden table. He ran his finger through them and put it in his mouth.
‘But, Ma, I told you—I’m not scared.’
One day, the bull charged. It was at the moment that James found a four-leaf clover. He bent over to pluck it and the bull hit. His mother, at the copper, heard the yelp and went running to the crumpled boy in the middle of the paddock. The bull was standing over him. She pushed the bull’s snout away as she got her son up. It pawed the ground and she tweaked its ear and it turned and ambled back to the corner. James tried to tell his mother about the clover, but she said she didn’t care about it, no matter the number of leaves.
‘You could have been killed.’
‘But I got it,’ James said, opening his hand.
His mother told him it had been a silly thing to do.
‘Would my father come if I died?’
‘Listen to me, love: he can’t come. He’s dead himself.’
A buzzing started in his ears and it seemed it would never stop.
When his mother did the baking, he went to the bees. He made sure the water drums were full because bees got thirsty, especially in summer. In winter, the insects were slow and invisible, turning in their hives, forming their special bee circles to keep the boxes warm. He peered into the tops of the hives and learned about the patterns. He watched them, and by the time he was eleven, he knew them all.
‘The bees are dancing,’ he told his mother. ‘They’re dancing in circles together.’
III
One morning before school they sat at the table. James was almost his adult height, already one inch taller than his dead father. He had taught himself to walk on his hands and he could juggle five matchboxes, but still to the other children, he was an outsider.
‘Do you think I’m queer?’ he said to his mother.
‘Who said that?’
‘No one. The other children say it’s strange that I don’t get stung and also that I fall asleep in class all the time.’
‘Not queer at all, love. Bees know what’s in your heart. People who get stung have a shadow that the bees can see and it frightens them. But don’t sleep in class. You sleep too much and one day you’ll miss something important.’
‘I’m not sleeping; I’m meditating on my blessed heritage.’
She frowned at him.
‘Just kidding, Ma.’ He chewed his bread. ‘At school they say your name is funny. They say it’s not even Irish. Do we come from another country?’
His mother explained that there was no special reason why she was not a simple Mary or Beth; Madela was just a name her parents liked.
‘Your family is not from abroad?’ He was disappointed. He liked to imagine her ancestors had come from Egypt or Spain, somewhere far like in his Cole’s Funny Picture Books, but she said that wasn’t the case. She was proud of being different, she said. There were lots of Marys in the area, lots of Beths, but only one Madela.
‘Just as there is only one you. Remember, it’s not wrong to be different.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘Now go and check the chooks for me.’
He went out to the hen yard and collected the eggs from the laying bins. He fingered the birds that hadn’t laid and went back to the house cradling the eggs in his arms. He thought about what his mother had said and supposed that she was right. It was not wrong to be different but it wasn’t quite right either. If they had to be at all exotic, like the Apis mellifera, why couldn’t they be from more exciting stock, originating from a travelling circus perhaps, or with famous explorers as forebears, such as Mr Burke or Mr Wills, brave men who’d struck out and crossed tricky terrain. It didn’t matter that they’d perished; they had tried something that required risk and determination. He wondered if his father had been a courageous man. Not knowing much about his father meant he had more room to fill his imagination with the kinds of possibilities that were tantalising to a fourteen-year-old boy.
IV
Each spring they moved the hives. His mother used an old wheelbarrow, but since James had been small, he’d helped carry them from place to place. At first it had been one wooden box, but now it was two or three stacked in his arms.
‘You can’t move them together like that, you’ll get stung,’ his mother said each time as she trundled the wheelbarrow along beside him, pausing now and then to press at her forehead through the bee veil with the back of a gloved hand.
‘But I always do it like this, Ma.’ His arms jerked the boxes against his stomach in a rattle. Mountain Greys were mild-tempered and slow to rouse. ‘You know I never get stung.’
One spring, he found a .31 calibre pocket Colt revolver wrapped in leather strapping shoved into the cavity behind the stove. James had no interest in guns and he put it back in the hole, next to some one-pound notes that smelled of earth. He was more interested in the newspapers in the shed, old Ovens and Murray Advertisers dating to the late 1870s. His mother had wrapped old pots in them. He thought about those papers for a long time.
‘Are we related to Ned Kelly?’ he asked his mother the night he found the newspapers.
Madela kept her face angled to the lantern. She was patching and the light was dim.
‘Who, love?’
‘Mr Kelly, the bushranger.’ He looked at her, unsure whether he wanted it to be so. His ruminations on potential fathers had included prime minister, policeman, gold prospector, football player, king, explorer. He wasn’t certain about adding bushranger to the list but it was the first time his surname had matched that of someone significant.
His mother said there might be some distant family connection.
‘Did someone say something to you at school?’
‘No, Ma. I don’t think they know nothing at that school.’
‘Anything, Jim. They don’t know anything. You keep away from the other children; people like to make trouble.’ Each Sunday, James and his mother sat in the chapel, side by side. He struggled to keep awake during mass, barely listening, until one day the priest leaned forwards and stared right into his centre.
