15
The day of Dad’s trial arrived. I wasn’t allowed to go to the magistrate’s court, so I can’t say exactly what happened. I can only imagine it. But the fat and the thin of it was that, after he’d finished punishing someone for breaking and entering and when he had fined John the Gun and some other blokes for shooting too many roos, Judge McNulty made Dad stand up and tell the little jury about what he was doing out at Old Sid’s mine that evening.
Well, this time my dad didn’t make up a lost-cat story or make out he was just looking for his contact lenses. No way. He stood up straight and told them that he was out looking for Pobby and Dingan, the imaginary friends of his daughter Kellyanne Williamson, and that he was just checking to see if they’d wandered over onto Old Sid’s claim. And Mum said Judge McNulty looked all confused, like a jigsaw puzzle before you put it together, and that he asked Dad to describe their appearance. I flinched a bit as I imagined my old man stuttering and tongue-twistering as he tried to get to grips with that one. Well, my dad must have handled it pretty well, but, because then McNulty moved straight on and asked whether Dad was on any drugs, and whether Dad thought the imaginary friends really existed. And apparently Dad looked old McNulty and the jury and everybody dead straight with his opal eyes and said that at first he thought they didn’t exist, and then he wasn’t too sure about it, and now he was positive they did exist after all, because he was on trial for ratting because of them and he was a little angry with them for it too.
Judge McNulty rubbed his chin and scratched his head a lot. And then Old Sid, that whiskery bastard—as Mum called him—got up with a bandage over his nose and testified and called my father “mentally deranged” and lots of other things, including a “low-down piece of roo shit.” And some of Old Sid’s miner-mates backed him up and talked a lot about how much my dad would drink and how he was always interested in other people’s opal and where they had found it. And that confirmed he was a ratter as far as they could see. And then a policeman said how he saw Dad snotting Sid in the nose, only he didn’t say “snotting.”
Well, according to Mum, the judge fidgeted around and whispered things to people. And then McNulty looked at the little jury and told them that the whole question of Mr. Rex Williamson’s guilt depended on whether it should be considered a crime to hit someone on the nose when they have called you a ratter and also on whether the jury believed he was really out looking for his daughter’s imaginary friends that night. And he told the jury that meant they needed to work out for themselves how real they thought Pobby and Dingan
were.
And Mum said you could see the jury mulling it over, and whispering the names Pobby and Dingan over plenty, and she reckoned that most of them were thinking, “Since half the town has been out looking for Pobby and Dingan, why couldn’t it just be possible that the father of Kellyanne Williamson was looking as well?” And then the jury heard from my dad that a funeral of Pobby and Dingan was taking place the next day, organized by his son Ashmol Williamson, and if the judge wanted he and the jury could come along and see what real people they had been. And then Old Sid and his lawyer complained that the funeral had been dreamt up to distract from Rex Williamson’s crime and that Pobby and Dingan were just invented on the spot as a sort of cover-up.
Mum told me that then Judge McNulty did lots of racking of his brains, and sometimes he looked a bit pale, but eventually he decided to break up the court until it was possible to interview Kellyanne. But he only did it after asking Sid about his family. And Sid said he hadn’t got any, and that his wife had died twenty years ago. And the judge asked him if he ever talked to her privately even though she was dead. And Sid said he did sometimes, when he was up at the agitator, because his wife used to help him sift through opal dirt because she had better eyes than he did. But I don’t think Sid realized what was going on, that the sly old Judge McNulty had trapped him into admitting that everybody has an imaginary friend of some kind even if you don’t think they have, and that Old Sid himself was a bit on the short-sighted side.
After that, McNulty announced that the court was going to come together again when Kellyanne was better. And at the end of the proceedings only about twenty or thirty people were outside the courtroom to throw cabbages and things at my dad and hiss: “Ratter. Ratter. Ratter. Ratter.” And only one bloke had a banner saying
POBBY AND DINGAN WERE RATTERS
on it in red paint like blood.
16
Well, to be honest, all this trial stuff cheered me up no end, and the next day Mum and me got ready for the funeral of Pobby and Dingan with smiles on our faces while Dad went off to fetch Kellyanne from the hospital.
Mum had bought me some new black pants and a black sweatshirt, and so we went out all comfortably to the cemetery and decorated the fence with flowers and opened up the gate. And the priest came and talked things through with us, you know, about what the proceedings were. And Mr. Dan drove up around ten o’clock and shuffled around a little awkward in his suit and tie. And then the coffins of Pobby and Dingan turned up and I helped carry them up to the grave. And old Humph came along in his hat to tell me he was putting a plaque for Pobby and Dingan up in his Moozeum. Well, I was looking forward to telling Kellyanne this when she arrived from the hospital with Dad. That would put a massive smile on her face, for sure. And she would never be sick again.
And then all that was left to do was to wait for people to start arriving. I had some butterflies in my stomach, but. You see, I’d been round the whole of Lightning Ridge posting Humph’s invitations into everybody’s mailboxes. And I was sort of nervous to see how many came and how many tore up the invitations and still called us Williamsons a bunch of frigging lunatics. And I was also nervous because of the reports about Kellyanne and how she was getting worse by the day even though they’d managed to pump some food into her at the hospital. So it seemed pretty much like it was now or never.
I got so afraid that people wouldn’t turn up and that I might have to imagine myself a whole crowd that I got really impatient, and an hour before the funeral was due to start I got on my bike again and went pedalling around Lightning Ridge to see if people were getting ready. The place was a sort of deathly quiet. I sat on the step outside The Digger’s Rest for half an hour, trembling and half wanting to go for a piss.
Eventually a few people started stepping out of houses and shops coughing, or pulling back curtains and doors. And then suddenly, as the sun got hotter in the sky, old buggers, young buggers, men and women and dogs started appearing on the street and walking out towards the cemetery. A couple of them saw me and waved. I got on my Chopper fast and cycled around the back way, standing up on the pedals to get a good view of the crowd walking along in silence between the gum trees and houses. And I noticed that everyone had like made an effort and changed out of their mining clothes into their best boardies and singlets.
I got back to the cemetery ahead of the people and I saw them all coming up the road past the balding little golf course like a massive great wave. I stood on Bob the Swede’s gravestone and saw that actually there were many more than I’d expected. Thousands of people all coming out towards us. More even than you saw at the goat races, more even than I’d ever seen in my whole life except on the football on TV. And for a moment I was worried that there was something else going on that they were all going to, and that they were going to walk straight past the cemetery gates or something and head out of town.
But I shouldn’t have worried, because pretty soon the little cemetery was full of living people, and everyone closed in around the grave and the coffins which had Pobby and Dingan inside. And some sat on the scorched grass, and some wandered around looking at some of the other graves. And no one was saying nothing except a few words to each other. But most just gave me a nod and gazed out over the land or fanned themselves down. And Mum and me had made some lemonade and cookies earlier, and so we passed some cups around and began pouring, so that people had something to graze on. But although I was relieved to see all these people turn up at the cemetery for the funeral of Pobby and Dingan, the most important ones hadn’t arrived. And that was Kellyanne and Dad.
Kellyanne and Dad. Dad and Kellyanne. They still hadn’t come back from the hospital. It was way past time for the funeral to start and people were starting to do a bit of muttering and all that. And I suppose some of them were starting to doubt if there was going to be a funeral at all. And perhaps some folks were beginning to look at each other and at me and my mum and starting to ask each other what the hell they were doing attending the funeral of two figments of a girl’s imagination, especially when that little girl wasn’t even there. And I remember picking out Judge McNulty in the crowd. He was frowning and looking at his watch. But at least the preacher was doing a good job. He was pretty sober and he was still going around welcoming people and saying hello and handing out sheets with some songs printed on them. I reckon he wasn’t keen to lose all these people. Because if they stayed it would be the biggest congregation he ever preached to in his life. At one moment he looked up and gave me a thumbs-up sign as if to say: “Don’t worry, mate, Kellyanne will be here soon.”
And then suddenly she came. I recognized the sound of the ute as it came in the gate, and there was Dad at the wheel. And everyone turned around and stood watching as he climbed out and walked to the back and began to take out a fold-up wheelchair and assemble it on the grass. I ran down to meet him. Through the back window I could see Kellyanne’s pale face. I ran to the back door and opened it and Kellyanne turned and gave me a twitch—because she had no strength for a whole smile. She was as thin as I have ever seen a person get, and Mum came and helped me lift her into the wheelchair which Dad had assembled. And there were tears in Mum’s eyes and the funeral hadn’t even started. Well, then Mum gave Dad a big hug and a kiss right on the lips and I did a yuck sign to Kellyanne by sticking my finger down my throat, and then I pushed Kellyanne up the slope through the crowd and up to the grave of Pobby and Dingan. And most people I think were pretty shocked to see my sister looking so sick. And some of them said nice things to her on the way up, like “Good on yer, gal,” and “She’s a brave one.” And somebody else’s mum put flowers on her lap. And then, when she got to the top, everyone suddenly started clapping and everyone was cheering and people were slapping my dad on the back. It took a fair while for everyone to settle down and listen to the preacher, who was now standing up at the front and looking like he wanted to speak.
He shouted out: “G-day, everybody! And welcome to the funeral of Pobby and Dingan, friends of Kellyanne Williamson and members of the good honest Williamson family!” Well, at that point Humph let out a huge cheer, but he was the only one and I think he felt a bit of a drongo for doing it. But my dad had a little smile to himself. And then the preacher told us we were going to sing from our song sheets and everyone rustled their papers.
Well, Kellyanne had chosen the songs, and first we sang the Australian National Anthem, “Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free,” and all that, and then Fingers Bill played a Cat Stevens song on his guitar and those who didn’t know the words sort of just hummed it, and it went “Oooh baby it’s a wide world,” or something like that. And Kellyanne had chosen it because it was Pobby and Dingan’s favourite song. And it was quite amazing hearing all these people singing together. And I wouldn’t say it was too tuneful or anything like that. But it was loud as hell and I reckon the emus out on the Moree Road didn’t have no trouble hearing it.
Well, then the preacher coughed and took out a piece of paper and said: “I would now like to say a few words about the deceased.” And this is how his speech went:
People of Lightning Ridge, g-day. We have come
together here today to celebrate the lives of Pobby and
Dingan, two close mates of Kellyanne Williamson. They have brought much pleasure to our hearts and
what a sad loss it is to say our final goodbyes to
them—whom many of us never even saw, but only
felt. We recall with pleasure Dingan’s calm pacifist
nature, her opal bellybutton and her pretty face, and
many of us will remember Pobby’s limp and his
generous heart, and let us give thanks for their lives,
which, whatever anyone says, they most certainly lived.
Well, people were sniffing and taking out handkerchiefs already. And even some of those real legend, tough miners were weeping onto the backs of their hands, and taking out rags covered in dirt to blow their noses into. The preacher raised his hand and pointed out at the crowd. He turned up the volume on his voice:
And there are some of you here today who have not
believed! You have not believed in the invisible,
because it does not shine forth from the earth and sell
for thousands of dollars! And there are many of you
here who have not believed in Pobby and Dingan.
But
God believes in them. And he believes in you. Yup. He
sure believes in everyone here. Oh, yes, indeedee. And
we are invisible. We are invisible and transparent and
shallow and yet God believes in us. And God believes
in Pobby and Dingan and he is in every single one of
those lollies they sucked and was with them on the
school bus, and when they played rigaragaroo and
when they danced in the lightning, and even, I tell
you, when they went missing so tragically out at the
Wyoming claim, where Kellyanne and her brother
Ashmol and their honest dad Rex Williamson went
looking for them. God was with Pobby and Dingan and is still with them in heaven. Amen.
Well, thank God the preacher didn’t go on for too long after that! He just said some things about Kellyanne and what a brave girl she was and he said I was a plucky kid for sticking up for Pobby and Dingan and fighting for them to have a proper burial. And there was more clapping and my dad slapped me on the back so hard he almost knocked my teeth out. And then the preacher gave himself a more serious look and shouted out something about how if anyone had any reason why Pobby and Dingan should not be buried in the cemetery for them to step forward and say it now. And there was a long silence and I held my breath. And during the silence I was looking around at all these people trying to fix them with my eyes so they wouldn’t budge. But then a bloke called Andy Floom stepped forward and everyone turned and looked at him. And the preacher said, “Well, Andy Floom, speak up!” But Andy Floom, who was a few stubbies short of a six-pack, looked confused and said: “What? Oh, sorry everyone, I was just, like, stepping forward to squash a spider.” And people started laughing everywhere. And the preacher said okay, now he’d go on with the burial.
So me and Dad and Mum and a few others got down and lifted the coffins into the grave and Kellyanne watched us silently and totally wide-eyed. And only when we had the coffins all lined up in the dark hole did the preacher say, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” and tears start glimmering down her face. And then I pushed Kellyanne forward in her wheelchair and she placed in the grave a whole pack of Cherry Ripes and Violet Crumbles, a couple of books and things. And Mum put in some flowers and then we stood in silence while two miners shovelled in some soil like they did when they filled in a mine shaft that wasn’t being used no more. And when the coffins were covered and buried the preacher led a prayer, and after that everybody started walking slowly home, sniffing into their sleeves. And I walked out last, with my dad resting his hand on my shoulder. And on the way out someone stopped us at the gate. It was Old Sid and he was holding out his fists and swaying in the road and shouting: “Come on, Rex Williamson! Come and fight me, you fucking ratter! You’re not going to get away with this! Turning the whole of the Ridge against me, you piece of shit! You ever come trespassing on my claim again and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll k-kill . . . !” But then some kids ran up to him and started shouting, “Lizard eater! Lizard eater! Old Sid is a lizard eater!” and Sid turned away and we watched them hounding him back up the road as he swiped at them with drunk arms.
Dad and I caught up Mum and Kellyanne on the road. Well, Mum was suddenly smiling and singing out that it was about time we menfolk got back to mining, because she reckoned it wouldn’t be too long before we found something. And me and Dad looked at each other and couldn’t believe those words came out of her mouth. And as we came up to them, Mum turned the wheelchair around to show us that Kellyanne was smiling too. And Kellyanne Williamson smiled for the rest of her life.
But her life was short. A week later the whole population of Lightning Ridge came out to the cemetery again. My sister Kellyanne Williamson was buried with her imaginary friends, in the same grave, in the same place where millions of years ago there had been sea and creatures swimming cheerfully around. And she took with her some Violet Crumbles, in case Pobby and Dingan had run out.
And although in the end everyone believed that Pobby and Dingan had really lived and were really dead, nobody at the Ridge could quite believe the funeral of Kellyanne Williamson was actually happening. And I, Ashmol, still can’t believe that it did. I just can’t. I can’t believe it at all. Even now, one year later, it feels like she’s still totally alive. And I find myself lying awake talking to her all the time. And I talk to her at school and when I am walking down Opal Street, and Humph and I when we are out at the Moozeum talk to her together, and you will still see today if you go to Lightning Ridge people pause in the middle of doing whatever they are doing to stop and talk to Kellyanne Williamson just as they still pause to talk to Pobby and Dingan and to opal in their dreams. And the rest of the world thinks we are all total nutters, but they can go and talk to their backsides for all I care. Because they are all just fruit loops who don’t know what it is to believe in something which is hard to see, or to keep looking for something which is totally hard to find.