2024 WINNER SD HARVEY AWARD

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After Hobbema

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By Marilyn Chalkley

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We could start with a gun—or maybe with an old lady and her bony shoulders. Alternatively, there’s the census field officer curled up in her bed, underneath a faded print by Hobbema, blue tacked to the wall. She’s thinking it’s time to get up. Outside is a battered car waiting to be driven into the bush.

On the other hand, we could start with the police officer, who at the moment has her feet up on the desk, filing her nails and looking forward to another day of policing in a small country town where nothing much happens.

Or should we start with a man who locks his mother in her room while he goes off to work, fencing. There’s a lot of fencing to be done after the bushfires, even a year and a half later. Everywhere there are scars from the cataclysmic conflagrations that took the centre out of the world for country people all down the east coast of Australia.

It’s for her own good, the locking up of the old lady with bony shoulders. Not that anyone asks, but Jay defends it to himself. This is what he would tell you: ‘I once found Mum tangled in the veggie garden, caught by the string holding up the tomatoes, when she tripped and fell, leaning over to pick one for lunch.’ The sun had beaten down for hours on the frail old woman who was delirious from thirst and heat stroke by the time Jay got home. But he would say that, wouldn’t he?

After that he locks Hermione in her bedroom every day, with a chamber pot, a bottle of water and a plate of day-old egg and lettuce sandwiches from the servo in the township. Nothing hot, no kettles. After a while Hermione doesn’t bother to get up. For some months she knits shapeless beanies on four needles. When Jay refuses to wear them, she gives that up too. He tells you—‘no way will I wear a pink beanie with a purple stripe.’ You do wonder what Hermione was thinking - but then Hermione doesn’t think much anymore, her knitting with four needles had become semi-automatic.

It’s census day. The second Tuesday in August. The day when a country takes stock. A day when Lotte has to go and check all the outliers, the people who aren’t online and often don’t fill in their census forms. Let’s go with her as she chases up the people in and around her little township, trailing down long dusty tracks to find houses hidden away behind dense forests of gum. She has to start with Mrs. Maladroit, which is where the gun comes in. Mrs. Hermione Maladroit, that is. Mrs. Maladroit met her with a gun last time, when Lotte arrived at the rundown weatherboard house with peeling paint. Actually, Hermione would reason, the sign on the gate says Trespassers Will be Shot! (In Jay‘s wobbly capitals) so what would any visitor expect? The house is at the end of a kilometre long track. The rusting gate leading to the track is half obscured some 900 metres down the long, majestic avenue, lined with tall gum trees, that reminds Lotte of the Hobbema print above her bed.

Just an aside on that painting. If I tell you that Lotte Jasmijn Van Eyck was born in The Netherlands (don’t say Holland, the Dutch don’t like it) you will understand that there was a certain amount of nostalgia in having an 18th century Dutch painting of a long, ever narrowing avenue lined with spindly trees, with a church in the distance, above her bed, even though she left there when she was seven. The artist invites you to walk into the painting and stare up at the spacious sky. Lotte often thinks the reason she loves her adopted country of Australia, is because of its sky, a dome of endless blue which stretches from the red sands of the desert to the sparkling sand of the beach with little in between.  She thinks it gives its inhabitants a sense of space and freedom.

We watch as Jay locks the door on Hermione’s bedroom and gets into his Toyota Hilux – the world’s most indestructible Ute. His dog, Shirl, a black mongrel with a white paw and more than a bit of kelpie in her, leaps up on the tray. Hermione misses Shirl more than Jay. She faces a long, lonely day stuck in bed, waiting for them to come home. Sometimes she looks out of the grubby sash window and dreams of her veggie garden. ‘Gone to rack and ruin,’ she mutters. She can see it from where she stands in her dressing gown. The neat rows are overgrown, the stakes for peas and tomatoes have fallen over in a lopsided tangle. There are two large partly rotten cabbages unpicked. What a waste. Jay never cooks. She shakes her head as she climbs back into bed.

Meanwhile Lotte is bumping over the corrugated dirt road. She turns the corner and there it is. Her favourite Hobbema Avenue, in the middle of nowhere, lined with spindly gum trees. She drives along it singing. You would wince if you could hear it.

She screeches to a halt, dust and stones flying up behind the wheels, and turns into the short gap in the road that she remembers from last time. Stops the car and gets out to unhook the gate, climbs back in again, drives though, brakes, gets out, pushes the heavy metal gate, brown with rust, up the slight hill and hooks the bent piece of wire round the top bar to hold it shut. The sign on the gate still says Trespassers will be shot! But you and I know she will ignore it because she has a job to do.

 Hermione is snoozing and doesn’t hear the car. A nervous Lotte has stopped singing–all she knows about Mrs. Maladroit is that the records show no report of her death. The most recent census was five years ago. It was the last time anyone has seen her, by all accounts. She still collects her pension though, every fortnight. Or at least someone does. Lotte has survived divorce, a terrifying bushfire, and years of drought in that time. She has lost a beloved kelpie to old age and gained a cake-loving rescue greyhound. Two close friends have died of cancer. What has Hermione gone through, out here in the bush?

Lotte drives towards the house, down a narrow road bordered by deep ruts, wondering what she will find. As she winds down the car window, several crows wail, their mournful cry punctuating the air. A couple of green parrots shoot up from a tree, chirruping in annoyance.

You will know by now that Lotte takes her job seriously. Lotte likes to think her diligence is because of her Dutch ancestry. She fixes her ID badge in a prominent position above her shirt pocket. 2021 Census. Commonwealth crest. Her name, Lotte Van Eyk. Census Field Officer. Her official yellow satchel is on the front seat. 

She gets out of the car, heart beating fast, her yellow satchel slung over her shoulder, the bulk of it in front of her like a shield. She imagines the bullet burning through the census papers, a neat hole through the middle, and her boss from the Australian Bureau of Statistics intoning at her funeral - ‘she died serving her country.’

It was careless of Jay to leave the front door ajar—he’s always in a rush. Lotte knocks on the lintel, adjusting her anti-Covid mask, blue and white check so people won’t think she’s a gangster, and is startled by three brown chooks who come rushing out, clucking loudly.

Meanwhile, inside Hermione stirs at the knock. Her voice, weak with fear, says ‘who’s that?’ but it is too faint to be heard by someone at the front door. The chooks go and investigate the veggie garden. Lotte follows them round the back and sees the veggie garden limp and weed filled - she remembers Hermione’s pride in it last time. In fact, Hermione had given her a Savoy cabbage to take home as a way of apologising for the gun.

Lotte returns to the house. Normally census officers don’t enter a home unless invited, but diligent, as ever (see above) she senses something is wrong. She calls again—nothing— then yells out: ‘I’m coming in. Is that OK?’

Silence. Or is there? Is that a faint sound? A slight murmur of breath, a whisper of a word?

She walks down the wooden hallway, her leather soled elastic-sided boots clicking  on the old floorboards. She glances in the rooms - on the left a living room, with a sagging sofa, on the right a dining room, with a large dusty table, mahogany, oval with a central pedestal and a tarnished silver bowl in the middle. Four ornate dining chairs are tucked in around the table.

The next door on the right is a bedroom with a single bed, unmade with crumpled sheets. The door on the left is closed. Lotte knocks. No answer. She turns the handle, and the door won’t budge. She glances down and sees an ornate key in the keyhole. Somebody has locked the room from the outside! She turns the key and slowly opens the door.

The room stinks - or stale urine and sweat, of baby powder, rotten food and unwashed flesh. Holding her breath, Lotte says—‘Mrs. Maladroit? Are you OK?’

Hermione’s shock as the door slowly opens is profound. Then she sees it’s a woman, smiling. At least she thinks so, behind her blue mask, her eyes crinkling. When did Hermione last see anyone smile? She sits up in bed clutching the sheet to her chin - ‘Go away,’ she croaks, ‘he might shoot you.’

‘Who, Mrs Maladroit? What’s happening here? This doesn’t look good.’

‘Jay,’ the old lady whispers.

‘Mrs Maladroit, how can I help you? Do you remember me? Lotte. I’m here to do the census. Shooting a census officer is a pretty serious crime.’ She rips off the mask so Lotte can see her face.

That laugh! The sound of a creaking gate combined with a whooping factory siren. Lotte steps back in surprise at Hermione’s merriment.

 ‘I remember you, Missy. I almost shot you last time. You gave me a helluva fright. No-one ever comes here.’

Lotte grabs a chair and sits down beside the bed. ‘I just need to ask you a few census questions.’

Hermione swings her pale bony feet slowly onto the ground. She clutches the strap of Lotte’s census bag, still slung across her chest. ‘Take me with you. You must. There’s no time for the bloody census. We’d better hurry. He might come back! Give me that dressing gown.’

Lotte is about to protest, then thinks again. Diligence combined with empathy. She helps Hermione put on an old flannel dressing gown, pink and stained. The old woman is shaking.

‘Mrs. Maladroit, does he lock you in every day?’

Hermione doesn’t answer. She shuffles across the floor, weaving a little.

Lotte says, ‘Hey, Mrs. Maladroit, hold on to me.’

She takes the old woman’s arm, and they slowly walk down the hall towards the open front door.

‘The sun! The light!’ Hermione lifts her wrinkled face to the sky.

There’s the sound of a car in the distance. Hermione lets out a wail.

‘Quick,’ says Lotte. She half carries, half runs with the old woman to the car. She’s light. A bag of bones, .Lotte thinks.

‘In the back seat.’ She bundles Hermione in and covers her with the hairy dog blanket. ‘Don’t move. Leave this to me’.

Lotte leaps into the car and starts the engine, her heart pounding. She has driven a hundred metres down the drive, hands gripping the steering wheel, when a dusty Hilux Ute blocks her way. A burly middle-aged man in a check shirt and black cap jumps out. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ He glares.

Lotte leans out of the window, engine still running.

‘Census officer, sir’, says Lotte brightly. ‘No-one at home. Glad to see you’re here. If you could just give me your name, age and occupation then I’ll be on my way.’

She pulls a form out of her bag, attaches it to a clipboard, and with her pen raised looks at him. She hopes he doesn’t know census forms normally take at least half an hour to fill out.

Jay spits at her, red veins popping on his neck. ‘Fucked if I’ll  let the Guv’mint know anything about me,’ gets into his Hilux and drives towards the house, swerving round her vehicle.

Lotte guns the accelerator and heads towards the gate. Just as she opens it, her heart leaps as she hears the Hilux engine starting up again in the distance. She hastily drives through and pushes the gate shut, twists the wire into a tight knot to close it and make it harder to open. She drives up the majestic Hobbema Avenue leaving a cloud of yellow dust behind her. She presses her phone - but she knows there is no signal for at least another two kilometres, until she reaches the road that leads back to the Princes Highway. Then she will ring Triple 000.

She speaks over her shoulder—‘you OK, Hermione? Don’t come out just yet.’

Hermione feels safe cocooned under the stuffy blanket that smells of dog. She gives a muffled sob.

‘Just hang on Hermione. I’ve got this!’  Lotte drives as fast as she dares down the road, turns the corner, and in another kilometre checks the signal. She can hear the Hilux roaring behind her but never quite catching up. Her head is pounding with anxiety. The police assure her they are on their way. 

‘Hurry,’ she screams down the phone. ‘He’s got a gun.’ She’s lucky they aren’t kilometres away on another job. She glances in the rear mirror—shit, there’s the Hilux about a hundred metres behind her, Jay’s face above the steering wheel furious and grim. There’s a crack, Hermione screams under the blanket. Christ,  he’s shooting at her tyres!  Lotte weaves across the road, swinging from side to side to make it harder for him to hit. Crack, crack, crack! The car slews across the road, limping with one flat tyre. She almost ends up in the ditch, a deep one.

Just as Jay jumps out of the Ute, pointing a gun straight at her, comes the blessed sound of the police siren. She sees Jay hesitate, and quickly put his gun back next to the black mongrel who is barking frenetically. He walks towards Lotte yelling, ‘give me my mother back. How dare you take  her!’

Sirens blaring, the police arrive and leap out of the car. Jay points—‘she fucking kidnapped my Mum.’ Constable Wang bangs Jay against the Ute bonnet and adeptly handcuffs him, saying, ‘yes but you don’t shoot at cars. You could have killed someone, sir. You’re under arrest.’ He reaches into the tray of the Ute and confiscates the firearm. Senior Constable Quince walks towards Lotte.

‘Where is Mrs. Maladroit?’ she asks, focused, as always. Lotte says—‘she’s hiding in the back seat. She asked me to help her escape. She was terrified. To tell the truth, so was I.’ She is surprised to find her knees feel wobbly. She leans against the police car for support, feeling the warm metal on the back of her legs. Somehow it gives her strength. Suddenly furious at what she’s been through, she turns and advances towards Jay.

She yells, ‘Why did you lock her up, Jay? Do you collect her pension, Jay? Ever heard of elder abuse, Jay?’

SC Quince grabs her arm, ‘Ok Lotte, that’s enough. Leave the questions to us…’

Lotte and SC Ariel Quince were at school together. They were always neck and neck in essay marks and sport, especially netball. Lotte has the scarred knees to show for it.

SC Quince opens the back door of the car and says, ‘Mrs. Maladroit, it’s the police. Would you like to tell us what happened?’

Hermione sits up and rocks, sobbing, clutching the dog blanket.

Jay yells. ‘She’s got dementia. She’s not safe. I lock her up for own good.’

‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll charge you on the spot,’ says Constable Wang.

‘Mrs. Maladroit, did you want to leave with Lotte?’ asked SC Quince gently.

Hermione just sobs.

‘She’s terrified,’ said Lotte. ‘She’s not going to speak with him around.’

‘We need to get her to the hospital to get checked out. We’ll take the son.‘  She turns to the constable. ‘Wang, fix Lotte’s puncture. Lotte, you, and Mrs. Maladroit follow us as soon as it’s fixed to the police station, then we’ll take her to the hospital.’

Lotte leans into the car and helps the old woman out. Wang gets the spare tyre out of the boot and jacks the car up. Hermione looks at her and wails,‘ don’t let them take me back.’ Her hands pluck at the dog blanket. Lotte puts her arm round her shoulders and says, ‘You’re safe with me. I’ll do everything I can do to stop it.’ 

Tyre fixed,  she helps Hermione up the steps at the police station. SC Quince says ‘now I need a statement from both of you.’ But Hermione is wide eyed, shivering and silent.

It feels strange to resume her census taking after such a morning, but Lotte has targets to meet. She rings Gerry, her Census Field Manager. ‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ says Gerry. ‘The scarring we had from the census going online last time and the whole website falling in a heap OR trying to track down all the hard to get people and being shot at. Is the old girl OK? I don’t want you taking a risk like that again. Have we any more potential shooters?’

Lotte does a mental scan and reassures him. ‘ So far we have had three people who’ve refused to fill it in, including Jay. I’m not going back there. Anyway, he’s been arrested.’

‘Can you get him to answer questions while he’s banged up in the lockup? No chance of being shot at then. I don’t want to have to escalate it to the Census Refusals team.’

Lotte sighs. Gerry also has targets to meet.

That afternoon she begins to wonder if the world is askew on its axis - two older women announce with some pride they are druids, and a young builder constructing his house with no nails on a wild bush block claims his religion is being a Jedi Knight. Lotte has been warned about the Jedi Knights: in 2016, 48,000 Australians told the census they were guardians of the peace and justice in the Galactic republic. It seems some people still want to be Luke Skywalker, even if they are living in the bush. And why would two grandmothers comfortably knitting over coffee in a remote cottage take to the woods in the moonlight and dance and sing naked to celebrate the summer solstice? Lotte wishes she could ask more questions, but it takes time just to get through the form, and she has her instructions from Gerry: ‘be polite, be quick, be accurate.’

She heads back to the police station to interview Jay - or at least try. Ariel glances up as she walks in. ‘Wang’s just taken Hermione down to the hospital. How’s your arvo going? Got enough labourers to build the pyramids?’

‘Sure - and enough milk and honey to feed the populace.’

They both grin - their joint project at school on the first ever Babylonian census in 3800 BC had been topped by discovering the main reason for the Egyptian census in 2500 BC was ensuring there were enough men available to build the pyramids.

 Lotte can hear a loud male voice yelling ‘let me out. This is fucking ridiculous. It’s my Mum that was kidnapped.’

Ariel smiles at her request. ‘You can try asking him, but I don’t like your chances. I’ll tell him if he complies he might have a better chance of getting out.’

Lotte drags a chair towards the cell and stares at Jay through the bars. Jay bares his teeth at her.

SC Quince says—‘If you answer her questions we will look at you more favorably.’ With a surly face, Jay says grumpily he was born in 1969, he has no religion, is a fencer by trade, and last night slept at his place. His mother is the other person to sleep in the house. She owns it. Their joint income is his paltry wage and her pension. And then he shouts in a rasping voice ‘how dare you kidnap my Mum?

‘She asked me’ says Lotte and walks away.

‘Reason enough to lock her up, so he collects the pension and spends it,’ she mutters to Ariel.

‘He’s been charged with unlawful imprisonment. And having an unlicensed gun. Goes before the magistrate tomorrow.’

Lotte visits the hospital that evening. As she walks into the ward, Hermione is sitting up, looking newly scrubbed, with a pink face, clean grey curls and a pair of green striped pyjamas four times too big for her.

‘Hello, Hermione,’ says Lotte.

‘Who are you?’ says Hermione.

‘Lotte, the census officer. You asked me to rescue you this morning.’

‘You shot me,’ says Hermione. ‘She shot me!’ yells Hermione, looking around wildly.

Lotte leans in toward Hermione -‘ I rescued you. I didn’t shoot you.’

Hermione shouts ‘Help!’

A nurse comes rushing up. ‘It’s OK, Mrs. Maladroit. No-one will hurt you. It’s fine, you’re safe with us.’

She mutters to Lotte—‘I’ll talk to you at the front desk.’

Staff Nurse Almeida speaks softly to Lotte. “She’s very confused. Constable Wang told us the story. She should never have been locked up like that. We are going to recommend she be sent to a nursing home. Don’t be upset, you did the right thing. I’m sorry she shouted at you.’

‘Make sure she goes into a home. That son of hers is dangerous.’

The nurse pats her hand. ‘We’ll do what we can.’

Lotte drives home slowly. It has started to rain— blessed rain, and as she speeds along the dark country roads she winds down the window and smells the scent of the gum leaves, peppermint sharp in the wet.

Eight months later Ariel rings her. ‘You know how Hermione went into a nursing home? Well, last week when Jay got out of jail, he insisted on taking her home She has no other family.’

Lotte exclaims. ‘How can that happen?’

‘Jay has enduring power of attorney—which gives him a lot of power. And get this, Hermione said she wanted to go home with him. Apparently she misses Shirl, the dog. They deemed her a fit person to make a decision. It’s out of our hands.’

‘Can’t we do anything? If he takes her home, he gets the pension again.’

‘And he could sell the house. We’re not happy about it. We’ll check up on her regularly.’

Months later, Lotte is in Canberra for a few days when Ariel’s name comes up on her phone. All around her are the clink of coffee cups, the scrape of chairs, the chat of customers  and it’s hard to hear.

‘Sorry Lotte. Are you sitting down? It’s bad news.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s Hermione. Jay must have had a hidden gun. We did a routine check yesterday afternoon.’

‘Oh no,’ falters Lotte.

‘We found two bodies. We think he shot her, and then shot himself. He spared the dog, who was whining outside the front door.’

‘Oh God!’ said Lotte. ‘The bastard. Why?’

‘Well, I shouldn’t tell you this, but we think he read Hermione’s mail. Before the enduring power of attorney clicked in apparently Hermione left the house to the local Koala Foundation. The letter of thanks was open in the hall. There was some mistake. It wasn’t meant to be made public until after she died, but the junior clerk at the lawyer’s stuffed up, and told the Koala Foundation.’

Lotte puts the phone down and sits, motionless. The coffee machine steams and screams behind her. People laugh and chat. She wants to throw up.

She drives the three-hour journey home, gripping the steering wheel in fury. She yells ‘why does no-one listen?’  She screams, ‘you bastard, you evil bastard.’ Sometimes the view of the road is so blurred with her tears she has to stop and wipe her eyes. She runs out of tissues and has to use the sleeve of her brand new sweatshirt.

When she walks into her cottage, the first thing she sees is the Hobbema print. She rips it off the wall and tears it into tiny pieces, dropping the paper shreds into the bin with shaking fingers. Which is a little tough on Hobbema’s memory.

Weeks later, Lotte sits in the back row of the hundred-year-old court room at the Inquest. She’s been at a seminar in Canberra run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, her boss insisted, so she hasn’t heard any of the evidence. ‘It’s not what you think,’ says Ariel. But won’t say more.

‘All rise,’ says the clerk. There’s a rustle as everyone obeys. The local magistrate, now Coroner, sweeps in. She surveys the room and sits down. There’s another rustle and a few coughs as the people in the courtroom sit. The atmosphere is tense. Lotte glances over at Ariel, and can see her hand gripping her papers tightly, the knuckles white.

‘I find that Hermione Maladroit caused the death of Jay Maladroit and then shot herself,’ intones the Coroner. Lotte and the packed courtroom gasp. Lotte glances over at Ariel, who gives a little nod.

Of course it was Hermione. Jaywould have shot the dog. Two days later Lotte, still in shock, puts a white rose on Hermione’s grave. Was it self-defence? We will never know. Lotte bends down to pat the dog sitting patiently at her feet – she has already adopted Shirl. It’s what Hermione would have wanted.