Trent Dalton’s heartfelt gift to mate’s mum who passed away

In this first exclusive extract from his new book Love Stories, bestselling Brisbane author Trent Dalton shares his own message of love, to the mother of a dear friend, and explains how this very personal mission came to be.

Dear Kath,

I got your gift. Might be the most beautiful gift I ever got.

I’m looking at your face in the funeral booklet as I write this letter. Kathleen Kelly 15.01.1931 - 25.12.2020. You look like an angel, Kath, some strange Irish cross between early Kate Hepburn and every star in the Milky Way.

You bowed out on Christmas Day. We all thought that was kinda perfect. The memorial was beautiful and true. Lakeview Chapel, Albany Creek Memorial Park. You were so loved, Kath. You must have done it right. Life, I mean. You must have known the point of it all: live a life so full and selfless that latecomers struggle to find a spare seat at your funeral.

The January heat outside the chapel broke the airconditioner and the photo montage broke me in two. All tears and no tissues. Funeral photo montages get me every time. The journey of it all. You as a kid. You as a mum. You as a grandmother to all those grandkids who did you so proud in that chapel.

Trent Dalton collecting love stories.

Judy and Greg, those beautiful children of yours, said the most beautiful things about you. True-love things. Maybe that’s the trick to parenting: just love your kids so hard and so fully that when you go they won’t be able to spit out a single word about you without trembling.

They told the love story of you and Jim. They told the love story of you and the 67 years you spent in the Jack Street house, how much you loved the people in your neighbourhood, how you listened to all their stories for hours until the hours turned into years and the years turned into decades. You knew the secret to it all, how the greatest gift we can give to the world is to shut up and listen to it.

Greg spoke of you and your beloved Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter, the sky-blue one that you’d been tapping away on since the early 1970s, writing fiery letters about women’s rights and human rights and doing life right to politicians and principals and popes. He spoke about the letter you wrote to the Catholic Leader in 1970, railing against Canon Law demanding the covering of women’s heads in church. You were so furious and brilliant. “I cannot see anything disrespectful about a woman’s bare head,” you wrote. “Surely it is what is in the heart, not the scrap of fabric on the head, that counts.” I turned to my daughter Beth beside me when Greg read that bit out. She’s 14 now, Kath, and she nodded at me because she heard every word you said.

After the memorial service, as per your instructions, we all went out to Greg’s car in the parking lot and he pulled out an Esky filled with the 30 stubbies of XXXX Gold that were still chilling in your fridge the day you were rushed to hospital. We gladly sank those stubbies like you wanted, Kath, and we toasted your good name. I told Greg some things he didn’t know about you, like how you wrote me those beautiful and tender emails when Dad was finally killed by the durries. “He’s not dead while his name is still spoken,” you reminded me.

Then Greg told me some things I didn’t know about you, how you cut my journo stuff out of the paper and glued the clippings into those sacred scrapbooks that documented your life and all that you cared for. I was so touched that a mate’s mum would take the time to do such a thing. “Well, wait til you see this,” Greg said. And he leaned into the boot of his car and pulled out your sky-blue Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter. “She wanted you to have it,” he said.

Trent Dalton collecting love stories.

I told Greg that I’d write something special onyour typewriter. I said I would write something filled with love and depth and truth and frankness and heart because you were loving and deep and true and frank and heartfelt. I said it wouldn’t be cynical and glib, Kath, because I can’t do cynical and glib anymore. The global market for cynical and glib has been flooded. The cynics bob up in your cornflakes, pop out of your toaster in the morning like a burnt slice of mouldy Tip-Top. Some four million people and counting are dead from a virus and, hell no, I don’t feel like being sarcastic. I feel like being open and true and right flippin’ here, right flippin’ now.

I told Greg I wanted to walk through the streets of Brisbane’s CBD for two months asking random strangers to tell me love stories. I told him I then wanted to sit for two straight weeks with the Olivetti on the corner of Adelaide and Albert streets, on the edge of King George Square, and ask random strangers to stop and tell me more love stories, and then I wanted to write about all those love stories on your beautiful Olivetti. “I don’t know, man, something inside me is telling me I need to do this,” I said. And maybe it’s this awful arse-boil of a pandemic that refuses to be lanced. And maybe it’s just me and maybe it’s just something I need to do. “I know Kath would say it sounds cheesy as hell,” I said to Greg. “But do ya reckon she’d mind if I did something like that with her typewriter?”

He didn’t hesitate, Kath. I can’t remember when your son was ever hesitant. “I think she’d love nothing more,” he said.

So here I am, Kath. I’m writing this letter to you on the Olivetti as I sit on the corner of Adelaide and Albert streets at a small fold-up table that I bought from BCF for $50 and will use as my writing desk. I’ve just spent two months walking through the streets of Brisbane, asking random strangers to tell me love stories. I’ve been shutting up and listening to the world. Back and forth through the city streets for 60 days, talking to people about love and what it means and what it is and where it comes from and what it feels like to find it, lose it, keep it and cherish it in the good years and the bad years and the arse-boil years like these ones we’re living in now. Back and forth from the Orient Hotel at the end of Queen Street and down to the brown Brisbane River that rises every 15 or 30 years to remind us we’re only ever three steps away from the mop and the bucket.

Trent Dalton in the Brisbane CBD.

And here I am now, spending two weeks sitting on this corner on a $15 fold-up blue chair I bought at Big W on Edward Street, with another $15 chair beside me that random strangers keep sitting in as they kindly, gently, wildly, courageously, beautifully tell me the love stories of their lives. Between the stories I’m tapping out letters to the people I love, inspired by the stories I’ve just heard. Just yesterday I wrote a letter to Joni Mitchell. This morning I wrote a letter to Whitney Houston.

The Olivetti is working like a dream, Kath.

I took it to Garry Hill, the typewriter repairer in Everton Hills. He put a new ribbon in it and cleaned the letter hammers. Garry worked for Olivetti from 1974 to 1991 and he was so impressed by the way you’d looked after your typewriter, Kath. “Beautiful machine,” Garry whispered. He dated the Olivetti to the mid-to-late 1960s. “There’s no parts available for this, but I don’t think you’re going to need any,” he said. “What are you using it for?”

“I’m gonna sit with it on the corner of Adelaide and Albert streets for two weeks and listen to complete strangers tell me love stories. It’s my gentle middle finger to 18 months of global pandemic.” Garry smiled. “Good for you,” he said. Garry said my “o” letter hammer on the typebar might get clogged with ink, but I can clean that ink out with a pin. I told Garry that was good to know: I needed that “o” hammer in good working order because I was about to type the word “love” maybe two thousand times.

It really is a beautiful machine, Kath. This machine kills fascists. This machine needs no power beyond stories and ideas. It carries no emails, no internet connection, no Spotify, but it carries my dreams.

There’s a sign resting against my desk: “Sentimental writer collecting love stories. Do you have one to share?” You would not believe the things people will tell you when you take the time to shut the hell up and listen. The wisdoms, the secrets and the stories so heartbreaking, triumphant, romantic, exhilarating, hilarious, tragic and wondrous, just like life.

Tretn Dalton sittign with his typewriter in Brisbane CBD.

Sometimes people say things so perfect and true that it feels like they’ve been wanting to say those things all their life but the timing was never right. Maybe the timing is right now and maybe it’s this awful pandemic that’s been making us all think so damn hard about what we care about, about what we love.

I’ve already made some friends on my corner, Kath. Three metres to the left of my writing desk are the ladies from the anti-Chinese Communist Party petition group. They’re tough as nails but caring, always giving me snacks and advice on being sunsmart when working on the street. Five metres to my right is Reuben Vui, a kind-hearted Kiwi who’s signing people up to child sponsorship programs. Some days I’m joined at my desk by Tony Dee, a crooner living with spina bifida, who sings note-perfect Sinatra love songs from his wheelchair at the entry to King George Square. Sometimes I’m joined by my new Belgian busker mate, Jean-Benoit Lagarmitte, who plays drums on an upturned empty Osmocote fertiliser tub. Jean-Benoit was born during the Rwandan Civil War and left for dead under a tree as a baby, and he might be the happiest man I’ve ever met.

Love Stories by Trent Dalton.

And now here’s another friend, a woman named Helen Clark, standing in front of my writing desk. “I’ve got a love story,” she says. And that means I’ve gotta go, Kath, because that’s how it always begins and I’ll never know how it ends if I don’t shut the hell up and listen.

I’ll write again, soon. I know I said I just wanted to tell you I got your gift. But what I really wanted to tell you was thanks. Thanks for the stories, Kath. And thanks for the love.

Trent

This is an extract from Love Stories, by Trent Dalton, HarperCollins. Available to pre-order from Booktopia, $33. For tickets to the book launch in Brisbane on November 3 visit: https://avidreader.com.au/events/trent-dalton-love-stories