Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Lila knew what was happening before Harry arrived on foot. Her tail was down, her eyes pitiful. She knew that worse was about to happen when Jenny clipped on her lead then gave her house keys to Harry, just in case she didn’t get back by the eighteenth, D-day, delivery day.

  No comfort is ever given or received from long goodbyes, so with a final rub of that red coat, a final kiss on a hanging head, Jenny got into her car and reversed down the side of the house, across the lawn to the concrete driveway, then out to Hooper Street to where the old red ute was near pawing at the earth to be on its way.

  Jenny followed it, made a right-hand turn into Three Pines Road, then right again onto the highway. She passed what used to be Joe Flanagan’s land where the road straightened out and the ute showed that it had a few miles left in it. Its speedo would be showing sixty miles an hour. Jenny’s was showing a hundred ks, the legal limit on this road.

  A long drive ahead of her, but the ute leading the way, she relaxed and allowed her mind to write a denouement to the story of her life.

  She drove that familiar road, the sum-total of her life in her car and in the vehicle ahead. She didn’t look back. Having set those wheels in motion the morning after her husband’s funeral, the wheels had turned, gaining momentum as they raced headlong downhill towards her final day.

  PART TWO

  HOUSE OF HORRORS

  Those who’d grown with Melbourne’s traffic had no fear of it. Five days a week Georgie joined the slow-moving stream of cars into the city, where she spent her days on the twenty-third floor of the skyscraper office building where Marino and Associates leased one floor.

  On Monday, Jenny spent the day alone at Greensborough, a street directory open on the family-room table. She was a confident driver. If she could find a route that would take her direct from Greensborough to Croydon, she’d have her car handy should she need to make a quick getaway. There was no direct route, only kilometres of roads and multiple turns, so on Tuesday she rode into the city with Georgie to catch a tram. She knew trams. They’d altered little since the forties and their routes hadn’t altered at all.

  The trains had. They now went underground, but she knew where to catch a tram that would take her to the Richmond station where she could catch a train to Croydon that didn’t go underground.

  Tram tickets had altered. Back in the forties she’d handed a coin to a conductor and he’d handed her a paper ticket. Tickets had to be prepaid now and verified when you boarded. She’d phoned Trudy, who’d spoken about her job, about Nick’s job, then, before hanging up, she’d invited Jenny to stay the night in Croydon.

  ‘We’ve got two empty bedrooms,’ she’d said. ‘The boys miss you,’ she’d said.

  Georgie had urged her to go. She’d offered to meet them at a restaurant in Doncaster and drive Jenny back to Greensborough.

  Facing Nick would be difficult, but he’d be at work all day. She wouldn’t need to see much of him.

  Croydon was on the Box Hill–Ringwood line. In the fifties, Jenny had known those stations well. Jim used to live and work in Ringwood, and Florence Dawson, Raelene’s natural mother, had lived at Box Hill. For months, every second weekend, she’d catch a train from Frankston to the city, catch another to Box Hill, drop Raelene off with Florence and her stepfather, then return to the station and ride the train out to Jim.

  That section of the line looked much as it ever had to Box Hill, then it changed. Jenny remembered those lines passing through farmland and orchards. She remembered cows grazing on green grass. The cows and grass had succumbed to the city’s greed for land. Today, to her left and right she saw only the creeping plague of houses.

  Every small town close to Melbourne had been swallowed up by the city. Lilydale had. Frankston had. She’d stayed at a guesthouse in Frankston before the war, had worked at that same guesthouse in the fifties when that town had still been a beachside resort. Raelene had been with her in Frankston. She’d loved the beach.

  Then Margot and her trouble had joined them, and Frankston had turned bad.

  Trains were more efficient than trams. She was at Croydon too early. Trudy had told her to give her a call from the station and she’d pick her up – but not at eight-thirty, and barely eight-thirty, so Jenny went in search of a bus. She’d Googled Croydon’s bus timetables and bus routes and two were waiting. The first driver she asked was going her way. He was an Australian. He understood the map Katie had printed out for her, a cross marking Tessa’s court, so she sat close to him until he told her they were at her stop.

  ‘Have a good day,’ he said.

  ‘You too,’ Jenny said, but thought it highly unlikely. Last night’s weather reporter had forecast intermittent showers, and before Jenny turned left into Tessa’s court, that reporter was proven right. The sky started spitting at her.

  Number fourteen was an off-white monolith with a marble tiled, columned porch that looked down its European nose at its more common neighbours. But it had a common doorbell – an Avon calling ding-dong. It dinged and donged as the sky stopped spitting and started to rain down. She stayed dry beneath the porch, where she leant harder on the button. Someone inside must have heard its Avon song. No one opened the door.

  The garage was open. Trudy’s car wasn’t in it. She could have popped out to get something, and so thinking, Jenny made a break for the garage where she reached into her bag for her mobile and sent a text. No reply from Trudy.

  The garage was so new its cement floor was still clean. She walked down to the back wall, to a door she expected to be locked. It opened and a blast of heat slapped her in the face.

  Tessa had central heating. How many times had Jenny threatened to have central heating installed?

  She’d met Trudy’s mother-in-law twice, when the twins were a month old and again when they’d been eighteen months. She was in the kitchen, standing in front of Jenny’s dream fridge–freezer, both doors open.

  ‘Good morning,’ Jenny said. ‘I rang your bell.’

  Tessa took a large ice-cream container from the middle shelf before turning to face the burglar.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ Jenny lied. She was twice the woman she’d been eighteen months ago, her hair was uncombed and her face looked like bread dough someone had forgotten to bake. ‘Is Trudy about?’

  For her question, she received a spurt of Greek followed by a screeched ‘Trudy!’ Then, the ice-cream container shoved back into the refrigerator, Tessa waddled into a passage, both refrigerator doors left open.

  She’s gone to get Trudy, Jenny thought, and took the opportunity to study the interior of her dream fridge–freezer before closing its doors.

  No Tessa. No Trudy, but water running overhead, a television playing nearby. Jenny waited – in her dream kitchen – with its black granite bench tops and white cupboard doors.

  Who wouldn’t want to live here?

  No sound of Trudy or Nick, but she heard the boys giggling overhead, so walked through the kitchen–dining room to a staircase. Tessa wasn’t fetching Trudy. She was sitting on a couch, watching a television commercial for exercise equipment.

  There was something wrong with that woman. Deciding not to disturb her, Jenny followed the sound of giggling and splashing water. She found them, water running full blast into a bathtub, pyjama-clad boys leaning over its edge, making sheets of toilet paper float.

  ‘Turn that tap off,’ she said. They didn’t turn it off. They tackled her around the knees, and apart from their pyjamas they were barely recognisable. They’d been shorn, their cherub faces stolen with their hair. She kissed two spiky heads, turned off the tap, scooped up the toilet paper, wadded by its attempt to get down the plughole. She mopped water from the floor with a towel, then asked about Mummy.

  ‘Thleeping,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Ssss,’ Jenny said. ‘Ssss, like a snake.’

  ‘Ssss-leeping,’ he said.

  ‘Good boy.’

  She could have cured Margot’s lisp, had she been interested
enough, early enough. They led the way to Mummy, down a passage to an open door where Trudy was asleep in one of two single beds, asleep with one eye open.

  ‘You’re here already,’ she said, rolling fast to her feet.

  ‘I got a lift into the city with Georgie. She drives in early. A bus was waiting at the Croydon station.’

  ‘You’re wet,’ she said, noticing the boys’ pyjamas. ‘What have you been doing?’

  There were dark smudges beneath her eyes. They’d been there in Woody Creek, but today one smudge was darker than the other.

  ‘What happened to your eye?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Trudy said and turned away.

  ‘Daddy went whoooosh, and her felled over,’ Ricky said, with actions.

  ‘And Mummy cried,’ Jamey said.

  ‘They’re talking rubbish,’ Trudy said. She’d opened a built-in robe, her back to them until she found matching tracksuits. Jenny looked at her face when she turned but said no more, or no more about that dark smudge. She mentioned the open garage door, no car in the garage.

  ‘I told you he was working,’ Trudy said. ‘They do gardens. Incidentally, I have to work tonight.’

  ‘You said you had tonight and tomorrow night off.’

  ‘I’ve got tomorrow night. There’s a throat virus going around.’

  They got the boys dressed, got shoes and socks onto tiny feet. They spoke about tomorrow night, about the throat virus, about the kitchen. Then Jenny told Trudy to go back to bed, told her she’d look after the boys.

  They took her on a guided tour of the upper floor, showed her Daddy’s bedroom and his television, his video and CD player.

  There are ways of gaining information from three-year-olds if you ask the right questions. ‘Did Daddy give you some breakfast before he went to work?’

  ‘No,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Because he went when he went whoosh, not now.’

  ‘Why did he go whoosh?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . . videos,’ Jamey said.

  ‘And Mummy said, “Go”,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Where does Daddy work?’

  ‘Wiff a man, so he can get some money.’

  ‘He can’t get any now, because . . . videos.’

  ‘What videos?

  Two shorn heads shaken, and more interested in breakfast, they led the way downstairs. They crept by Tessa, still seated on her couch, a very fine couch, the television now playing a morning panel show. Once past that doorway, they skedaddled into the kitchen to show Jenny where the bowls were, where the Weet-Bix and Cornflakes lived. She found a banana and milk, found honey, and added it liberally to sliced banana and Cornflakes, and when she put the milk away, she looked at what was in the ice-cream container – packets and more packets and bottles of pills. She recognised the names of a few, recognised bottled medications lined up on a door shelf, a laxative, an antacid, a brown bottle she didn’t know, and when she lifted it to read its label, Ricky said, ‘We don’t want some now, Nanny.’

  ‘Is that your medicine?’

  ‘When we go to bed. Not now time,’ Ricky said.

  It was an over-the-counter thing, an antihistamine, for children. Do not exceed recommended dosage, the instructions said. May cause drowsiness.

  Trudy was drugging those boys so she could work – or he was drugging them. Their bowls emptied fast, they wanted to show her outside. She returned the bottle to its shelf and unlocked a glass door. It opened onto a roofed and paved barbeque area, where six padded outdoor chairs were set around a long glass-topped table.

  They ran to a barbeque, a gas bottle beneath it.

  ‘Don’t you ever touch that,’ she said, dragging them away from danger. ‘That’s poison.’

  ‘Daddy can make it go.’

  No small bikes to ride, no toys, not a ball for little boys to kick – and no space to kick it. This was an adult’s playground.

  ‘A lady in that house have got two puppy dogs like cats.’

  ‘Is her name Margaret?’

  ‘Yes, and the dogs go yap, yap, yap all the time,’ Ricky added.

  ‘What do you do when Mummy is sleeping?’

  ‘Play,’ he said.

  ‘And videos,’ Jamey said.

  ‘Have you got some books?’

  ‘In there.’

  ‘Show me.’

  The books were in there with Tessa and they weren’t going in there to show her.

  ‘Do you know where Mummy keeps the teabags?’

  They knew. She made them cup-a-teas in plastic glasses and they thought it very funny. She found sugar and they drank tea together at a polished wooden table, already ringed by hot cups.

  She’d rung that Avon calling bell before nine. At eleven, Trudy still dead to the world, Jenny zipped the boys into their parkas, ripped a page from the notebook she always carried and scribbled: Trudy. I’ve taken the boys out for some exercise.

  She slid her note beneath a fridge magnet where it would be easily seen. Then they left the house the way she’d entered it, via the garage. The boys’ parkas were shower proof and had hoods. She’d worn her overcoat and a scarf, and if the sky wanted to spit at them, the boys didn’t complain. They’d been promised hot chips for lunch.

  She walked them back to the bus stop. No bus in sight. They waited for fifteen minutes and while waiting she sent a text to Trudy’s mobile. It would be beneath her pillow. She’d always used it as her alarm clock.

  ‘It coming, Nanny.’

  The driver, an Asian man, spoke English, but badly. He may have said he was going to Eastland. That’s where he delivered them, to a city within a city and all new to Jenny. It wasn’t to the boys. Daddy had paid a lady there to cut their hair and her shop was near a shop that sold dinosaurs.

  They bought two plastic dinosaurs, and colouring pencils and a book to colour. They bought a big, colourful ball and were toting two plastic shopping bags when their noses led them to a food court, where you could buy everything from sushi to a roast dinner. They ordered potato cakes and chips, then helped themselves to a tomato sauce bottle on the counter.

  Eating lunch at Eastland. XX. The boys made the kisses then sent the message flying to Mummy’s phone.

  They sent another one from the supermarket at two. Anything you need us to pick up for you?

  Still no reply. Maybe she was helping herself to the boy’s medicine – or to Tessa’s sleeping pills.

  They bought a small packet of Jenny’s brand of teabags, bought cheese, dry biscuits, bananas and two chocolate Kinder Surprises because good boys had always deserved a Kinder Surprise. They’d been so good it hurt. It was Jenny’s best day since . . . since a very long time ago . . . or it was until her mobile beeped a reply.

  Where have you taken the twins?

  Read your messages. We’re at Eastland.

  You were not given permission to take them out of the house.

  It came from Trudy’s mobile but her finger hadn’t picked out that message.

  Had I known your number I would have texted you directly to find out how long you might be away this morning.

  Stay where you are. I’ll pick them up.

  You weren’t so concerned about their welfare when you left the garage and laundry doors unlocked. A murderer could have walked in. The boys are fine. We’ll be home when we get there.

  No beeped reply to that. They were eating more chips and sharing a hamburger before the next beeps came through, this time from Trudy.

  He panicked when he got home and they were missing. Are you on your way?

  We’re having afternoon tea. You can tell him from me that he won’t need to drug them tonight. They’ll sleep like logs.

  She hit send before censoring that message. As with the postal service, once a letter is dropped into the mailbox, you can’t retrieve it. Shouldn’t have mentioned the drugging, but that’s what that bottle was for. Those boys didn’t have an allergy between them.

  She didn’t take them home. She lifted them into
a supermarket trolley to give their legs a rest, then they went window shopping. She’d done a lot of window shopping with Jimmy, in Sydney and in Melbourne. She’d taken him with her to ladies’ rooms before catching the train or tram home. She took the boys into a ladies’ room at Eastland where she washed all evidence of junk food, tomato sauce and Kinder Surprise chocolate from their faces, hands and parkas. She spoke to a woman who told her that she was on her way back to where the buses pulled in. They followed that woman and her shopping trolley. It was after four-forty when she walked the boys that last block home and be it weariness or apprehension, they’d grown silent.

  Nick responded to the doorbell’s ding-dong.

  ‘Nanny’s buyed us dinosaurs,’ Ricky said.

  ‘An’ a big giant ball,’ Jamey said. It was in the bag with the dinosaurs, with the colouring pencils, books and Kinder Surprise toys, and while retrieving their dinosaurs the ball got away to bounce merrily towards the stairs.

  ‘Go up and let your mother know that you’re alive. She’s been frantic,’ Nick said, his ‘frantic’ added for the benefit of their abductor.

  ‘Tell Daddy how you sent kisses to Mummy.’

  ‘We send six kisses. One two free, an’ one two free,’ Jamey said.

  ‘And we made it go,’ Ricky added.

  ‘You were not given permission to take the boys away from the house,’ Nick said.

  ‘I was given all the permission I’ll ever need three years ago when my daughter screamed them out of her. As I recall, you were missing at the time. Excuse me, Nick.’

  He allowed her inside. He closed the door to keep the heat in, and when he turned, he tripped over a squatting twin, still eager to show Daddy his dinosaur.