During the course of this story reference is made to a play written a few years ago by one Wm. Shakespeare Esq. In fact the perceptive reader will recognise some aspects of the storyline have been 'borrowed' from that work. I make no apology for that, for it might be said; 'if the wheel ain't broke, why build a new one.' I am not the first, and indeed will not be the last, to have borrowed that same storyline. CM
PS: The perceptive reader will also notice a few new words in this story. These are of my own invention, and seemed appropriate to the narrative. CM
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Never in the history of family feuds was there ever one as violent, or indeed un-necessary, as that between the Mitchells and the Coopers. The Montagues and Capulets, and the Martins and the Coys pale into insignificance beside the Mitchells and the Coopers, and it all started over a woman.
Four generations ago two young men, Henry Mitchell and George Cooper were the best of mates. Their families lived next door to each other, at numbers 32 and 34 Mortons Lane in a small rural village respectively. Each family lived on their small holdings where they grew fruit and vegetables, raised poultry for eggs and each had a cow grazing in the back yard to provide them with milk. The young men did everything together, they rode together, they fished together and, it seemed that they would be best mates for the rest of their lives.
What then, I hear you ask dear reader, could possibly have come between these two inseparable best mates? I offer by way of explanation but two words; Lydia Armitage.
Into these idyllic lives came Lydia Armitage who was what was described as a 'sweet girl' or a 'comely wench'. She was slim and of medium height, her unsupported breasts pressed provocatively against the bodice of her high-necked blouse, and even those that did not know her had to admit that she was pretty. She was also an agreeable young girl, who found it difficult to so 'no' to anyone. At first this was not a problem, the twosome became a threesome, in a non-sexual way of course. The three of them rode together, they even fished together, and no-one thought any more of it until, one day, in response to the question; 'will you allow me to kiss you', Lydia kissed each of them behind the other's back.
Henry Mitchell now wanted more of this relationship with Lydia than he could have with George Cooper tagging along and spoiling his chances, so he asked Lydia to be his date at the next community dance. What he didn't know was that George had decided that HE wanted more from his relationship with Lydia, and he had already asked Lydia to be his date. Lydia solved the problem in the short term by going with both of them. This solution was very short term, as a fight broke out between the two of them over who was to kiss her good-night. They tossed a coin for it but, by the time they found the coin in the long grass, Lydia had gone inside.
It was then decided that Lydia would go out with them on a roster system. This proved to be something of a disaster because a date to the dance had a higher status to a date to the Sunday picnic down by the river bank with the rest of the people in the village, and each of them tried to forego the lesser status date so that he was next in line for the higher status date.
Their rivalry took a turn for the worse when George hid in the bushes on the side of the road and waited for Henry's horse and sulky to come slowly by. As it passed him he spooked the horse and it bolted down the road at breakneck speed. It was some time before Henry could bring it under control. Lydia demanded that he take her straight home. He didn't even get a goodnight kiss from her before she jumped from the sulky and bolted for the safety of her home.
The next time that George took her out, he was driving his sulky slowly along the road to the riverside park, where he intended to lay down a rug and entice her to sit with him in the hope that he would be able to kiss her. They had just sat down when a gunshot spooked the grazing horse, it took off with the empty sulky and galloped back to the safety of its barn. The sulky hit the gatepost as the horse tried to negotiate the turn off the road and a wheel was shattered, along with the friendship between Henry Mitchell and George Cooper. Henry claimed that he was shooting at a rabbit, and produced a suitably freshly killed carcase to back his claim. Claim and counter claim over who had started this feud between the two of them spread to the parents and brothers and sisters. Soon neither family spoke to the other.
Lydia, disgusted with the whole episode, moved to the city to live with an aunt, where, not long after, she found it impossible to say 'no' to her new friend Spencer Fawcett when he invited her to accompany him home to meet his parents. That his parents were not home was unknown to her, but well known to him. She did not say 'no' to him when he suggested that they would be more comfortable on the sofa. She did not say 'no' to him when he placed his hand on her breast, she also did not say 'no' when he put his under her skirt and touched her between the legs, and by the time he suggested that they would be even more comfortable in his bed, she had found it even more difficult to say 'no'.
Three months later when Spencer felt obliged to ask her to marry him, and she had no hesitation in saying 'yes'. This proposal came as a relief to her because she had just told him that she had missed her second period and was certain that she was with child. This was to be the first of five children that she and Spencer would have before she decided that a hastily invented headache meant that she no longer had to say 'yes'. News of this union found its way back to Henry and George and both of them realised that they had missed a perfect opportunity by not asking the right question of Lydia.
Meanwhile Henry and George now spent their time avoiding each other and encouraging the rest of their families to do likewise. Early one morning Henry's uncle Fred caused the conflict, that had been simmering for some time, to erupt with new found fervour. As he staggered with rum-befuddled steps toward the dunny, the Cooper's magnificent Rhode Island Red rooster chose that moment to wake the world. Standing on the fence that separate the two properties and stretching himself up to his full height, and with his neck arched, he began his wake up call. He had got as far as 'Cock-a- doo.' When Uncle Fred's hand grabbed him by the neck and with a swift twist the rooster's voice was cut off mid-call. While Fred denied any knowledge of the bird's demise, he was heard to admit in private that the 'damned bird did taste nice'.
(In those days the dunny, as toilets were known, was a weatherboard construction in the farthest corner of the block. It sat over a 'long drop', a deep hole into which the waste products dropped a good twelve feet before combining with previous droppings. For the purpose of cleaning the nether regions a thick bundle of newspaper squares held together by a piece of string passed through a hole in one corner and looped over a conveniently placed nail. Caution had to be observed when vomiting into the dunny, you had to remember to remove your false teeth for fear of them dropping from your wide open mouth mid-chuck. Once down the hole they were impossible to recover. Usually there was a wood heap next to the dunny, so that when you'd finished, you would grab a load of firewood and bring it up to the house. No self respecting dunny was without a choko vine growing over it. These provided a continuous supply of chokoes for the dinner table while protecting the occupants from the hot sun. Everyone overlooked the fact that, the reason that these vines were so prolific, was that their feeding roots were firmly entrenched in the waste products of the family that it fed).
Another incident that has entered into Mitchell folklore, to be told to youngsters of each new generation, was how George Cooper's brother Jim found himself unable to sit down for weeks. The current Mitchell grandfather was telling the tale to this current group of Mitchell youngsters. "Great-great- grandfather noticed, when he was picking fruit in the orchard at the back of our property, that the oranges seemed to be disappearing faster than he was picking them. Having decided that one of the Coopers was slipping through the fence in the wee small hours and helping himself, Great-great-Grandfather decided that revenge was in order, so he got a couple of shotgun cartridges and removed the shot. He replaced it with coarsely ground rock salt from the cow lick and put the wadding back in. He then sat in wait and, sure enough, he saw someone throw a bag over the fence and climb through it himself. He waited until the man had harvested his supply of oranges and had lifted the bag over the fence. Then, as he pushed down the centre strand of the barbed wire fence and climbed between it and the top strand, Great-grandfather let him have it with both barrels, right up the Khyber Pass."
"What's a Khyber Pass Grand-dad?" asked one of the transfixed youngsters.
"His bottom."
"Oh, you mean he shot him up the arse."
"Yeah, well, yes, he shot him up the arse. They knew which Cooper it was soon enough."
"Gee Grand-dad, didn't he get into trouble?"
"No, the thing about the feud is that while it stayed between the families the cops didn't worry us, but one thing was for sure, Jim Cooper never nicked any fruit, ever again."
Eventually both Henry and George married equally attractive young women and raised a family. Neither of them was happy in his marriage because, in the back of his mind, he had thoughts of what might have been with Lydia. The two wives each tried hard to make the most of her marriage, but knew that she could never compete with her husband's memory of Lydia. Both of them hated Lydia for coming between her and her husband. Beneath the surface, the four people had reason to blame Lydia for their unhappy situation, and beneath the surface the feud simmered, occasionally boiling over into open conflict.
This conflict was passed down from them to their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Even now, while they no longer shot at each other, the Mitchell children and the Cooper children will only speak to each other if there was no way of avoiding it. The Mitchell and Cooper boys have had to be counselled on the ferocity of the way that they tackled each other when playing football, and the way, if one was bowling to the other at cricket, the ball would invariably be bowled as fast as the bowler could bowl it, and aimed at the other's body at a point anywhere between the groin and the head.
The Mitchell and Cooper girls' rivalry centred on who had the best circle of friends. This too had reached violent proportions to the point that neither of them could entice the girls in their class to be their friend. So of course they blamed each other for the situation.
The school principal had, on a number of occasions, sought mediation meetings between the warring parties. He eventually came to the conclusion that there would be no easy solution. He even went as far as to arrange a showing of the film 'Romeo and Juliet' in the school hall and made sure that both families received an invitation. The damage to the hall and its furniture was to set the school budget back by thousands of dollars and resulted in an official reprimand from the Education Department.
What then, I hear you ask dear reader, can possibly break down this impenetrable barrier that has separated these two families for generations? Again I offer you two words; 'true love'.
