My favourite trophy had been awarded to the ‘Most Courageous Player: Port Melbourne Seniors, 1952.’ A twelve inch block of red wood, flanked by two shorter blocks, it looked like a skyscraper; making all the other trophies in the cabinet seem small. Perched on top was a sculpture of two men falling forward under the impact of a third springing above them, marking a polished silver ball. The man on top, the ‘Most Courageous Player,’ teetering on one knee above the pack, seemed to me a Superman. Sometimes, though, I wondered if the man beneath him, the one with the shiny knee planted in the middle of his back, was the more courageous.
The cabinet was in Mrs Potter’s lounge room. The trophies, together with a crystal bowl and a set of wine and sherry glasses, had all been won by her son, Phillip, who had died before I was born.
Mrs Potter was old enough to be my mother’s mother, my grandmother. Every Thursday Mum and Gracie would meet me after school and we would catch a train to Port Melbourne and visit her. Because I liked her, because visiting her was more enjoyable than visiting any of Mum’s other friends, I had never thought to ask why we saw Mrs Potter so often; why, given that she didn’t go to church, we treated her as though she did.
Her house was small and painted blue. A narrow path led to the front door. I lifted Gracie so she could reach the bell.
After a while, after Mum had rung it a second time, Mrs Potter opened the door. ‘You been here long? I couldn’t hear you for Bing.’ She tilted her head back towards the smooth sound of Bing Crosby’s voice wafting down the hall from the kitchen. ‘You’re early, aren’t you?’
‘The early train was running late.’ Allowing Gracie to squeeze past her, Mrs Potter leant forward and kissed Mum on the cheek. ‘And how’s my little man?’ She put her hand out for me to shake. We always shook hands, as a sort of joke, pretending we were both men. Sometimes, though, as we said goodbye, she gave me a hug.
Mrs Potter wasn’t much taller than me, but for some reason I thought of her as being about Mum’s height. Though her body had shrunk with age her personality had retained the size and vitality of youth. In the kitchen, standing at the sink filling the kettle, she noticed me staring at the scones bundled in a tea towel on the table and said, ‘They’re not ornaments, Josh. You’re meant to eat them.’
I looked for a nod from Mum before slicing one open to smother it with raspberry jam and cream. After my fourth scone and a cup of tea in a tiny floral cup, I asked if I could go into the lounge. Mum looked to Mrs Potter.
‘Course he can,’ she said, slurping her tea as she spoke.
As I opened the door into the hall, Mum leant back and touched my arm.
‘Don’t break anything.’
Once I had finished with the trophies, I looked at the photographs lined up along the mantelpiece above the fireplace. These, too, featured Phillip. A couple of them were shots of him as a boy — wearing a cowboy outfit, riding a trike. Another had him standing in the middle of a football oval, an old grandstand sagging behind his right shoulder. He was wearing a Port Melbourne jumper and baggy white shorts. He had his arms crossed, a hand tucked under each bicep, pushing his muscles out, making them look bigger. His face seemed confused, though, as if his eyes had seen something amusing that the rest of him had missed. They looked straight at me, grinning, gleaming, while his mouth seemed sour, the lips crooked, thin. Next to this photo, in a slim gold frame, was a shot of a young Mrs Potter on her wedding day. A spray of flowers dropped like a waterfall from one arm. Clutching the other was a tall man with a face like a farmer’s and a back not yet bent by a life of laying bricks.
The photograph I looked at longest, though, the one I took from the mantelpiece and carried carefully to the couch by the window where the light was better, was of Phillip wearing jeans and a leather jacket, leaning against a black Norton motorbike. His curly hair had been slicked back and a half-smoked cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. It was like something from the movies, as if the camera was a woman he was trying to impress.
Behind the bike were trees and bushes, maybe a creek, and in front, in the left hand corner of the shot, was the fringed edge of a travel rug, a thermos tipped on its side. I wondered about Phillip and the woman taking the photo — for I was convinced it was a woman holding the camera — and guiltily began imagining what, besides picnicking, they might have been up to on that blanket.
‘That belongs on the mantelpiece, Josh.’
Mum was standing at the door. Without thinking, I clutched the frame to my chest.
‘Mrs Potter doesn’t mind …’
Taking a step towards me, Mum lowered her voice. ‘I don’t care what Mrs Potter says …’ She cut herself short. ‘Be careful, that’s all; they’re her treasures.’
I pushed myself from the soft cushion of the couch and put the photograph back where it belonged.
‘Anyway,’ Mum said, ‘I came to tell you if you want to see the birds you’d better hurry. We have to go soon.’
The back of Mrs Potter’s house smelt like washed wool, birdseed and feather dust. The canaries lived in two tall cages on the porch, the cock birds in one, the hens in the other. Mrs Potter hadn’t bred them since Mr Potter’s death. She kept them in separate cages so the cocks would whistle more.
Harold and George, the male birds, were of the common yellow variety — George, the better singer, a buff; Harold, a deeper, yoke yellow. The hen birds were more interesting. The greediest, the one called Antoinette, was pure white except for her head which was covered by a mop of longer black feathers that fanned up and out like a fountain. Mum said she looked like one of the Beatles. The other hen, Caitlin, (named, I was told, after Mrs Potter’s mother), was a cinnamon green. From a distance, her breast feathers appeared seamless; their colour golden.
Every week I watched them leap from perch to perch and wondered if their wings remembered how to fly. I knew their every move — the way they hurriedly turned the seed in their beaks, worrying the kernel from the husk, how their claws clung to the wire when they hung from the side of the cage; the jerky way they sharpened their beaks. I often wished I could enter their world or they enter mine — for us to be on the same side of the wire. I wanted to hold them, pet them like a cat or dog, make some show of affection. Filling a bird bath and placing it on the floor of the hens’ cage, I watched Antoinette bustle Caitlin away and broil the water, first with her beak, then with her whole head.
Hearing my name, I turned my attention to the conversation filtering through the wire door.
‘But they’re your company.’
‘They’re too much for me, Jude; sweeping up after them, cleaning the cages.’
‘He could do that for you, when we come.’
‘It’s either him or a pet shop; my mind’s made.’ Something clattered, like a cup dropping into a saucer.
‘You spoil him.’ Mum’s voice sounded grateful and annoyed at the same time. ‘What if you wait till his birthday?’
Antoinette splashed water on me.
‘I want to give them to him, not leave them in my will.’
‘For heaven’s sake, it’s only three weeks away.’
Mrs Potter coughed. Her voice went weak like she was about to lose it. ‘I guess I can hang on till then.’ Her croaking breaking into laughter.
Antoinette hopped on to the side of the bird bath and ruffled her feathers, running the water in droplets to the tips of her wings before shaking them to the cage floor. The drying feathers collapsed into each other like a folding fan.
Serious again, Mum said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,