by Joy Dettman
About Trails in the Dust
After many tumultuous years spent grappling with the past, Jenny Hooper might have expected her latter years to be the best of her life, and they are - until tragedy strikes. Left floundering in a house full of memories, not all of them good, Jenny knows a reckoning is in order.
But it won’t be easy. History is beginning to repeat itself for Jenny’s adopted daughter, Trudy, who finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship. Jenny and her older daughter, Georgie, can only stand by and watch as Trudy’s life implodes.
Meanwhile, half a world away in the UK, Cara and her husband Morrie nurture a devastating secret that keeps them at arm’s length from Jenny.
But most of all, Jenny wants to renew contact with the beloved son she lost decades before when she was at her lowest ebb. Only that, and having the chance to tell him the truth about what happened, will give her peace. But is it too late?
About the author
Joy Dettman was born in Echuca, Victoria. She spent her early years in small towns on either side of the Murray River. In the late sixties, she and her husband moved to the outer suburbs of Melbourne, where they have chosen to remain. Joy is an award-winning writer of short stories set in country Australia, which were published in Australia and New Zealand between 1993 and 1997. The complete collection, Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007. Joy went on to write the highly acclaimed novels Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday’s Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry’s Daughter, One Sunday, The Silent Inheritance and the Woody Creek novels.
Joy returns to Woody Creek for the final time in Trails in the Dust. She says that she owed herself and her readers a more satisfying end to her epic tale.
For my brother Jack who has gone to
tend the gardens over the rainbow
7.4.1938–3.3.2019
CONTENTS
Cover
About Trails in the Dust
Title Page
About Bio
Dedication
Prologue
PART ONE
Cara
Jenny Hooper
That Thursday
The Breaking
The Widow Hooper
The Hoopers
China Ladies
Sunday Night
Greensborough
That House
Busy Hands
Langdon Hall
Pandora’s Box
Trouble
Sold
No White Ants
PART TWO
House of Horrors
Luggage
The Restaurant
Exporting Live Sheep
Gone
Teddy Hall
Memories
Rome
Catastrophe
Dawn in Venice
Missing
The Unveiling
Friday the Thirteenth
Jimmy
Jimmy’s House
Jimmy
When the Party is Over
PART THREE
Roads
Greensborough
Goat Tracks
Fifty-Eight Ks from Hay
Epilogue
Also by Joy Dettman
Copyright page
PROLOGUE
‘Stand up and walk,’ she said. It was the same advice she’d been offering herself for the last half hour. Had she been able to see a hand before her, she may have taken the advice. Couldn’t right now. That pale scythe of a wintery moon had slid in beneath its blankets and left her in the dark.
There’d been pockets of stars winking down at her when she’d run. They’d deserted her too. She’d walked through rain for an hour. There was no shelter to be had out here. Anything that scratched a living from this land was stunted. Just scrubland and no end to it.
She’d thought she’d find a fence, a house, sheep, something. Her foot had found a dead branch. It tripped her.
‘It could have been worse,’ she said. ‘You could have broken an arm, a leg.’
Her shoulder had taken the worst of her fall. It didn’t feel good but she could still move it. Should have got straight up and kept on walking. The logical side of her brain had told her to get up; the other half had told her to rest her legs, just for five minutes. She’d been sitting for so long now her legs were too cold to move.
Her body wasn’t cold. She could thank her parka for that, could thank it for a lot. She’d wiped blood from her brow with a crumpled tissue found in one of its pockets, had been sucking on peppermint Life Savers, also found in that pocket. Only had four left.
‘Get up and go back to that goat track,’ she said.
She was in wild pig county. She’d seen three fighting over roadkill before he’d made her turn off the bitumen road. Too much traffic on it. He hadn’t liked traffic. He hadn’t liked towns. He was running from something.
She’d seen wild pigs on television but until last night had never seen one in the wild. That’s where she’d been attempting to walk back to, that road, those pigs – until she’d tripped.
This scrub was probably riddled with pigs, not that they’d find much roadkill beside that last track. She’d seen one vehicle on it, a big twin-cab ute that came out of nowhere, then disappeared into nowhere.
‘It was travelling too fast not to be going somewhere,’ she said. ‘Taking a short cut home, maybe.’
Should have walked that way. Maybe where he’d been going would have been closer than that bitumen road.
‘You make your choices and you have to stick to them – and I could be closer to those pigs and that road than I think.’
He’d carjacked her, not for her car and money but for a driver. She hadn’t seen his bare and bloody foot at the time. She hadn’t seen much – other than the gun he’d shoved in her face. They’d been doing it in America for a while now, carjacking. It went without saying that they’d start doing it over here. Australia had been following America’s lead forever.
‘He’s long gone,’ she said. ‘Get your feet beneath you and go back to that track. It will be easier walking.’
He could have been long gone. He could have been parked in the dark waiting for her to come out of the scrub too. He was crazy.
She’d always been a walker. She’d walked in the rain before tonight. Her parka was shower proofed and she was wearing a sweater and cardigan beneath it. Wasn’t wearing much beneath her slacks, and they felt damp.
Had no idea where she was. She’d crossed over a rattling old bridge to get him away from one town. He’d liked that bridge less than the town, and on its far side there’d been another town. BAR-something. That’s all she’d seen of the sign.
There’d been farms on the outskirts of Bar– and more farms and farmhouses beside that bitumen road. When she’d taken off from the car, she’d expected to find a farm, but what farmer in their right mind would want this land? It was worn out, dead.
‘And if you don’t get up soon, you’ll be dead.’
PART ONE
CARA
She was running blind through smoke-filled rooms, attempting to scream Morrie’s name, but her throat would produce no sound. She was opening doors, different doors but always the same door, seeking that red room. In dreams, she always found him in that red room.
Her heartbeat woke her, and her lungs whooping for air. He was beside her, sleeping the deep sleep of the just. Dreams rarely disturbed him, his or hers.
Easing herself away from his warmth, she got out of bed, then, her hands before her, feeling her way, she walked through to the bathroom, closed the door silently, then hunted the last of that nightmare away with a flood of white light.
For thirty years she’d been dreaming that house dream. At times it was Amberley, at times
it was Langdon Hall, on occasions it was Georgie’s crumbling old house, but wherever her nightmare took her, there was a red room, and since the night of the fire, the houses were burning.
She blamed Cathy for tonight’s dream. They’d spoken late – late in England, morning in Australia. Cathy and Gerry were flying over for Elise’s wedding in October. It was a gruelling twenty- six-hour flight, which Cara and Morrie had sworn never again to sit through. When they’d spoken last night, Cathy had likened the flight to childbirth – agony at the time but once the baby was in your arms, the pain faded fast. She’d know. She’d given birth six times before she’d got her daughter. Cara had given birth once – or for twenty-eight hours she’d attempted to give birth the natural way – until a surgeon took pity on her and cut Robin free. To this day she remembered the agony. They’d adopted their girls.
The shower turned on, she stripped off the t-shirt she slept in, tucked her hair beneath a plastic shower cap, then stepped under the hot spray. Once a week her hairdresser washed and straightened her hair, which remained that way until the next appointment – if she didn’t get it wet between shampoos.
Had never concerned herself with shower caps when she’d worn her hair short and natural. It had been short when, for a week, her photograph had been plastered all over the media. She would have packed up and flown with Morrie then, but hadn’t been free to fly, or Tracy hadn’t. Until the adoption was finalised, she’d had to remain in Victoria. It had taken seven months, long enough for her hair to grow. She’d had it bleached and straightened in Melbourne, had it cut in a chin-length bob, and every time she’d shown her passport during her escape to the UK, it had raised eyebrows.
They’d been a mixed and matched bunch that day. Robin had been registered as a Grenville-Langdon – by Cara’s parents; Tracy had been made a Grenville by her adoption, Cara’s passport, issued in her maiden name, said she was Cara Jeanette Norris. Only Robert had got through without questions, her father. He’d flown with them, if unwillingly.
She turned off the water, dried herself, and then slipped on a towelling dressing gown before removing her plastic cap. Apart from the hair at the nape of her neck, the rest had remained dry. She combed it then crept back to the bedroom, where the small windows were now allowing a little light to enter, enough for her to see Morrie’s head still buried in his pillow.
She envied his sleep as she’d once envied Cathy’s – her best friend by default. They’d been thrown together by room allocation at college, vociferous Cathy, silent Cara, unlikely friends. Their relationship had continued, perhaps assisted these last years by that twenty-six-hour flight.
Cathy had been the first to uncover Cara’s secret vice. They’d been in Sydney, sharing a bedroom at Amberley, when she’d helped herself to a partial draft of Angel at My Door. Her demand to know how the story ended had added fuel to Cara’s youthful pencil and paper obsession. It was Cathy who’d presented her with her first rattle-trap typewriter, who’d first planted the idea of a pseudonym – twenty-three books ago.
‘You’ll need to marry someone with an interesting name,’ she’d said. ‘Cara Norris sounds like the author of a book about brussel sprouts.’
She’d turned the conversation to brussel sprouts – and weddings – the night they’d sat around her dining-room table in Ballarat, wading through the legal jargon of Cara’s first publishing contract.
‘Cara Grenville-Langdon sounds like a writer’s name,’ she’d said.
‘Of hysterical romance,’ Cara said. She hadn’t written a romantic novel.
The Author has written an original work at present entitled ‘Rusty’ herein called the Work. To Cara, the only words of importance in that contract had been ‘Author’, ‘Rusty’ and ‘Publisher’. For years she’d pursued publication.
Morrie had added his vote for ‘Grenville-Langdon’. He’d wanted them to remarry before he had to fly home.
‘C.J. Langdon,’ Gerry suggested. He’d been Morrie’s friend before he’d become Cathy’s husband. ‘It’s a name that could be male or female.’
‘C.J. Langhall,’ Cara had said, her promise that she’d join Morrie at his Langdon Hall when she was free to, and when she’d printed C.J. Langhall on that contract, it had looked right.
They’d remarried, in Ballarat, but not until after Angel at My Door had been published.
The bedroom windows looked down on a huge old tree, which may have been as large when Henry Whitworth Langdon had walked this land. Cara wasn’t fond of the monstrosity she called home but she loved that timeless tree. It had seen it all, had stood through the battles and the blood, through the births and deaths of generations of Langdons.
All gone now. Robin had dropped the Langdon name when he’d married. His son was registered as Richard John Grenville. Cara’s hairdresser called her Mrs Grenville. Her passport and driving licence still claimed that she was Cara Norris. Her readers knew her as Ms Langhall. Being spilled nameless onto a kitchen floor and left to her fate by her birth mother may have had some bearing on her confusion of names.
‘What are you doing up at this ungodly hour?’ Morrie asked.
‘Thinking?’
‘Thinking what?’
‘Cathy. She raises memories.’
‘They’re the by-product of leaving half of our lives on the wrong side of the ocean,’ he said. ‘It’s easy enough to cut ties, but no one has yet invented a cork to hold back memories. Come back to bed.’
‘My hair is damp at the back. If I lie on it, it will go frizzy. What do you think about when you think of Australia, Morrie?’
‘You,’ he said.
‘Full points for a safe reply. You spent seventeen years of your life there. What do you think about when you remember those years?’
‘Houses,’ he said. ‘Lots and lots of houses.’
‘How many?’
‘Balwyn, Cheltenham, Frankston, Bendigo, Ballarat, Kew –’
‘That Kew house belonged to Lorna. You never lived with her.’
‘She lived with us. Mum and Pops moved into the Kew place for a time. I was at a school nearby.’
‘What do you remember about Armadale?’
‘Your dogbox.’
‘I meant when you were a kid. You went to school at Armadale Primary for twelve months.’
‘Come back to bed,’ he said.
She slid in beside him, and he kissed her and told her she smelt of toothpaste.
Right or wrong, she loved him, loved his face, loved the scent of him, and if one day she stood before her parents’ god for judgement, she’d point to her daughters. Robin may well be an added sin, but not the girls. As a twelve-month-old baby, Elise had been found in a park, strapped into a stroller. The authorities never found her mother. Cara had known Tracy’s birth mother, Raelene King, an addict, a thief, who’d given birth in prison. Cara had fostered tiny mop-topped Tracy – until Raelene was released and attempted to add kidnapper/murderer to her resume.
She’d come in the night, with the mongrel she’d run with. They’d taken Tracy from her bed, drugged her, sealed her into a cardboard carton, then left her to die beside a farm fence. She’d survived that nightmare night. Raelene hadn’t.
They’d shielded Robin from the aftermath and the media – or believed they had. He’d been eight at the time. He was in high school when Cara realised how badly they’d failed.
A dawn call from Cathy had woken her, but before she’d silenced the bedroom telephone, Robin, who slept downstairs, had picked up the family-room phone. Cara heard his voice on the line.
‘He’s definitely dead, Aunty Cath?’ he asked.
‘Dead as a dodo,’ Cathy had replied. She was into church and God in a big way and not the type to celebrate a death, but her voice had sounded jubilant. Without need of a name, Cara had known who was as dead as a dodo.
‘A pregnant woman got him with a shovel,’ Cathy said. ‘Tell your mum he was dead on arrival at the hospital.’
‘She’ll want to
hear it from you. Hang on and I’ll wake her,’ Robin said.
They met on the stairs, Cara and her pyjama-clad golden son, she halfway down, he halfway up, both holding telephones. ‘Did you hear, Mum? Dino Collins is dead.’
Cara had been flinching from that name since she’d been fifteen. She hadn’t flinched that night. She’d made coffee while listening to Cathy’s every gory detail, and when that call ended – because Cathy had been known to pass on incorrect information – Cara had placed a call to Chris Marino, a Melbourne barrister, who’d never been guilty of passing on incorrect information – or not outside of a courtroom. Chris had first-hand details. The woman who Collins had attacked in her garden had been one of his junior solicitors.
JENNY HOOPER
Jenny’s foot touched the brake as a whirlwind, raised in a bone-dry paddock, found the heat of the bitumen to its liking and came dancing down its centre, towards her car. She clung to the wheel as that swirling cloud of red dust and debris hit.
‘I just washed my car this morning,’ she complained, to the dust or to her passengers. She had three today and a boot full of their shopping. Twice this week she’d driven to Willama. It got her out of the house. She couldn’t stand its silence since Trudy had taken the boys and gone back to Nick. And God alone knew why. She’d been getting her life straightened out. She’d been looking well, and happy for the first time in three years.
‘You fool of a girl,’ Jenny had said to her. Shouldn’t have, but when you can see a mistake being made, it’s hard to bite your tongue and turn away. She and Jim had raised a trouble-free teenager, a sensible, reliable nursing sister, until she’d come into money and gone overseas for a twelve-month holiday. She’d married that bludger over there and stayed away with him for damn near ten years, and may have been wandering the world still if he hadn’t got her pregnant.
Stop thinking about her. Think about your new fridge. She’d looked at a big fridge–freezer today, a twin door, one side a freezer and the other a fridge. She had a brochure in her handbag with its measurements, in centimetres. She couldn’t visualise centimetres, but she had a dressmaking tape at home with inches on one side and centimetres on the other. It would tell her if she had space enough for that fridge, and if she did, she’d phone that store today and order it.