They Who Nicked the Sun: a novel

By Lindy Warrell

Fleeing her cruel husband, 60-year-old Ruby Marie Wilson finds herself broke and living in her car in a strange city with her beloved old Kelpie, Roo. She jumps at a Housing Commission offer of a tower bedsit in cosmopolitan Prahran.

As Ruby searches for meaning in her new world of high-rise compatriots, itinerants, their dogs,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wattletales Publishing
• Release date: Apr 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9780645312966

Lindy Warrell

Lindy Warrell is a novelist, blogger, and poet with a PhD in anthropology from The University of Adelaide. Her debut novel, The Publican's Daughter, was published in 2022. She has edited two poetry collections in collaboration, and her poems appear in three chapbooks, online and in literary journals. A publican's daughter and mother of three, Lindy lived in Post-War Japan as a child, travelled in South Asia, did postgraduate field research in Sri Lanka, and has worked as an anthropologist across outback Australia. A Curious Mix in Free Verse is her first poetry collection. Stay in touch with Lindy athttps://www.wattletales.com.au.

Book preview

Prahran

Chapel Street,

Melbourne's jewel

of fine dining

funky wares and

designer clothes,

a promenade

for young girls

between puberty and sixteen —

tiny boobs, huge hairdos

lurid makeup, mini-skirts — giggling over coffee in Gloria Jeans,

teetering on stilts like stick insects

across roads in perilous packs

between vans and green trams,

bikes and SUVs.

A Porsche flashes past

its boom-boom music a wolf-whistle,

men on the prowl

blind to the destitute

spawned by commission flats

and deaf to the dejected

down by Coles, where

hoodies, parkas and recycled prams

jostle with vagrants, and

fingerless gloves

grip stolen trolleys

brimful of bottles and cans

in tattered chequered bags —

pickings from bins

to be turned into cash

for clothes at Vinnie's

or a Thursday roast at the Mission.

At dusk, flashes of leopard skin

and fishnet stockings appear in the park.

1

Ruby Marie Wilson woke in pain. Like a tough-love friend, it was a daily reminder that she was not yet dead. A ruckus outside summoned her from sleep, but it took a while for the whisper of trees and curiosity to prise her eyes open and urge her from blanket to window, only to find nothing out of the ordinary happening in the park below. She admired the morning doggy parade of Schnauzers and Jack Russell terriers tearing about, sniffing and snapping, while Doberman and Rottweiler big boys ran fast and free. The fluffy phalanx of little Poodle-crosses-on-leads, yapping at everything from the safety of their owner’s left leg, made her laugh.

Ruby searched past the pooches for Misha, the pigeon man who lived right above her in No. 25. She liked Misha. Dogs liked Misha, too. And children. Yet, many people hated the old Russian. They accused him of malice for feeding pigeons. In their eyes, he deliberately invited what they like to call rats with wings to destroy their residential amenity. Pigeons, they said, pollute the air with their mating coos and grunts of alarm, and they smother roofs and ledges with sloppy splats of poo. Since arriving in Prahran, Ruby and her skinny red Kelpie, Roo, had slept in her battered Camry, a British Racing Green bomb she’d bought for cash at a 24-hour tourist buy, swap and sell market in Darwin. She’d planned and saved from her housekeeping money for a year to escape her abusive marriage and had become a familiar visitor to the car yard on nights when her husband, Lance, was at the Casino till all hours. The sales guys saved the Camry especially for her. It was in good nick and roomy. And cheap. They waved her off with good wishes as she jumped into the driver’s seat under the cover of darkness to head off down the track. Ruby covered nearly 4,000 kilometres in four days, sleeping in the car off-road or at a truckies’ lay-by until she reached Melbourne.

Ruby was no novice at sleeping in a car. She’d often run away to hide from her husband in Darwin. On a good night, he’d come home so drunk he’d pass out on the doorstep. But when he lost badly at the Casino, he’d turn nasty. Painful memories crashed into the present, making Ruby shake and wince as though Lance was pummelling her now, forcing her face down to the ground so he could take her from behind. Afterwards, she did not move until she could hear him snoring. Then she’d take a hot shower and try to scrub away her shame.

Here in the city far away, she was truly homeless, but she no longer had to hide from the husband she had left behind, although the inner city seemed more threatening than balmy Darwin nights or a tropical storm. Still, it didn’t take Ruby long to develop a routine, with Roo curling up in the front while she stretched across the back seat under blankets. Each morning before the sun rose, she stowed her few possessions in the Camry’s capacious boot, leaving nothing visible that might suggest someone lived in the car. As an added precaution, she parked on a different street every night, never too close to a park.

Ruby was scared of parks at night, so wasn’t game to use their public toilets. She’d seen too many shows portraying women being raped and killed in such places. When the urge was insistent, she was sometimes tempted to pee in the gutter behind an open car door, so Roo could come to her rescue if need be. But he could not save her from the police, who’d probably lock her up for urinating in a public place. So, she went to the closest servo when her bladder demanded it. The lavatories were inside, protected by security cameras and bright lights. For a daily shower, she preferred Brighton Beach. The amenities were great. She washed her clothes there. They soon dried in the car in summer’s heat.

One night before she got into her new unit, a gaggle of teenagers, drunk, high or both, frightened her, peering into the car. Their noisy banter woke Roo, who barked loudly. When they started kicking the tyres, she shrivelled in familiar fear. Roo’s ears pricked up; his muscles taut, ready to strike. He would terrify them if she let him out. He’d scared Lance more than once until Lance locked him out. As fast as they’d appeared, the louts lost interest and disappeared, but Ruby had trouble sleeping for a few days afterwards. The worst that ever happened in Darwin when she slept in the car was when a couple of lurching drunks in shorts and thongs knocked on her window, saying with a crooked smile, ‘Hey lady, you got a few bob for us fellas, we’re parched.’

Taking her cue from Darwin’s travellers and backpackers, Ruby had registered for Post Restante in Prahran before leaving Darwin. She’d chosen the Prahran Post Office because her grandmother once lived there, and it was the only suburb she knew. The only letter she ever received was a Housing Commission offer of a studio in No 25 King Street, Prahran, one of two high-rise public housing towers for the elderly, right in the heart of things. If she had a car, it said, she could park on-site. Pets were welcome.

That very day, she popped into the Housing Commission’s office on Malvern Road to sign papers and collect keys, barely able to contain her excitement. She’d never had a place of her own before. The only thing she would have to share was the laundry. With unit keys in hand, she drove to King Street, parked the car and went straight upstairs by elevator, dragging a somewhat reluctant Roo behind her. They’d given her a corner unit with two windows overlooking Princes Park. The wall-to-wall main window brought in light and had an outlook across paths and gardens to a sister building, No. 27. Although this was great for keeping an eye on who was afoot, she instantly took to her small, canopy-shaded side window because it gave her a bird’s eye view of the doggy park and a panorama from Princes Gardens across to Pran Central’s copper dome on Chapel Street to the enormous towers of the Horace Petty Estate on the far side of Malvern Road.

Ruby spent a few minutes giving thanks for having somewhere to live as she pulled up her jeans, hoping they’d stop shrinking, and made it downstairs around 9 am after the ruckus. A sunken lawn surrounded by a path lined with ornamental pear trees greeted her. She sat on one of the many benches and released Roo. He took off without a care, his deep red fur shining in the sun as he dashed around, digressing only to sniff bushes and other dogs before bouncing back to Ruby for intermittent reassurance, then shooting off again, ears flying in delight at his freedom.

Ruby praised the god who had given her a second-floor unit close to a stairwell because it made it easy to take Roo downstairs when necessary. The park possibly thrilled her more than the flat because it gave Roo, who was getting on in years, other dogs to play with and lots of little children to please. There were poo-bag dispensers and water fountains with taps for humans and bowls for dogs. Ruby’s heart expanded at the generosity of a caring Council. The benches all carried plaques donated by relatives of the dead, giving people somewhere to meet and chat.

Although the Stonnington City Council might be as friendly as Darwin, Ruby soon got the message that being in public housing meant that society would say she had fallen through the cracks. Yet, here she was, watching Roo chase other people’s balls and pups, warm in the knowledge that she had come to the right place — no more hiding.

There was still no sign of Misha, who lived immediately above Ruby, but it was clear that two of the three old girls Ruby had already met from No. 27, Annie Gunn and Mary Kelly, were coming straight for her. Her stomach tightened. Ruby was unsure of herself among strangers, without a husband beside her, defining her. The women might want to take her under their collective wing, but the way they walked towards her was formidable. She chastised herself for being silly

The first time Ruby met Annie, the woman gave her a medical run down on her heart and hip operations. She said her stomach wasn’t clever either, and with puzzling bravado and no hint of shame, went on to share that she relied heavily on continence pads. The absent Marge was apparently the refined one of the three, but Annie and Mary had grown up together in the same girls’ home. Annie became a proud and sharp-witted woman, and Mary was rough as guts.

Mary fixated on Ruby to declare without a hint of warmth or mirth, ‘I’ve done time at Her Majesty’s Service — in prison, you understand — where I gained a keen eye for detecting bullshit and spotting frailties, important skills in an environment like that and valuable anywhere if you want to control people’.

Ruby held her composure under the intense scrutiny.

Annie piped up. ‘Yes, and tell her, you silly old bugger, that you still like to drink to excess and spend half your life at the TAB. Anyway, don’t talk like that, you’re gonna frighten this girl.’ Annie turned to Ruby. ‘Yeah, yeah, Ruby, I know you’re 60-ish. Mary, you’ve gotta give the girl time to settle like I gave you to pay me back after you borrowed from me when you were broke.’

‘Where’s Marge?’ Ruby asked Annie, whose little Chihuahua, Prancer, toddled slowly alongside her with a semi-paralysed tongue hanging limp from the left side of his mouth, as pink as the little one’s flaccid penis on permanent show. Prancer was going on 17 and had had a stroke or two in recent years. Annie adored him.

‘Marge got taken to The Alfred last night. She’s got terminal cancer and had a bad turn, but she’ll be right.’ Annie spoke in hushed tones, belying her confident words. Roo sniffed at Prancer in friendly disdain before galloping off to see if anything had changed in the park since his last round. The older women gazed kindly at Roo, but he moved too fast for them to pat him.

‘Oh! I am sorry to hear that about Marge,’ Ruby said, ‘I do hope she’s home safe soon. Do you mind if I ask, did you hear that ruckus earlier this morning? What was that all about?’

‘Oh! That? They had to carry a corpse away from the Horace Petty Estate after someone snuffed it in suspicious circumstances in the wee hours. There’d been fisticuffs. The police came here on a tipoff early on and found their culprit cowering in our park’s toilets, off his head on drugs.’

‘Oh! The noise woke me, that’s all, but I was a bit slow getting to the window for a look-see’, Ruby said, trying to mimic Annie’s nonchalance, but the news that junkies might be regulars in the park was discomfiting.

‘Never mind, luv,’ Annie smirked. ‘You’ll get plenty of opportunity to see more than a junkie screaming at cops cuffing and bundling some poor blighter into the paddy wagon. A huge fat woman once birthed her twelfth child right here in the middle of our beautiful park, right down there on the green, right in the centre in full sunlight for all the world to see. Mind you, you’ll never hear or read about these things in the news.’

‘Why are you waffling on about that shit, Annie? You’ll scare this one yourself.’ Mary turned to Ruby with a kinder yet still sceptical face. ‘Did you know that our flats were built on what used to be reclaimed swampland? They said it would get rid of mosquitoes, but instead, there was a hullabaloo from the rich and upper-crust mob who lived around here, saying that the poor would inherit their sun. Their sun, mind you. The towers, they said, would cast them into the shade. There’s still a lot of anger about it. Living in these flats carries a stigma, Ruby, that’s for sure. You’ll see.’

‘You’ll see what?’ A young woman stepped up to the group. ‘Hello, ladies. How are we today? My name is Gaye Bailey. I’m your new social worker from the Office of Housing.’

‘The Ministry, you mean.’ Annie corrected the girl by using the locals’ name for that very office, once controlled by the state’s housing minister himself. Ruby took note.

‘If you want to call it that.’ Gaye Bailey replied.

‘Well, how can we help you?’ Legs apart and arms folded across her copious breast, Mary turned as though to square off with Gaye Bailey.

Gaye turned to Ruby. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? Welcome to King Street.’

Ruby was not impressed by this girl’s welcome, acting like she owned the bloody flats. Her sing-song voice made statements that ended in an upward lilt, so you’d think she was asking questions. It made the girl sound silly. Couldn’t she see the old girls were mocking her?

‘Yeah, ta.’ Ruby was cautious, again taking her cue from the older women.

Unperturbed, Gaye went on, now in an earnest tone, to announce a residents’ meeting for ‘next week Thursday’ as she put it, in the Common Room at No. 25.

‘Invitations will be distributed to both No. 25 and No. 27 residents’ letterboxes later today, but could you please all share the news with everyone? It’s my role to organise community get-togethers’, Gaye’s voice turned into a trained institutional coo of pity for lamentable situations, ‘to help the solitary, the elderly and the disabled in the two King Street towers. My goal’, she continued, her voice ringing with the nobility of intent, ‘is to alleviate loneliness by creating community through shared activities, so tell everyone to bring along any ideas they have for discussion.’ Gaye spun around to leave, bidding goodbye to her clients over her shoulder after failing to enquire about any of them.

‘Quick, Ruby Wilson, look and learn.’ Annie pointed towards Chapel Street as she and Mary cracked up laughing. ‘Thomas Bannister’s on his way. See that little Jack Russell darting out from behind the tennis courts? That’s Muggins, his dog. The timing’s perfect. Lookout now, girl, watch and learn.’

Thomas Bannister emerged from behind bushes precisely in time to stop Gaye Bailey in her hoity-toity, high-heeled tracks, upon which the old girls erupted into giant guffaws. Gaye Bailey was trapped.

‘Serve her right,’ Mary said in her rasping voice.’ He’s such a bloody hand-groping nuisance when he’s pissed — which is most of the time — and she’s so up herself, the little tart. You take note, Ruby Wilson, you’ll need to look out too, or that Thomas will be after you in a flash. New flesh. Even the older variety will do for our Thomas.’ There it was again, that edge in the way Mary spoke.

Leaving Ruby with mouth agape, Annie and Mary turned on their heels to waddle off in a riff of giggles and bursts of laughter that tickled the trees into a chorus that reverberated around the park and all the way to Chapel Street until they disappeared inside their building.

2

Ruby had spent the better part of her first fortnight at No. 25 holed up alone in a bare flat, sleeping under a blanket with Roo on a hairy but much-loved car rug on the floor. To avoid meeting people after her initial unnerving encounter with Annie and Mary, she snuck out to the Chapel Street Mission for cheap meals, including a special roast costing only $2.50 on Thursdays. Kindly volunteers there advised her to go to St Vincent de Paul, where she got a single pine-slat bed and a new mattress, a second-hand refrigerator that was shaped like the ice box of her childhood, and a little table and two chairs now ensconced beneath her park-viewing window. The jolly delivery men were a delight. Taking their advice, Ruby visited the Citizen’s Advice Bureau on Chapel Street.

She was greeted by a volunteer who asked her to wait in the dark, cool corridor of the old building off Commercial Road behind Safeway. Soon, a very elderly volunteer with a shock of white hair invited Ruby into her private office and offered her a chair. ‘My name’s Bernadette. What’s yours?

‘I’m Ruby.’

‘Well, Ruby, how can we help you?’

‘Um, well, a delivery man yesterday told me I might be able to get financial assistance here, as well as food vouchers. I’ve moved into No. 25 King Street.’ Ruby looked around and noticed a sign saying that she could get legal advice at the Bureau, too. Nice to know.

‘We can offer you $100 towards settling into King Street and a voucher for $60 for food from Coles.’ Bernadette handed Ruby a form. ‘Complete this and take it to the receptionist when you are ready.’

Before leaving Darwin, Ruby had the good sense to apply for a Disability Pension from Centrelink. Lance had no idea; she kept what she was doing very close to her chest, but there’d been interviews, doctor’s certificates, and psychological tests as officials pried into all corners of her life. The menacing tone of her inquisitor, a man not open to believing a word she said, had her alternating between anger and tears. Still, it was worthwhile because soon after she hit Melbourne, her first payment — back-dated to her application date — showed up in the new bank account she had opened in her maiden name. Ruby dared not think what life might have been like had they knocked her back. She’d driven away from Darwin on hope and a prayer to a place where, without money, she could have ended up homeless for the rest of her life. Ruby treated her Disability Pension as a blessing. As a 60-year-old woman who had never worked, she now had a regular income and would be eligible for the Age Pension based on her year of birth, when she was 63. She thanked her arthritis and growing infirmity for they protected her from the onerous job-search requirements of New Start for the unemployed.

The back pay set her up with inexpensive basics like bed linen, towels, a kettle, toaster, saucepan, frying pan and wok from the Chinese cheap shop on Chapel Street. At Priceline, she bought a few fragrant treasures like shampoo and deodorant, and she stocked her quite functional old fridge with fruit and vegetables, butter, milk, and a large container of Streets Vanilla Ice Cream as a treat. She thanked Kentucky Fried Chicken and MacDonald’s, whose cheap food had staved off starvation from the day she left her husband and her beloved Darwin, with a firm resolve never to eat junk food again.

In her first days and weeks, Ruby still avoided people by going out at dawn and dusk to let Roo have a big pee and take daily walks. As her confidence grew, she edged into the daylight, and it wasn’t long before Mary declared that she might as well come out like others at a respectable time because everybody would know what she was up to anyway. Thus, freed from hiding, Ruby asked Mary about Misha, saying she could feel his presence, even from her window. Mary grunted and went on her way, hurrying to reach the grog outlet at opening time.

Misha sat on his bench feeding pigeons, morning and evening, while others walked their dogs. He paid no attention to others but was hard to miss. Ruby’s growing attraction to the man puzzled her, but it was strong despite his colourless, crumpled trousers and grubby sandshoes, which he wore without socks. Yes, the hacking, phlegmy cough that sometimes wracked his large frame was repellent. Even worse, he clasped a bottle of what Ruby imagined to be spirits in a brown paper bag in his left hand, screwed at the top so the bottle’s lip was barely visible. He only relinquished his bottle to pat a dog with one hand while holding its head with the other, to smile at a child and scatter seeds for the birds or re-ignite his home-rolled fag, the dank stub of which kept going out at the corner of his mouth. Ruby shuddered to think the man might slobber. Still, she wanted to get to know him.

Misha’s pigeon-feeding drew insults in equal numbers from dog walkers and passers-by among Prahran’s high and low born. Many dog owners conspicuously tugged their dogs away from the old man or put them back on leads to stop their darlings from flocking to him. But the indiscriminate Roo had bounded up to Misha, tongue hanging out with a smile. Ruby smiled, too, and Misha smiled back with a twinkle in his grey-blue eyes. The directness of his gaze fascinated and delighted her, hinting as it did at a sharp intelligence. After a few days, she sat beside him regularly until she could no longer think of the park without wanting to talk to Misha.

One day, the flock of pigeons surrounding him lifted from the ground in a sudden, metallic rattle and whistle of wings to greet a steaming feast of cooked chicken bones. Ruby could smell their pungent warmth as they splattered on the ground outside No. 25. The Russian woman from the flat next to Ruby’s, who had poked her head out of the window before chucking the food out, was about to withdraw from view with her empty bowl. But Misha was already beneath her, waving his arms and