Two Boys Named Gray!

It's raining and I still have a cold so I'm staying indoors all day, thus ... let's find a long story for today's post. Ah, here's a very special one that happened many years ago, when I lived in Australia, that I was so proud to be a part of; that always felt all "Hand of God" and that I was intending to turn into a filmscript and pitched it several times but never got any interest. So ...

Two decades ago, I was visiting a small town in NQ (no names to protect X's privacy), staying with a friend for a long weekend. When this story started, I was the friend's workplace. We had planned do something and were just leaving when he remembered he had to make a phone call. It took ages and I was climbing the walls with boredom when an old lady cleaner came along vacuuming. We politely said "hello" in passing and I noticed she had the thickest accent I'd ever heard.

"Where are you from?" I asked, just to give myself something to do.

"East Berlin."

"Wow!" I said, and she switched off the vacuum so we could talk about that for a while. And, as we chatted, I noticed, playing in the corridors, was the most exquisite little boy of about five years old, all golden and gorgeous, but with the most monstrous black mono-brow, from one side of his head to the other. "Is that your grandson?" I asked.

"No, he's my son."

Undoubtedly I looked disbelieving because she instantly gave a big happy grin and added "Yes, I know. I was too old for children. I thought it was cancer. But no. It was my Gray coming back to me. Yes. This is the truth. For over 10 years I prayed to Virgin Mary and finally she was kind and that's when she gave to me my Grays back. First one. Then the other."

Intriguing, huh! I sooo wanted to know more, but right then my friend returned and wanted to leave. "I'd really like to talk to you some more." I told the cleaner, so she invited me around to her house the next day to see her opal collection and have afternoon tea.

We can't continue to call her X. Let's say her name is Renee, although it isn't. Anyway, at the front of the building she pointed out her house - a perfectly normal Australian "small country town" house - just down the street from my friend's workplace.

The next afternoon, Saturday, I turned up at the house ... and, yes, her opals were wonderful, as were all her precious stones. Serious cases full of gems. All found and cut by her. And nearly two decades of prospecting in the Australian Outback, unprotected from the brutal desert sun, explained why she looked in her 70s when, in reality, she was only in her early 5os.

Her husband and son were away for the afternoon, to give Renee a chance to talk, so, still chatting about prospecting and gemstones, we sat down for a seriously high tea. I was almost embarrassed by how much trouble she'd gone to with the delicacies, but it was obvious she was desperate for female company.

As we ate and talked in the sitting room, right next to my sofa was an old photograph. I only glanced at it but then ... the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I pulled over the image to look again.

In the decades old photo was a young Renee, maybe late 20s, and with her was a brutally mono-browed young man in his 30s and a five year old boy who was ... unquestionably ... Gray! No seriously! "That's your son!" I said.

"Yes, I know. That's my first Gray!" and then she added "Those are my first two Grays! That's my first husband Gray! And that's my first baby Gray."

Chilling! Totally chilling! And I noticed that, although Renee didn't have even a hint of that brutal mono-brow ... both the baby Grays did! Unbelievably weird, right?

"My second husband is also Gray. It's really Graeme, but I call him Gray!"

She told me the story of how they met: "When I first came to this country, I was crazy! My Grays were dead and I'd been shot in the stomach so I couldn't eat properly, and I so full of pain and grief I just wanted to die ... so I caught a bus out into the desert and just walked and walked, wanting to feel the sun burn, wanting to feel deep thirst, and I walked and walked until I fell down to die. But right beside me, right beside my eye, I saw the sparkle in a stone and I took the stone and looked and realised, well, I saw all around me were gem stones and they were all for me and I was rich so then I wanted to live."

And so it went on. But that's simply how she became a prospector. To cut a long story short, for over a decade she prospected, out in the desert, all alone, and finding a lot of gems but still feeling the deepest, deepest pain ... and all the while praying to Virgin Mary to take her pain away ...

And then she met Graeme!

"... so I came up to the lonely campfire and he was sitting there. I almost screamed. It was Gray. My husband Gray. I thought it was a ghost and I almost ran. But he saw me there in the dark and called to me to join him for a cuppa tea."

She was almost embarrassed to tell me what happened next: that ... when, over that cuppa, he said "My name is Graeme but my friends call me Grae.", she flash-backed and, um ... pounced and ... bleep, bleep, bleep! ... mad frantic rutting under the stars.

He was, back then, a young prospector in his 20s ... and, well, to cut a long story short he taught her how to cut gems and they discovered she had a genuine gift for it, and so the pair of them went into partnership together, traveling across the length and breadth of the Australian desert, finding, cutting, selling, doing extremely well for themselves for almost another decade ... until ... well, she thought it was cancer ...

Only it was the new Gray on his way! A miracle indeed since Renee genuinely believed that part of her life was over. When Graeme found out he was thrilled, and they married and, when Baby Gray was five they moved into a small country town so to give him an education, and that brought me up to the present.

Beautiful, beautiful story, right? But it doesn't even start to be over!

The next part of my Renee story happened about a year later with those dozers smashing down the Berlin Wall. The ABC was showing a live feed of the event, and, because it was such an historical occasion I was sitting there with a glass of wine, watching. It made me think of Renee, the only person I knew from that part of the world, so I phoned her to find out what she thought, and it turned out she was sitting there, all alone, watching the live feed and crying, so I told her to grab herself a glass of wine and we'd watch it together.

It was during our hour-long phone conversation that she told me the story of how her first two Grays died: when First Gray was five they decided they wanted a better life for him, so they paid people smugglers a lot of money to get them out of the country, but, on the designated night, the smugglers only took them and about forty others out deep into the forest and mowed them down with machine guns. Renee was shot several times in the stomach and fell into a ravine so they left her for dead. Then she woke up to daylight ... she has no idea how long later it was ... struggled up the ravine, saw the mountain of dead, her Grays among them, and simply went crazy. She zombie-walked for days and days until she was found ... and she has no idea how any of it happened ... but suddenly there was a hospital and then people asking questions and then signing things then, equally suddenly, she was on a ship to Australia ... and then she was in the desert ... and it was all walking, walking, walking, wanting to die ... until the sparkle of a gem stone brought her back to life.

Drinking those glasses of wine with Renee on the other end of the phone made that whole Berlin Wall event very special for me.

The next part of this saga happened about three years later. Sunday morning and I'm reading the newspapers when suddenly my hair stood on end. I raced to the phone. "Have you read today's Courier Mail?" I asked Renee.

"I don't read newspapers." she said.

"You need to read this one and you need to read it now. Go straight down to the newsagency and get the Courier Mail. Look on page 36. There's an article you need to read."

It was a story on how East German police had been finding mounds of decades-old skeletons throughout the forest and believed they were all killed by people smugglers, but couldn't prove it because there were no eye witnesses.

I kept the phone by me as I continued to read the rest of the news. 20 minutes later, it rang and there was hysterical sobbing on the other end for the longest time. "It's me." she said eventually. "I am the eye witness."

"Yes, I know."

"But what do I do?"

"Go to the police. Do it now. Go down now, while you're still hysterical. Bring the newspaper with you. Show them the article and say what you said to me. 'It's me. I am the eye-witness.'"

"But why would they care?"

I laughed. "Because it's a small country town police station. This is an international event. They get to deal with Interpol. It'll be the biggest and most exciting thing that's ever happened to them. You will be forevermore their hero."

And that's what she did. And that's what they did. And that's when the system went into operation. Renee rang me often to keep me up to date.

She had to return to East Berlin. "But it might take a long time. I can't leave my Grays." she said to me.

"You won't have to leave them. Renee, have you any idea what a powerful position you are in? They will give you EVERYTHING you ask for, I promise you!"

So Renee made all sorts of demands and, yes, got to take her Grays back to East Germany with her, and Interpol made up their lost wages and young Gray got a tutor to help with his schoolwork. Great hotel. Great meal allowance. Even a promised travel allowance so Renee could visit her German family. Indeed, EVERYTHING she asked for they gave her without hesitation or complaint!

She rang me when she got back six months later. Yes, it took that long! Endless interviews and more and more of everything official and dire, and months in freezing rooms spent poring over book after book of mug shots ...


... but that isn't what she wanted to talk about! There was something HUGE that had happened while she was there. Beyond huge. Downright enormously and miraculously huge!

What happened was that the East German police wouldn't give Renee a break and her Grays, back at the hotel, were climbing walls with boredom. "Why don't you go up into the mountains and meet my family." Renee said to them.

"But I don't speak German." hubby-Gray said.

"It doesn't matter. You just have to show Little Gray where he comes from."

So they hired a car and left ... and half way up the mountain they stopped off for petrol ... and, at the petrol station, everyone there got all excited at the sight of Little Gray. Hubby-Gray had no idea what they were talking about, but was astonished that they seemed to calling Gray "Gray" and to be calling out to people nearby to 'come and see Gray!"

"How do you know my son's name?" he kept asking in English and it all got increasingly absurd and confusing, until a little old lady came up, took him by the hand and walked him to a house several doors down. There, she pointed to a single photograph among an entire wall of old photographs, obviously wanting him to see for himself how alike the two Grays were.

And, yes, it was the exact photo Renee had in her sitting room in Australia: Renee with her two Grays.

He wanted to say "How do you come to have this photo?" but excited, laughing neighbours kept pouring into the house, all having heard the news, and wanting to see Little Gray for themselves, and hubby-Gray noticed they all had the monstrous black mono-brow. And everyone was hysterical with laughter that both little boys were called Gray. "What a concidence!" hubby-Gray presumed they were all saying, but he was too busy trying to figure out what they were doing with Renee's photo. Finally, after much confusion, he managed to figure out, he thought, that the old lady was First Hubby-Gray's mother.

And then he noticed another photograph and the situation just got deeper and stranger ... it was the photo his own grandmother had in her house in Australia of HER parents. "Grandmother Mother Father!" he kept repeating, pointing from himself to the photo, and one of the neighbours got it and said something in awestruck German and all the neighbours fell back in shock and awe ... until the laughing started, and then came the hugging and kissing and everyone falling on everyone else, and the demand he stay for a meal ... and so they did ...

... and it is a happy, laughing, hilariously incomprehensible lunch, with neighbours constantly tumbling in, bringing more food, and explaining to Hubby-Gray, presumably, how they were related, and Gray going "Cousin! Cousin!" like 'beyond that didn't matter' so they started to chant "Cousin! Cousin!" with much falling about laughing.

But, after the meal, it all got terribly confusing again because the woman who was Presumably-First-Gray's-Grandmother pulled out a photo album, and started showing Little Gray all these weird photographs of First Gray growing up.

Like, huh?

Terrible, terrible confusion! Hubby-Gray went over to the photo of Renee and her Grays and pointed to Renee "Renee, ja?" and then from Renee to his Gray and said "Renee. Mother. Gray. Mother. Gray. Renee. Mother. Gray." The old lady kept shaking her head and saying something like "Renee tod. Renee tod."

"Nein. Nein. Renee nein tod!" said Hubby-Gray. "Renee. Gray. Mother."

The old lady, walking like a zombie, came over to the photograph and pointed first to Renee "Tod." and then First-Hubby and said "Tod." then pointed to First Little Gray and said "Nein tod." A goose-bump moment like no other. "Gray nein tod?" "Gray nein tod!" and took him to the photo album.

It appeared that young First Gray was raised in this very house by this very woman!

Hubby-Gray found it incomprehensible, and especially incomprehensible that Renee had never told anyone back in Germany that she was still alive, but ... well, for most of her time in Australia she hadn't been quite sane.

He then wondered what it would be like turning up at Renee's parents' house claiming, in a language they didn't speak, to have their grandson ... so decided it would be too hard and that he shouldn't do it alone; he had to have Renee with him. So that's when he decided to return to Berlin straight away and pass on the news that, maybe, just maybe, he couldn't be sure, that First Gray was alive, and he left behind the name of the hotel, just in case there was indeed someone who wanted to get in touch.

He didn't have to tell Renee. He got back to the hotel to discover Renee and First Gray in the lobby locked in an unshiftable embrace ...

... but that was Renee's part of the story. She had no idea that any of the above had happened. She simply got back to the hotel, shivering with cold, after yet another difficult and fruitless day of searching through mug shots, and was walking through the lobby when she heard a single word, in German, naturally, "Mother?"

First Gray had come back to her.

And that's the story of The Two Boys Named Gray. There was more, but it's not exactly a happy ending. Within weeks, yes, First Gray joined her in Australia for their happy-ever-after but ... well, after a month, they overnighted at my place so as to put First Gray on an early morning flight home to Germany. Seems he was too angry with Renee for just deserting him, leaving him in the forest that night surrounded by mounds of dead people, then never letting him know she was actually alive. And, also, he was jealous of Second-Gray and how the boy, now ten, appeared to be having the life he should have lived. And he fought with Second-Hubby-Gray and was making everything most unpleasant. And he refused to learn English and so couldn't find work, and so ...

... Renee was again back to having only one son called Gray, and she was fine with that!

"Maybe, when he's older, he'll find he can forgive me and we'll be a family again." were the final words Renee ever said to me. Neither of us ever had a reason to get in touch again and so we never did. Sad really, but I was so happy to be a part of this story, and I do wish there was interest in turning it into a film script. Guess it's all seems too far-fetched to garner producer interest, but, believe me, this all happened exactly as I've described.

Once upon a time, there were two boys called Gray!