HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN. Story by Helen Askew.

Blue Mountains, NSW 1973

Gary and I were not close, despite the gentle encouragement of our mothers. Nobody’s fault. The eight years that separated us formed an opaque barrier. He had glasses, acne and a driver’s licence; I was just a kid, a girl, red hair and freckles.

His mother was a tailor, and a lot of other things besides. She knitted and crocheted dresses for my Barbie doll, and for me. She was an exceptional cook and had a gadget that made butter curls. I thought her one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen as she walked airily through our back gate, floral dress swinging as she moved, bright hair, wavy and long. She had freckles like me and tranquil, kind blue eyes. My beautiful Aunty Coleen.

Uncle Bill didn’t gamble as far as I know, but he did get ‘rollin’ drunk’ from time-to-time apparently, although I never witnessed it. He was a builder, swarthy and tanned, but for the line where his socks afforded his ankles protection from the sun. His dark eyes twinkled and he sang or whistled as he went about his tasks, always bush ballads like My Old Black Billy. He kept budgies and canaries in aviaries that skirted their back yard. He called me darlin’ and was always kind to me. We shared a love of animals.

Gary went off to teachers’ college in Bathurst while I was still playing with dolls. He met his future bride there and asked to be known as George. By this time he wore his hair long and lank, as was customary for young men at the time. He rode a motorbike and played guitar.

I went along to his twenty-first, a summer night gathering in the back yard of his parents’ home. Gough Whitlam’s Labor party had just formed government, late December 1972. I felt suddenly awkward in my orange floral, strappy dress. When compared to his grown-up friends I became self-conscious and shy. We were reluctant invitees, his gawky baby cousins hovering around the snack table gobbling Cheezels. Gary’s parents bought him a gold fob-watch, and his aunts a set of suitcases for the world explorations anticipated for his future. He never did get to New Orleans though.

He was married about two weeks after his birthday at a small reception. Cousins and aunts were not invited. The closest we got were copies of wedding photos in colour. Gary’s bride Dianna looked like a princess, blonde ringlets and a toothy smile. Our grandparents made the guest list and beamed with pride beside their first-born grandson. Gary looked happy, though slightly uncomfortable in his formal suit, no sign of any ball and chain.

Three months after his wedding Gary was dead. It was the Easter long weekend as the light faded on Good Friday. He had been riding from Bathurst, back to the family home in Springwood in the lower Blue Mountains. He had planned to surprise his mother for her birthday the following day. The Bathurst 500 motor race was on and the road inbound was congested. One impatient driver was overtaking a line of slow-moving cars when he collided with Gary’s bike heading east. I overheard the policeman who came to our door say Gary was ‘fatally injured’. We didn’t have a phone so my mother had to run down to the local phone box to have the news confirmed by Uncle Bill.

The full impact of the tragedy did not strike me until I saw the ravaged, tear-stained faces of my kin when we gathered to console each other. I was shocked to witness the expressions of grief, their loss of composure as they wept openly, coughing out raw angry sobs of despair. The cousins were deemed too young to attend the funeral. We stayed behind in the care of a close family friend.

As my aunt tried to come to terms with her loss, salvaging fragments of what remained of her son, she listened to the latest albums in Gary’s collection: Johnathan Livingstone Seagull and John Denver. Uncle Bill found solace in the bottom of a glass. In that state he was of little comfort to Coleen. I no longer heard his voice raised in song. Dianna grieved for a few months and then married another man she had met at college, a friend of Gary. My aunt made copies of a recording she had of Gary singing and playing guitar, The House of the Rising Sun. I still have the red cassette tape, although no longer the means to play it. But every time I hear the Animals singing that song, I am a child once more, trying to connect with my grown-up cousin, Gary.

Stereo Story #823