MERYL BROWN TOBIN

SHORT FICTION

SHORT STORIES

Publications where featured

Australia

Ash; Artlook; Climb the Mountain: Poetry & Prose from The Society of Women Writers Victoria Inc; Eclectic Words: 2021 General Anthology (Geelong Writers Inc); Expression Australia; From the Inside Looking Out: 2020 General Anthology (Geelong Writers Inc); Family Circle; Free XpresSion; Gabbalot News; Gippsland Writer; Hells Belles Letters; Lyrebird Monthly; Lines from the Homefront; Manly Advocate Weekender; Matilda; Melbourne Report; Monbulk Magazine; Network; New Idea; Northern Perspective; Oz-Wide Tales; Pageant; Pendulum; Penny Dreadful; Phoenix-Australia; Prints; Pursuit; Realist; SCOPP; Single Life; Studio; Swag o’ Tales 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007; The Society of Women Writers Victoria Inc. Christmas Competition 2003 Winning Entries and Judges’ Comments; Through the Web and Other Stories; Waneroo-Stirling Weekly; Waterline Writing Competition 2008: Selected Stories and Poems; Weekly Times; Wind, Rain & Mud Anthology; Write Away; Writer’s Friend; Writer’s Friend 5th Birthday Anthology, 2002; The Australian Writer; The Waterline News; The Write Angle 

Overseas: Alfie Dog Fiction website; Her World, Her World Annual (Singapore); Short Story International (USA); Student Series: Seedling: Short Story International

Radio: ABC, ABC Regional Radio, Radio Nag 91.3 FM, Yeppoon, Southern FM 88.3, 5UV Short Stories

MAIN AWARDS in Short Story Writing Competitions

'Mother Carmela'                     1st, Short Story Award Christmas Comps, The Society of Women Writers, Victoria Inc, 2001

'Kitty's Chance'                       1st, The Society of Women Writers, Victoria Inc Biennial Literary Award for Women, 2011

'The Wooden Trunk'                1st, Positive Words Short Story and Poetry Competition, 2017

Numerous places in Christmas Comps, The Society of Women Writers, Victoria Inc

To see some of Meryl Brown Tobin's short stories on Internet sites, check out https://www.waterlinenews.com.au/waterlinesearch.html.

The following 1,650 word short story is an example of Meryl Brown Tobin’s work. An earlier version won The Society of Women Writers, Victoria Inc Biennial Literary Award for Women, 2011 judged by writer and lecturer Ray Mooney. It was published in The Society of Women Writers, Victoria Inc newsletter, Write Away, August, 2011.

KITTY’S  CHANCE

by MERYL BROWN TOBIN ©

Today I’ll sprout wings and fly out of this life into a new world. It’s the day I’ll prove to everyone I’ve got what it takes––Scholarship Day. I hurry along the street. For once I don’t hear my tin sole clacking on the pavement.

Everyone’s good at something, and I am too. Not sport, or housework. Mum calls me dizzy because I don’t like helping her in the house. But I hate housework and I get sick of being the one most asked to help because my older sisters work long hours and my younger one is the sick one. Because I sneak up on the roof to watch the birds flying about and to write poems, Mum also reckons I’m a dreamer.

Mr Baker says, ‘Kitty, you’re the best reader, writer and speller in the Merit grades.’ I blush to put what he says in writing, but it’s true––and it is nice to be good at something, and nice that Mr Baker lets me know. Hugging the thought warms me as much as sitting in front of a fire full of hot coals.

‘Winning the scholarship will open up a new world to you, Kitty,’ Mr Baker says. I whisper his words to my secret self, the one I talk to when things get tough at home. I don’t want to end up like my oldest sister Lucy who is eight years older than me. When she was 14, she had to leave school to work in a shoe factory. Because Dad was always ill and couldn’t work, Mum had to use Lucy’s wages to keep the family. But even then it was hard for Mum to manage. Three years later my second sister Florrie turned 14 so she had to go to work with Lucy. But Florrie was like me, really good at school. She wanted to be a teacher or a nurse, but she didn’t get a say. Mr Baker says if I win a scholarship there’ll be money for my books and keep.

I tingle at the thought of staying on to finish secondary school. My stomach has butterflies at what will happen after that. If I am good enough––and I know I am––I’ll go on to the Conservatorium to study Music.

Music, my love, my passion. Even though I’ve never had a piano lesson, except from Mum, I know I have a gift. Everyone who hears me play tells me so. ‘Hum the first line,’ I say to people. As I play song after song and piece of music after piece of music, their mouths drop open. It gives me the giggles. ‘I’ve got thousands of tunes stored in my head,’ I say.

I’ll sit for hours playing Mum’s piano. Mum doesn’t mind. She plays well, and it makes her happy that I can play too. Once I even heard her say to Mrs Dawkins next door, ‘You know Kitty can play even better than I can.’

When she’s home, Florrie’ll stand beside me and sing. When I tell her I wish I had a rich contralto voice like hers, she laughs and says, ‘Well, I wish I could play the piano like you.’

As I approach the old single-fronted house in Fitzroy that my family rents, I try to ignore the clatter of the sole of my shoe. How Florrie laughed when Dad first repaired my old shoe with a piece of tin and she heard it go clacketty-clack when I walked. I cried and told Dad I wished he had a job and could afford to buy me a new pair of shoes. ‘Don’t take any notice of Florrie,’ he said. ‘It’s the Depression, and we’re all doing it hard.’

Poor Florrie––I hope she doesn’t feel too badly about losing her baby. It would have been nice to have a little niece to love. Where are you, Florrie? Come home soon. With her pencilled eyebrows, flapper hairstyle and narrow velvet ribbon with a pearl around her ivory neck, Florrie’s the glamour girl of our family and my idol. Why did she have to run off to Queensland with that sleazy charmer Will last year? He might be handsome but he’s a lot older than she is and he’s always eyeing off the young girls, even me. He gives me the creeps, so I keep out of his way. And, boy, is he nasty when he’s had too much to drink! Let’s hope he never finds Florrie now she’s run away from him.

Careful not to twist my ankle, I jump along the cobblestones in the back lane. I hope Mum and Daphne got home early from the hospital, and Mum has my lunch ready on the table. Poor Daphne. She’s only a year and a half younger than me but when she was a little girl she fell and hit her head on the brass stand in front of the fireplace. Since then she has had lots of fits and had to leave school in Grade 4. And she was a good reader, speller and writer like me too. Crossing my fingers, I hope she won’t have a fit today of all days.

Bursting in the back gate, I nearly cut my head off on a taut piece of rope. I pull up abruptly. Dad comes out of the falling-down wooden building he calls his shed. ‘Watch it, Kitty! You’ll damage my milk delivery system!’

He points to the rope stretching from the gate up to the back door. ‘In future you won’t have to come down here to get the milk. The milky can slip the billy on the rope, give it a tug and off it’ll go––all the way up to the house.’

‘Sounds good.’ I rub the redness on my neck as I rush past yelling, ‘Mum, I’m home!’

‘She’s not home. Must have got held up at the hospital. You know what the queues are like there.’

My lip goes wobbly. ‘But she promised.’

Dad brushes flakes of wood out of his walrus moustache. ‘Tell you what. You rustle up something for lunch, and we can sit here in the sun and eat it.’

Shaking my head, I run inside. I wash my hands under the tap. How cold the water is. Then I go looking in the cupboards. I grab the remains of a loaf of bread and find some dripping in the meat-safe. I prise open the lid of a jam tin. Only a scrapping of plum jam left. Barely enough for one piece of bread.

Just as well Lucy gets paid today. I hate the end of the week and going to bed hungry. Carefully I pour water into the teapot from the old black kettle on the fire stove. No milk or sugar for the two weak lukewarm cups of tea, because there isn’t any.

I carry our meal out into the garden where Dad has turned three metal buckets upside down for our table and chairs. As Dad eats his lunch, he doesn’t seem to notice I have no jam on my bread and dripping. It would have been nice if he’d said, ‘You’re a good girl to look after your old dad like that, Kitty.’

I guess my father is an old dad––he snot as young as my friends’ fathers anyway. He’s 63 and looks like my friends’ grandfathers. They all have long walrus moustaches and balding heads like him.

Dad starts to tell me about his inventions. Normally I love sitting in the yard listening to him, but not today.

As I quickly clean up after lunch, I glance at the small clock in the kitchen. ‘No!’ I dash out, kiss Dad and rush to the gate.

‘Look out for the rope!’ yells Dad.

My heart thumping in my chest, I hare along the street. In the distance the school bell rings for the end of lunch time. ‘No!’ I sob and run harder. Straight after the bell the Scholarship kids have to assemble in the quadrangle to walk down to the station to catch the train.

I wince. Not a stitch! I hold my side and slow to a walk. I’m never going to get to school in time.

When I do get there, the schoolground is deserted. My stomach contracts and I feel as if I’m going to be sick. From a classroom window I can hear the sound of boys and girls reciting the four times table. There is no sign of the Scholarship kids.

I break out in a sweat and race down towards the station. Rounding a corner, I glimpse the last of the children disappearing through the station gate. But I still have blocks to go. How I wish I were as good a runner as I am a student and piano-player.

I can hear a train in the distance. I put on an extra spurt and ignore the feeling of my side being split open. Whoo-oo-oo-oo! My train is approaching the railway crossing. I run faster.

The train pulls into the station. With my face as hot and red as Dad’s chasing the milky’s horse when it bolted after being scared by kids with crackers, my heart threatening to burst the buttons on my shirt and my legs feeling like junket, I put on another spurt.

I fly down the station ramp and get to the station gate just as the train pulls out. Someone waves to me, but I can’t wave back. As people leave the station, I stand aside to let them pass.

‘Miss the train, did you, young lady?’ says the ticket-collector. ‘Don’t worry; there’ll be another in half an hour.’

I can’t even pull a face. Instead I turn around and scuff my way back along the street. The clacketty-clack of my tin sole echoes the clacketty-clack of the train receding into the far distance.