by Joy Dettman
Crazy, desperate, out-of-her-mind months she’d spent in Melbourne, while in Sydney, Myrtle and Robert played grandmas and grandpas. They’d named Robin, had baptised him, adored him. He’d been eight months old before fate forced Cara back to Sydney. For two years she fought against loving Morrie’s son, but he’d bewitched her.
Her eight-hour marriage had been wiped from the record books before she’d told Morrie he had a son, and in the same breath, told him to stay away from him.
Then Myrtle died, too soon, too fast and so easily, in her sleep, Robert at her side.
It broke him. Overnight Cara inherited responsibility for her three-year-old son, her father and his mortgage. She’d been at breaking point the day she’d agreed to foster Raelene King’s baby, a tiny, mop-headed mite, sentenced at birth to a lifetime of that vicious slut.
‘If she goes into the welfare system, I’ll never get her back,’ Raelene said that day at the prison. ‘I’ll get a single mother’s pension if I’ve got a kid with me when they let me out of this place.’
A wild plan, hatched in the dead of a crazy night by a frantic woman, but that plan had included retirement from teaching, no crèche bills for Robin, full-time supervision for Robert, plus time to write the great Australian novel. If, while achieving those four prime objectives she could take something of monetary value away from Raelene, wasn’t that a bonus?
Someone should have seen that she was unfit to foster an infant. Someone should have said no. No one had seen or said no.
The day she’d brought Tracy home, she’d expected tantrums from Robin. But he’d been enamoured by his baby sister. She’d expected Tracy’s wail to drive Robert over the edge. Tracy hadn’t wailed. She’d chuckled, and, given time, Robert had started smiling at her chuckles.
Love a baby born to Raelene? Cara had been unaware that she felt more than responsibility for her charge – until that vicious slut was set free and given supervised access to her daughter.
Supervision hadn’t gone down well. Tracy was four years old the night Raelene and Dino Collins gained unsupervised access. He had no parental claim on that little girl, no interest in her. He’d taken the opportunity to take his revenge. At fifteen, Cara had broken his nose and knocked out one of his front teeth with the spine of Mansfield Park. He’d murdered Bowser, had cut a circle of glass from Tracy’s bedroom window, drugged her, sealed her in a cardboard carton and driven her up to Woody Creek, where he and her slut of a mother had dumped that carton beside a farm fence.
Until the day she died, Cara wouldn’t forget that night. She’d driven late to Woody Creek, to Georgie. She’d been sitting with her when a neighbour came bellowing up to the back door. His dogs had found Tracy. ‘She’s breathing.’
They’d run, Cara and Georgie, hand in hand beneath a star-filled country sky, the farmer bellowing his news as he’d led the way through wire fences, around trees, his dogs barking at their heels.
So much noise. Sirens. Police. Dogs. So much light and movement. At some stage Cara had released Georgie’s hand to hold Tracy’s. At some stage she’d stopped seeing Georgie and only seen Tracy. In the ambulance she’d held her tiny hand. She’d held it on the plane that flew them through that star-filled night to the lights of Melbourne. She’d held it later in a room where tubes and machines and nursing staff kept Tracy alive.
Dawn was creeping over the city, early trams grinding their weary way by when Robin materialised at her elbow. He’d brought Bunny Long Ears, Tracy’s bedtime friend.
‘How did you get here?’ she’d asked.
‘The man who you said owns our toy car drove me.’
She’d known that Morrie was in Australia, that he’d flown over to take possession of his elderly MG. To this day, she had no idea what had been in her mind when she’d released Tracy’s hand and walked out to the corridor.
Night staff leaving, day staff arriving, that transitional time at a hospital when death is on the prowl. And there he was, waiting to drive their son home. She hadn’t seen him in five years. He’d looked older, but so tall and strong and alive.
Perhaps she’d meant to tell him again to stay away from their son. Perhaps she’d known she had too little strength to keep fighting death away from that hospital bed alone. She didn’t know why she’d done it, but she’d held out her hand to him and told him she didn’t want to wait alone.
He hadn’t left her side thereafter, not that day, not the next. He and Robin were with her when Tracy opened her eyes.
Tracy had studied them for a moment, studied the strange room, then asked, ‘Why is that man wiff you for, Mummy?’
‘Because he’s our father,’ Robin said.
Right or wrong he’d been their father since.
TROUBLE
Loss, guilt, the day-to-day demands of her mother-in-law and the boys had allowed the heat of March to become the rain of April. It was the rain and the blacked-out days of Easter on the magnetised calendar that held Tessa’s list of medications to the refrigerator’s door that told Trudy she was eight weeks pregnant. Hadn’t done anything about that baby she didn’t want but was imprisoned by it, and by nausea, lethargy – and no car. Nick spent his days running free. She resented his freedom.
The boys were going stir crazy. Accustomed to half an acre to run wild on, to prickly fences they knew to stay away from, to tall gates and their canine babysitter, they whined about their imprisonment, demanded, screamed and stamped their feet to go home.
She’d explained death to them. They’d kissed their sleeping Papa goodbye but this morning while she’d slept, they’d got her mobile and spoken to him.
‘He waked up now, Mummy. Now we can go home, Mummy.’
Jenny had taught them how to use her mobile, how to make her big phone ring. They’d made it ring many times this morning, enough times to waste almost fifteen dollars. Trudy prepaid for her Telstra connection and she needed it. It was her contact with the world outside of this overheated prison. She had to break out of it, had to get to a Telstra shop and sign up to a plan.
In Woody Creek, prepaying had been easy. She’d done it over the phone, paid with her bank card. Three days ago, she’d cut that card into many pieces and thrown the pieces at Nick. Before the boys, she’d never denied him her card. She had money, saved since the boys’ birth, and he wasn’t getting one cent of it to waste on his scamming solicitor.
‘We want you to go home, Mummy.’
‘Go outside,’ she said.
They wouldn’t, not unless she went with them. They wouldn’t go downstairs unless she was with them. Tessa was a nasty old woman – and she had more wrong with her than diabetes and high blood pressure. She’d spoken English the day Trudy met her at the airport. She’d screeched English in Woody Creek. She screeched in Greek now.
‘You come outside too.’
Children learn from those they live with. They’d learnt to demand in Tessa’s house.
‘Go and find a video,’ she said. They had half a dozen in their room. Had watched most of them too many times. Videos silenced them for a time. She needed silence. Needed to think.
Needed to see a doctor too.
‘Mummy. Mummy.’
They found Pinocchio. She took the video and walked down to Nick’s room, no longer her room. She hadn’t slept with him since the funeral. At home the boys had shared a large cot. They had single beds in Croydon but wouldn’t go to bed unless they were tucked in tight together. She slept in the other bed.
Everything was since the funeral, as if a dark line had been drawn across the calendar that day, as if she’d been a person on one side of that line and a pregnant someone one else on the other side. Her breasts were sore. She couldn’t eat. Her hair looked lifeless and her bones ached from dawn to dark.
Still hadn’t told Nick. Hadn’t told anyone.
‘Trudy,’ Tessa screeched. When she called her by name it usually meant another catastrophe, usually a bathroom catastrophe, sometimes a kitchen catastrophe. She’d put food
in the microwave yesterday and instead of hitting 2.25, she’d hit 22.50.
‘You stay here wiff us,’ Jamey said.
‘I won’t be long.’ She might be, depending on today’s catastrophe.
‘The law,’ Tessa said in Greek as she pushed the landline phone at her. The law was anyone who didn’t speak Greek. Bills came from the law.
Trudy took the phone from Tessa’s hand. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said.
‘It’s me, Trude,’ Georgie said. ‘Jen just called. She’s been trying to phone you.’
‘How is she?’
‘She said your mobile isn’t working and Tessa keeps hanging up on her. The boys left her half a dozen messages about no car and no shops and no outside.’
‘Tell her we’re fine. Nick’s been using the car.’
‘He’s working?’
Working on a fraudulent insurance claim. ‘Sort of,’ Trudy said.
‘What’s wrong with your mobile?’
‘It’s prepaid – was prepaid.’ Trudy explained her boys’ calls to their Papa, Tessa was at her elbow, wanting to know what the law wanted.
‘I’ll be a minute,’ Trudy said, in Greek.
‘What’s with her?’ Georgie asked.
‘I’ve got a fair idea,’ Trudy said. She’d needed that call, needed to spill her load to a sympathetic ear. Georgie might know Nick’s cousin’s solicitor, and she’d definitely know something about Margaret Morrison. She dodged around Tessa and escaped upstairs with her phone, Tessa screeching behind her.
She didn’t return to the boys and Pinocchio. She went to the bathroom and closed the door to muffle Tessa’s screech and Pinocchio.
‘Are you there?’
‘Still here,’ Georgie said.
‘I think Tessa’s got early stage Alzheimer’s. There’s something more wrong with her than losing her husband,’ Trudy said.
‘What does her doctor say?’
‘She hasn’t seen him for a while,’ Trudy said, then changed the subject. ‘What do you know about my birth mother, Georgie?’ That question created a silence. ‘I’ve got it into my head that I was sent down here by fate to find her living over my back fence.’
‘Life doesn’t happen like that, Trude,’ Georgie said.
‘It happens all the time like that.’
‘I’ll go as far as to say that your Margaret Morrison isn’t who you think she is.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I do, and as I said in Woody Creek, you need to speak to Jen about this, not me.’
‘It’s the wrong time, Georgie. What do you know?’
At the other end of the line, Georgie rattled papers, sighed then said, ‘Your birth mother has been dead for twenty-odd years. I know this for a fact – and that’s all I’m saying on the subject – apart from why the sudden interest?’
‘It’s like Dad took Trudy Hooper with him and I don’t know who I am,’ Trudy said. There were tears in her voice. She took a moment, took time to breathe. ‘My new driver’s licence came yesterday. I’ve never changed it to my married name and it looks fraudulent. Was she a relative of Mum’s father?’
‘You’re related to me and Jen by blood, and I’m at work. I’ll have to go –’
‘Before you do, I was going to ask you about a solicitor Nick is using to sue his brother-in-law’s insurance company –’
Tessa must have made it halfway up those stairs. Georgie heard her. ‘Get her to a doctor,’ she said.
‘Tonia tried to, Nick’s oldest sister. Tessa bit her. If she’d had her own teeth it would have been worse. Her false teeth ended up on the floor.’
‘Call the CATTS ambulance,’ Georgie said. ‘I’ll get Katie to put some money on your mobile. She prepays hers online. And give Jen a call. She’s selling stuff hand over fist up there. She sold Lorna’s dining suite and is talking about selling Amy’s silver cutlery set.’
‘Dad loved that suite.’
‘It smelt of Lorna – according to Jenny. She reckons Lorna’s ghost is walking the verandas looking for a way in. Thinks if she gets rid of her furniture Lorna might follow it. Call her tonight,’ Georgie said.
Then she was gone and Trudy joined her boys to watch the end of Pinocchio.
On Thursday night, the night before Good Friday, Georgie phoned again. She’d received a text from Jenny. Trudy had received an identical text.
House sold. Got a good price. Sixty-day settlement. The buyer’s choice. Bad timing for me. Am currently at cinema. Have to turn off mobile. Talk tomorrow.
SOLD
Jenny had been railroaded into agreeing to that sixty-day settlement. It had happened too fast. Everything. She hadn’t expected the house to sell. The first couple to look at it bought it.
It started at three o’clock last Saturday. She should never have picked up the phone. It was the agent wanting to show the house to a retired city couple, only up from Melbourne for the weekend. They’d been looking at houses in Willama but seen nothing that appealed. They were cash buyers, he’d said, had sold their house in the city and were desperate to buy up this way before their settlement date – a Pat and Mike Bertram, a professional couple who should have had more sense than to go looking for a house in this town.
She’d done her best to talk them out of buying. She’d told them that Woody Creek had been dying since the supermarket went bankrupt.
They’d already known that. Their eldest son owned a business in Willama.
They’d wanted a large block. Jenny had a large block. They’d wanted a house with character and at least five bedrooms. Vern Hooper’s house had a nasty character and six bedrooms. They’d made an offer for it that evening. Jenny had refused it, and not because they’d offered thirty thousand less than the advertised price. She’d still been considering arson, had been putting herself to sleep at night by considering possible ways of burning a house to the ground but still collecting the insurance.
She couldn’t empty it. She knew that much. She’d sold Lorna’s suite, the antique bedroom chair, Amy’s cutlery, Jim’s invalid aids. She’d sold the twins’ stroller, a bedroom suite and outdoor furniture. She’d delivered boot loads to the tip and opportunity shop, but every item she sold, dumped or donated was more proof of the impossibility of getting rid of forty years’ accumulation.
Her refusal of the offer hadn’t killed Pat and Mike’s interest. On Monday morning, they’d knocked on her door and asked to take a second look. She’d let them in, then warned them that Lorna’s hallstand was immovable, that it went with the house. Two antique dealers had praised it but neither one had wanted it – and it was that bloody hallstand that sealed the deal. Pat wanted it.
The necessary documents had been rushed through by their solicitor and at three-thirty today, Jenny had signed away Vern Hooper’s house, conditional on it passing a building inspection. She’d walked out of the solicitor’s office in a daze, had walked around to the motel and got their last room. Willama was a Mecca for tourists, and with the school holidays beginning today, the motels and caravan parks would have been booked out by tomorrow.
She sat alone in the cinema, her mobile turned off, not because the screen had told her to, but because she didn’t need her girls’ replies, not tonight. Try as she might, she couldn’t concentrate on the movie, which may or may not have warranted her concentration. She was thinking dates, thinking numbers, thinking twenty-eight from sixty equals thirty-two. She was thinking cruise, thinking of that thank-you advertisement.
She’d put the house on the market because Vickery’s real estate agency was next door to the Gazette office, then on her way back to her car, she’d called into the travel agency, Jim’s fifty-thousand-dollar cheque still playing on her mind.
A bad movie followed by a bad bed, Jenny vacated the room early. She’d shopped yesterday. No supermarkets opened on Good Friday. She’d bought long-life milk. Miniature motel refrigerators weren’t designed to hold bottles of milk. Their freezers weren’t designed to hold three chocolate-coa
ted Magnums. She’d taken one with her to the cinema.
Drove home on automatic pilot, didn’t see the road, the roos or the bridge, and no Lila to greet her at the gate. She’d spent the night with Harry. He’d said he’d bring her home at ten and take a look at what was in the shed. Jenny didn’t know what was in it. Before unlocking the house, she moved a crate against the garage doors, climbed onto it, dragged down two large bolts that kept those doors closed, then swung them open. One swung. She had to lift and drag the other over the concrete. Stood then, surveying the chaos of that shed – a workbench buried beneath a clutter of tools and dusty bottles and half-full cans of paint. Every wall was hung with power cords, pieces of hose, chains and tools no one had used since Jesus was a lad. There were rotting hessian bags hanging from nails driven into wall studs, coils of fencing wire in the rafters – and redback spiders everywhere. Jenny didn’t like redbacks and moving a motor mower disturbed two. She took her shopping inside, dumped it on the table, then reached beneath the sink for her can of insect spray, its label suggesting it would kill spiders. Thus armed, she returned to the shed.
Norman’s toolbox, unmoved from its corner in forty years, was woven in by dusty webs. John McPherson’s toolbox, a more recent resident, lay open beside his wood router, where he’d left it the day before he’d died. His antique photographic equipment leaned close by and was redback riddled. She drowned a few with spray, dosed a few more on a lawnmower. There were three mowers in this shed. One of them used to start, or five years ago it had. She used to start it until a retired chap knocked on her door looking for work. Thereafter, she’d paid him to mow. She sprayed all four corners of the shed, sprayed the bench and beneath the bench, sprayed until she ran out of Mortein. Maybe there’d been enough in that can to make a few redbacks drowsy – or angry.
Harry knew about the sale. She’d told him yesterday when she’d dropped Lila off. He’d been shocked. Jenny was still in shock. Vern Hooper would probably rise up from his grave tonight to walk with Lorna.