FIC: "History"

[lobelia321]

Title: History
Fandom: Ned Kelly Gang
Part: 1/1
Author: Lobelia; lobelia40@yahoo.com
Website: My niche .
Pairing: Various.
Characters: Mick Jagger, Mark McManus, Ned Kelly, Joe Byrne, Sidney Nolan.
Spoilers: None re film or book but basic knowledge of Kelly Gang history is assumed.



Rating: G
Summary: Time passes through history. Various men look at art, make art, or are trapped by art.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
Spoilers: None, as I haven't myself seen the 2003 film and the 1970 film so long ago that I've forgotten it. EDIT: Actually, the story does assume basic knowledge of the Kelly gang history.
Archive Rights: kellygangfic community. My niche. Anyone else, please ask.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen. Well, the ones on public record did and the paintings do exist, but the rest is made up.

Thanks to: eyebrowofdoom, cupiscent and girloftheq for making me green with envy and hence spurring me on to Kelly-fic!

The following pictures by Sidney Nolan play a role in this story:

More pics here:
http://www.pictureaustralia.org/nolan/
http://www.ironoutlaw.com/html/gallery.html
http://www.web-arts.com.au/NOLAN.html

-----

The year: 1969. The place: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. The protagonists: English middle-class rock musician, rolling stone and all-round bad boy, Mick Jagger; up-and-coming Scottish actor and half-brother to the sweet Sweet lead singer Brian Connolly of glam-rock fame, Mark McManus. Current occupation of protagonists: Ned Kelly; Joe Byrne. Topic of conversation: It's only rock'n'roll but I like it. More specific co-ordinates: Australian National Collection of Art. The reason: A day off filming. The art: Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series of paintings. Their dates: 1946-7.

Cue Mick: "Funny-looking bugger, he was."

Cue Mark: "I don't know much about art but I know what I like."

Mick: "Do you like this then?"

Mark: "Yeah, it's alright. It's bright and colourful, isn't it."

Mick (peering at picture more closely): "But what does it mean?"

Mark: "It's just a picture, isn't it. It's a picture of Ned Kelly, with his iron helmet on."

Mick: "Yeah, picture of me, haha. But what I don't get is, why doesn't he have a face? Where's his bloody eyes? All I can see is clouds through the slit."

Mark: "It's so unfair that you get to wear that iron helmet."

Mick: "I mean, is he thinking about clouds? Is that it? Is his brain so vacant that it's just air whooshing through?"

Mark: "I wish I could be Ned. I want to wear the helmet. I want to be the hero. I want to be in all these pictures."

Mick: "You are. Look, there's you. Bloke in a dress on a horse."

Mark (peering at caption more closely): "It says 'Steve Hart as a girl'. That's not me. That should be Joe Byrne."

Mick (takes out felt pen; looks around): "Well, if you're so dead set on it, we'll just scratch that out. We'll just write 'Joe Byrne' over the top of it. There. Satisfied?"

Mark (takes felt pen; looks around): "I guess so. Can I keep your pen?"

Mick (on way out; humming): "I can't get no.... satisfaction... I can't get no... curly action..."

-----

Dry. Stuck. Yellow. Smell of oil. Decades now. Can't move much. Not much brain. Thoughts stuck. Rectangle around. Desert all round. Clouds. Scrub. Horse. Gun. All's as should be. But stuck. Not moving. Feel gummed up. Am dead?

Desert round back. But in front. Weird. Room. Walls. Chairs. Faces. Rectangle all round. Rectangle on head. Eyes where?

Across room, more wall. More rectangle. Across room, Joey. Joey horse. Joey dress. Must be. He heaven? I hell?

Oh, Joey.

-----

25 years earlier.

Sidney squinted into the sun. All the shadows were sharp as cardboard cut-outs. The sky was so blue it was black. Flies made his nose sneeze. He would sweat except the sweat dried as soon as it had oozed out through the skin and hit the heat.

Something was moving out in the bush. A wallaby toppled over, dead. To the left, a bone gleamed. A mirage rode out from between the stringybarks and let off a salvo of triumphant beats.

"Ned?" said Sidney.

The mirage knocked on his iron mask. Dong, dong. His silhouette sucked up all light. There was a snort. Hoofs pawed the red dust.

"Fucking hell," said Sidney.

His easel fell over. All his paints spilled, magenta, azure, malachite and happy-sunshine-yellow.

The mirage pointed his gun at Sidney, casually, loosely cocked over his elbow.

"No, please. Please. Don't shoot me. I'll... Tell you what. I'll paint yer."

So all that hot hayfever afternoon, with the earth shimmering and the clouds glimmering, with the flies buzzing and thoughts so flat you'd think they'd been pressed through a mangle, Sidney painted Ned.

The man on the horse held perfectly still. The horse put on portrait-eyes but then shat unbecomingly on the ground. At least that drew the flies off for a while. They crawled in throngs over the steaming mound.

When night fell, with a gust of oven mist and the insides of tulips everywhere, the mirage wavered. The horse faded first, then the armour, finally the gun and the hard black rectangle of head. The last thing to go were the eyes: big, burning, endlessly sad.

"This," said Sidney out aloud to the cacophony of galahs, "is going to make me fucking famous."

-----

Sssh. There's just us now. No one will know. No one ever knows anything. It all fades away, dust to dust, haven't you heard it yourself a thousand times on a Sunday morning? And then what remains? Just a few hoofprints and a couple of lace-edged handkerchiefs. Some do the shootin' and others do the gettin' shot. Time blows over everything. History, Joey! History! That's what we're makin'.

Sssh. It's all a pack of lies, though. And no one will ever know what we really were. Or why we did any of the things we done.

Give me your lips, my friend. One last time.

-----

The End.

3 April 2003