by Kim Kelly
REAL LIFE
He smiles at me across the twelve-pack of toilet rolls on the checkout conveyor: ‘How are you today?’
‘Hm. Good. You?’ I look away, blushing, suddenly flustered.
The checkout boy is about twenty, fresh-faced, intelligent eyes, and he has no idea I’ve used him as the model for a World War II RAAF flight engineer in my latest manuscript. This boy is younger, possibly still at university, and whenever I see him at the supermarket, I have a compulsion to tell him not to join the air force. A rush of maternal concern: as if I know him.
Somehow, somewhere amid the universal soul soup we’re all adrift within, perhaps I do. All of my characters certainly appear out of it, and often without me knowing at the time. My RAAF man came to me quite unexpectedly in the middle of my chapter three and while he looks very much like checkout boy, in spirit he’s the whispering shadow of a real-life RAAF man. Fred Dennis was his name and, as navigator, with set-square, pencil and stopwatch, he flew in the Battle of Britain, and once flew Winston Churchill himself. He’d have been in his seventies when he stole my heart with his stories. In many ways, he’s nothing like my fictional man – for a start, they’re not even the same nationality – but my imagination, questing through the soup, has sought to honour him and his quiet, melancholy heroism. And I didn’t realise I’d done it until I found myself at the end of my story in tears of recognition: ‘Oh – Fred!’
When I say, as I often do, that all my characters are real people to me, this is what I mean: they are made of fragments of love and wonder at the people around me.
Of course sometimes that wonder explores aspects of humanity that frighten me. Netty Becker in The Blue Mile, for example, is an awful, sniping gossip, amusing on the one hand for her know-all nosiness, but breathtakingly destructive on the other, spreading lies about others for no purpose other than her own gratification. And then there’s Alec Howell, the sadistic, misogynist uncle from Paper Daisies: he is every bully I’ve ever met – and I found a great deal of satisfaction in killing him on the page. It is a bit of screwed-up fun to punish those who’ve punished me in real life in these ways, but generally I don’t do bad guys. I suppose, in my experience, they seem so far in the minority, why give them more attention than they deserve? I’d rather celebrate the strengths and triumphs of those I admire: there is an ever-increasing multitude of them. And, if my stories are my legacy in this life, I want to leave behind me trails of light: kindness, compassion, wisdom.
We’re all miraculous survivors in one way or another. We are stupid, annoying, frustrating, blind to our faults and more, yes, but we’re all amazing, too. As I’ve said elsewhere and several times, if that makes me a sentimentalist – oh well. What did Nietzsche say about playing with monsters and staring too long into the abyss?
I stare into my soup instead and find more interesting depths of reality there, sprinklings of interconnectedness I can’t begin to understand. But I want to.
How is it that in writing The Blue Mile, whose colourful hero Olivia is so much my Nana, I inadvertently discovered one of her most closely held secrets? I gave posh Olivia a convict grandfather in her family closet completely unaware that this was Nana’s truth. It was only during some idle research of her unusual maiden name, Mellish, a year or two after the novel was published that I stumbled upon the facts – and I swear I heard Nana gasp from the stars. Sorry, Nana.
Although I’m not a religious person or in any way into woo-woo, the idea that we’re somehow atomically, interdimensionally entwined is a compelling one for me. Did my convict want me to find him? Did he stare back at me from the soup?
If so, he’s not the first to have done it. When I was madly scrambling at the final, final, last-minute history checks for my first novel, Black Diamonds, before it went to print, I thought I’d just better make sure none of my German-Australian family went to the Western Front during World War I – as does Daniel Ackerman in the story. I searched the Australian War Memorial databases, as I had done several times already – I even remember thinking, ‘Why am I being so neurotic about this? Who cares if there was family there or not?’ – when the name Henry James Schwebel shouted back at me: ‘Here I am!’ One of my Pop’s cousins, as it turned out, and he’d died in Flanders, slaughtered like so many thousands of other Australians there. I hadn’t known he’d existed at all until that moment.
I was suddenly awash with ninety years of untold grief, floods of it, and astonishment that I’d just written a novel that might as well have traced Henry’s path – only Daniel, in the story, makes it home again.
The real-life model for Daniel was a lovely young man not unlike my supermarket checkout boy. He’d gone to school with my own boys, a little older than my eldest. When I first began writing Black Diamonds, I sketched much of its opening chapters in the car while my eldest played cricket on Saturday mornings, and whenever I looked up at the sports field I couldn’t help but notice the boy with dark hair, a glint of auburn in it, who was bigger and more skilled than all the others. The way he moved, so gracefully, and his encouragement of the younger, smaller boys, had me magicking him into a man on my pages. I can’t think about Daniel without thinking about him.
But I can’t name him. Not here. This boy didn’t quite get to become a man. He was killed in a car accident on the highway not far from where we lived a few years after the novel was published. I’d always meant to tell his mother what I’d done, how I’d used her beautiful son, and I couldn’t tell her then. Perhaps I will one day. Or perhaps she’ll read the novel sometime and find a whisper of him there. Either way, he is there and always will be. Really.
Thank you Kim for your insightful writing.
Thanks for dropping in. Dee x
Brilliant post, Kim. It’s true that characters come from what you call the ‘universal soul soup’. I am sure that my characters have lived before in some form, then when they make themselves known to me, they live again.
In my first novel, one character has a bit of my brother, another a bit of my late father, and yet another a piece of his father. But they are all themselves as well. I am sure that there is a bit of me in my second book’s protagonist, but mostly she comes from the soup of people who have lived and long to be recognised in some way.
Thanks Linda. It’s beautiful, isn’t it, the way we explore the lives and minds of those we love, or those who fascinate us? I wish we celebrated that more as an important function of storytelling. All power to your writing x
Hi Kim. Looks like we are cousins. Henry Schwebel is my great uncle. I grew up in Marrickville and remember going to the war memorial out the front of the town hall and reading his name there on many occassions as a child. My grandfather, Ray Schwebel remembered Henry with great fondness. He saved my grandfather when the Cooks River flooded and got him out of the house. There was actually 22 years difference between them as my grandfather was the baby of the family and a late edition, quite unexpected as his mother thought her baby bearing days were over. Grandpa used to tell me that his father, George Schwebel was a hard, old German man and that Henry and George had a big row which resulted in him going off to the war. His mother, Jessie never got over his death and grieved his loss until the day she died. Apparently the RSL movement started in Marrickville due to a mother’s letter (not sure to who) about the loss of her son, and I have often wondered if it was Jessie who wrote it. My Grandpa and Uncles’ Reggie and Herbert used to take me to the RSL with them, so I have fond memories in that regard. All the best to you. Your story sounds wonderful and how intuitive to write it without knowing about Henry. Cheers to you, your cousin, Coralie.
How wonderful, Coralie! Interestingly, I had had snippets of information about Jessie. I knew that she was a businesswoman of note in the area and that her house was called ‘Zonnebecke’, which I thought was a curious name – little knowing it was her grief over Henry that caused her to name the house, on Illawarra Road, after the place where he was killed. Such a tragedy. I’m glad he ‘found’ me in the end – and that you have, too! Being such a close relative of Henry’s you must be a descendant of Adam Schwebel, my great, great grandfather Georg Schwebel’s brother. So lovely to be in touch, cuz XX
Hi Kim. Lovely to meet you too. Just thought I would check in tonight and see if you had had a chance to see my comment. yes, Adam Schwebel is my great great grandfather. I’ve been trying to trace the family tree but can’t really get past Johann Michael Schwebel. Adam and George’s father. I’m taking it on face value that there is some evidence somewhere that Johann Michael Schwebel and Maria Eva Muend are actually their parents as there are no known birth records that I have been able to find. On the passenger lists via the Triton, Adam and George state their parents names were Michael and Maria Eva from Reissen Grand Duchy of hessen. But I can find no birth records or marriage records that mentions Adam and George in this area. Perhaps they were telling half truths about their parents and origins? There are plenty of Michaels and Maria Evas in WaldMichaelbach. I’m not sure about the history of that area, but I have heard something about people trying to avoid some sort of conscription at that time. I’m not sure if that is the case, but I have been through so many birth records – even ones available from German sites and can find no records at all. I think I may have to throw my net wider. Perhaps they came from a different district? Hmmmm. It is a mystery. I do rather think that Jessie was the lady who started the RSL movement, which makes me even sadder that the Marrickville RSL was closed down as it was the first in the country. As to discrimination in Marrickville at that time, my Grandpa and Auntie Joycie seemed to think that the Schwebels were well known and liked throughout Marrickville. They were considered Aussies through and through, and highly regarded. Maybe because Adam Schwebel built so many houses and council projects. I don’t think the objection to Schwebel Street came from parties within Marrickville who knew them, and perhaps they were from another suburb, sticking their nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Uncle Reggie served in the 2nd World War too. Anyway, I shall keep digging around the family tree to see if I can verify the parents of Adam andGeorge Schwebel, and let you know if I find anything. Cheers to you, Cuz.
So great you’re doing all this digging, Coralie. Although conscription was definitely something lots of young German men wanted to avoid, one other theory is that the brothers might have simply come out as contract tradesmen, because Australia had a shortage in the 1850s – and many came from Germany. I’m not sure if those kinds of records still exist, though. We grew up with the story that the Schwöbel/Schwebel family is from Wald Michelbach, too – and from the Weinheim area generally. The only other person by that name I’ve ever come across is the 1930s socialist politician Georg Schwebel – also from Hesse (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Schwebel). One other angle you might try is synagogue records, if any exist. My great-grandfather married a Jew, Hester Miers, and we always had that understanding of her Jewishness growing up. I’ve always wondered, too, if there might be a religious angle behind the unanswered questions. If they were avoiding conscription, conditions in the army were often tougher for Jews. It might also explain why no record of them seems to exist – if those records were deliberately destroyed. Questions! Questions! Have fun on your quest. I’d love to hear any news on your discoveries 🙂 x
I just wanted to add that I’m really sad that your family felt they had to change their name to Swivel because of discrimination during the war. The Schwebel’s of Marrickville never experienced that. I remember asking my Grandpa about that when I leanred about the wars at school. There are still some Schwebel’s at Undercliffe – just the other side of the Cooks River. Undercliffe is where the quarry was. My Mum’s maiden name was Schwebel too. Where did George settle and his descendants live?
Cheers
Coralie.
Yes, it is sad, and we don’t really know why, except for vague stories of bricks through windows. Georg settled in Newtown – so not far away. I’m not sure why, but I wonder if there was a rift between Adam and Georg. They were both stone masons, but Georg ended up a carpenter and carter for the building trade. So many questions! I think that’s why I write historical novels – my way of trying to get to know these people 🙂
Hi Kim. I’m still searching for Adam and George’s grandfather back in Germany. I looked up your great grandfather. He and Hester were married in the Congregational Church at Newtown by a Reverend Davies. I wonder if he is a relative of mine. LOL. I too thought there may have been a Jewish connection, but I have searched Jewish sites related to Hesse without any luck searching for these Schwebels. Hester may have been Jewish, but I don’t think George and Adam were. Adam was protestant and his sister in law married a Catholic. Perhaps they were liberal in their thought about religion back then in Oz? George came out later than Adam in 1857 onboard the Helvetia (Helveha) as an unassisted immigrant. Adam was already established in Marrickville, so he probably suggested Newtown and Enmore as it was close by. Adam named his son George, my great grandfather, so maybe there wasn’t a rift between them and they just went their separate ways? Anyway, I’ll keep hunting. xoxox
Gosh you’re good, Coralie! That’s all so interesting. Hester was definitely Jewish – I have her family tree. Have you looked at Georg Schwoebel the SDP politician to see if there’s a connection there? He came from Wald Michelbach too. Seems quite a coincidence to me. Happy hunting! X