Oh Matilda: Who Bloody Killed Her? Chapter 24

The sexual energy cannot be contained when these two movie stars meet — and Nikki Gemmell’s here to capture every passionate moment.

 

This is ‘summer reading’ like nothing you’ve read before: a diverse field of writers collaborating on a novel that will captivate you through summer.

Each author had just three days to write their chapter, with complete freedom over story and style; it’s fast, fun and very funny.

Start from the very beginning with Chapter 1 or go to ohmatilda.com.au

Today The Weekend Australian Magazine’s beloved columnist, author Nikki Gemmell, brings the book to its crescendo with Chapter 24. Don’t miss Tom Keneally’s final chapter on February 27, right here.

By Nikki Gemmell

Maya and McCredden were smiling secrets at each other. As usual, shutting Mother out. Those two. Wearing smugness like an Oodie. Especially that McCredden. Mother was invisible to him and it stung. She still had his Cleo nude centrefold tucked into her copy of The Thornbirds.

The loneliness howled through her. No man had ever looked at her like this but it hadn’t stopped her dreaming of it. Solitude was Mother’s destiny and she was now curdling with it. Maya glanced across at her like she knew too much.

Mother suddenly stopped. Wildly gesticulated. Slapped her face. McCredden thought it the most animated he’d seen the lumpen woman since they’d landed on this godforsaken island; Maya, that if only it was her own hands doing the slapping because she’d be hitting just a wee bit harder here.

“Bee! Bees!” Mother gasped. “Allergic! EpiPen. Quick.” She stumbled blindly towards her room, furiously batting away circling insects as her eyes puffed up. “W-what did you have to tell me, Maya? Can’t it wait? I can barely see.”

“It’s nothing, Sweetie,” Maya grinned roguishly at McCredden. “Just that I’m about to have the shag of my life. With, quite possibly, the man of your dreams.” Maya planted a tender whisper of a kiss on her old friend’s forehead, suddenly all distracting, addling want in the adrenaline of the moment. The supreme actor of her generation.

McCredden fell for it. Maya Churchill still desired him. This felt as sweet as being crowned National Talking Point circa 1974 as Australia’s most famous, golden-hued nude centrefold – with strategically placed lava lamp. Take that, Jack Thompson. He had it in him yet.

Mother scuttled off blindly to her room as Maya eyed her old sparring partner. Felt a stab of fondness for her still bronzed – actually, now slightly orange – warrior god of luvvie land. All during the seventies the housewives of Australia had pictured his glorious body rather than their partner’s as they lay beneath their oblivious men. Maya owed him one last shag for his mighty service. For the women of Australia. After all, the mere thought of those lickable limbs had given the nation’s mothers, daughters and indeed grandmothers so much pleasure, for so long.

“Come on John-boy,” she smiled, “it’s not quite goodnight yet.”

The old bull was confused, but tamed. Docilely he allowed himself to be led to Maya’s chamber, scrabbling in his pocket for the magic pills Kev had slipped him for his little, er, problem. That chef’s ironic 1970s Ansett travel bag contained so many revelatory joys.

McCredden swallowed four then a fifth for good luck.

Wooah! The old actor felt a rush of adrenaline. Rocket fuel or what. This was going to be better than the time he stole Delvene from Hoges and they had the post-Logies romp with Abigail and Picnic’s Miranda. Or was that in his head? McCredden’s memory was fading. But his old China was not.

He cut straight to the chase with his girl, the only girl he’d ever wanted. None of that snowflakey foreplay business thank you very much. This was the greatest sex he’d ever had and the best for Maya too, he just knew it. Her orgasmic gasps, her moans. He was giving the old Sting a run for his money here. This could go on for hours. Days.

As McCredden crescendoed a clammy sweat skittered over him. He felt a tingling. A stabbing lurch in his mighty chest. He keeled over. McCredden had always dreamt of bowing out at the peak of ecstasy; it would be a fitting bon mot to the storied, carefully curated fiction of his life. And now he was signing off with the act he’d be remembered for most. With Australia’s darling, their celluloid ice queen no less.

If only the world had known what a dud shag McCredden was, Maya thought, as she patted John’s back in the shock of the silence afterwards. “Your secret’s safe with me, old chap,” she whispered gently.

At that moment Mother lurched into the room with her puffiness much reduced. “Any man would be proud to die on the job, eh?” Maya chuckled, woman to woman. She didn’t notice Mother’s face, catatonic with grief, because it was not in Maya’s remit to notice other people. Or care. Unless they could help her in some way. And she’d always been shortsighted which was why she’d perfected the Jackie O sunglasses look

And why would Maya ever take note of the likes of a Mother? The woman was like an anchor dragging in the sand. Always lumpily fading into the wallpaper, or in the dim corner of a green room, or on the far reaches of opening night crowd. Always the Madge to her Edna. Lurking. Watching. Dampening.

“What a relief,” Maya sighed, oblivious to Mother now scratching her cheeks in deep gouges. “He just went on and on. Don’t you hate that? The worst shag I’ve ever had and it only took fifty years to discover it. I’ve never actually had an orgasm, Sweetie. Not that he knew. Not that they ever know.” Maya noted her use of the present tense, and that it might have been some time since Mother had actually experienced any fleshly delights, but she ploughed on nonetheless. When it came to empathy and other women Maya did not compute.

She tried shifting McCredden’s weight. It wouldn’t budge. Inconvenient. “I’m sure he was proud to die on the job. And this certainly isn’t the Rushcutters Bay Travel Lodge is it? One has standards. Well, at least, one does now.”

“My god, was that … you … with Billy?”

“Good girls never tell,” Maya smiled. “But as Prue never said, why spoil a good story. Now help get him off me, would you. He’s huge. But no, no, not in that sense. God no.” Mother was in a trance. “Maria? Hello? Are you in here? Little Maria Annie Champers. Can. You. Hear me.”

Mother was listening to the full horror of her real name. The moniker only her Mama-Dearest ever used when beating her with the empty Mortein Pump. For not remembering her lines. Or singing flat. Or failing an audition. Or just wanting to cut her hair short and pull the wings off dead cicadas with her hot next door neighbour, Dot.

“Maria Annie?” Maya’s voice taunted. Maya who’d always had it easy. Who’d never known suffering. A director’s rejection. The torment of unrequited love. Maya who took her role when Maria exited Evita and never gave it back.

For decades these two had been fawning over each other at opening nights – “Dahling!” “Sweeeeeeeetie!” “Choooookas!” – while wishing the other as vanished as Melissa Caddick. We’re talking the volcanic bitterness of Vinegar Tits and the Freak here. It’s Madge and Mrs Mangle territory. Ita and Denise. Yumi and Kerri-Anne. Hazel and Blanche. Pat the Rat and Beryl Palmer. Gina and Rose. Nene and Dulcie. Fitzy and Stan. Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh. Amber Sherlock and Julie Snook. Even, even, Gladys and Anna.

“It’s a myth that women hate each other, isn’t it?” Maya chuckled. “I’ve been helped all my life by other females.” She wittered on in her audition-ready, baby voice. “And you’ll help me now, won’t you Maria?” For Maya was still pinned. “Sweetie? Maria Annie!” The hated name that Mother had long erased from her life. The hated woman saying it.

“Braddy,” Mother intoned, looking at Maya with her assassins’s eyes. “My beautiful boy. He was going to be the first Australian to get an EGOT. No. An EGOT-L.” She corrected herself awkwardly, because awkwardness, alas, was Mother’s Oodie.

“A . a what?”

“An Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony. And a Logie. But you ruined my – his – dreams.”

Mother was a heavy woman. She took McCredden’s loose arm and pressed it down on Maya’s famously swanlike, loathed neck. “I can’t go on,” Mother whispered. But she could.

“What are you doing?” Maya gurgled indignantly.

Mother smiled. “Don’t Cry For Me … Australia,” she sang in a perfect, whispered vibrato that in another world would have netted her a Helpmann. For Mother, finally, was the star of her show. Noone would be ignoring her now. “This one’s for Braddy. Sweetie.” She choked up. “The only man who ever loved me.” It was her finest performance.

Maya scrabbled for the heavy Diptyque candle by her bed. The eucalyptus one from the AACTAs goodie bag that she took on every shoot to cleanse her existence of the horrors of an unaesthetic world. The old girl was strong, still, thanks to her boxing workouts.

McCredden’s dead arm was pressed deeper into Maya’s neck in a final embrace of futile want. Deeper still. Mother grunted with the determination of someone crushed by decades of unrighteous ignoring. Maya gripped the candle. There could only be one victor here.

And then there was one.

In the time honoured tradition of Bette Davis – upon hearing of Joan Crawford’s death – the happy murderer declared to no one in particular, but quite possibly an invisible camera, ‘‘You should never say bad things about the dead – only good. She’s finally gone. So. ‘Good.’”

The glee roared through her.

Don’t miss the next and final thrilling chapter by Tom Keneally, out February 27. To catch up on the story, start here with Chapter 1 or go to ohmatilda.com.au.

Nikki Gemmell has a new novel, an historical thriller called The Ripping Tree, out in April. Dissolve, a non fiction book about love and female creativity, is published in September.