by Joy Dettman
Daddy snatched the tyrannosaurus and threw it at the front door.
‘You broked him,’ Ricky said.
Plastic is indestructible. Little boys aren’t. ‘Take them up and show Mummy,’ Jenny said. Mummy now standing at the top of the stairs, keeping her mouth shut, looking like an abused Alice in Wonderland.
Three years ago, Georgie had put her finger on the Trudy–Nick problem. ‘She was hothouse raised, Jen. Hothouse plants don’t do well when planted out into rocky ground.’
This place was rocky ground in disguise.
‘He lost them last week at Eastland,’ the wilting hothouse plant said.
‘Put that down to lack of experience,’ Jenny said.
She followed the boys up the stairs, walking away from confrontation, as she always walked away from confrontation – when she could, but women didn’t lock their gates on little tin gods, or turn their backs and walk away. Jenny was in his castle where he was Jesus Christ. He caught her arm.
‘I have ultimate authority in this house. In future, you will ask my permission before you take my sons anywhere.’
‘Unlike your wife, I have ultimate authority on who puts their hands on me,’ she said, then shaking his hand off, she continued up.
‘From what I’ve heard, you weren’t always so fussy,’ he said.
Since when have you been so fussy, Jen?
A sick wash of memory stilled her feet, knife in the gut memory. She’d been the town pariah at seventeen when she’d dared to show her face at the town hall, when Gone with the Wind had been playing. Town pariahs are open season for bastards.
Bobby Vevers had put his hand on her in the park beside the town hall, where she’d been hiding her shameful face during intermission. She’d turned the other cheek that night. She’d run from him. She’d been running from him and his ilk for half of her life, running or hiding.
She was a step above Nick when she did what she should have done at seventeen. Every ounce of strength she possessed she put into the swing of her arm. Heard the satisfying smash as her palm connected with his cheek. Didn’t feel it, or not at the instant of impact.
He felt it. And unexpected, if not for the handrail, she may have felled him.
It shocked him, shocked his wife, but interested his sons. They’d seen Daddy go whoosh and now they’d seen Nanny do it. Wide-eyed, they waited for what came next.
Leaving came next, putting space between her and that bastard came next. Her hand was tingling, old words playing in her mind as she stepped by him.
Sixpence a ride and a discount for two –
You’re an infectious disease –
You’re not fit to raise dogs –
I’ll have you in court, you hot-pants little slut –
She’d hit out at the lot of them, and connected. Her one regret was she hadn’t been higher up the stairs, that the handrail had been close enough for him to grab. Wished he’d gone head over heels from top to bottom. Wished he’d broken his neck. He was all of them, every male who’d ever put her down, every bastard who’d ever put his hands on her.
Trudy’s fault. She’d given him the ammunition, had probably laughed with him in bed while telling tales of her mother’s colourful past.
Should never have phoned her. Should have known better than to come here today. She’d wanted to see the boys. She’d wanted to tell Trudy about Margot.
She opened the front door, stepped out, then slammed it behind her, and the hand she’d hit with shaking, she dug in her bag for her mobile. If Katie hadn’t keyed the number of a taxi company into it, she would have had to walk back to that bus stop, in the rain.
There was a voice on the line when Trudy opened the door enough to look out. Jenny ignored her while giving the stranger the address.
‘You’re not leaving like this, Mum?’ Trudy said.
‘I’m leaving, and if you had half a brain in your head, you’d leave with me.’ She stepped out to the rain then. The woman on the line had said they’d send the first available car, which could be in five minutes or twenty. The rain wasn’t heavy.
‘We’re having dinner with Georgie tomorrow night,’ Trudy said.
The rain smelt clean, and cleansed by it, Jenny turned to face that fool of a girl. ‘How dare you?’
‘How dare I what, Mum?’ That voice, that patient nursing sister voice she used when dealing with the elderly.
‘Tell him about my life?’
‘He’s my husband –’
‘He’s a parasite that’s attached itself to your back and tapped into your blood stream. When he sucks you dry, he’ll fall off and attach himself to someone else – and he’ll ruin those boys before he sucks you dry. Leave the bastard.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Because you love him – or you love living in that bloody house of horrors.’
‘You sold my home.’
‘As far as I can recall, until you needed someone to raise those boys, in twenty-odd years you might have spent two dozen nights beneath its roof.’
‘You had your Georgie. All of my life you’ve had your Georgie – and your Jimmy – and you spent half of my childhood worrying about Raelene. I don’t know why you bothered to adopt me.’
Sibling jealousy Jenny understood. She used to be jealous of Sissy. She half turned. It was the opening she needed to tell that fool of a girl that she was her granddaughter. Not the right time or place, so she walked on, wondering if the boys would remember her. If their dinosaurs and rubber ball survived their bastard of a father, they might remember their day out at Eastland.
They’d remember Tessa’s screech. That open front door was letting cold clean air inside. Trudy closed it.
Jenny walked three house blocks to a tall brick fence that had a gum tree overhanging it. There was shelter there and the clean scent of wet eucalypt, the scent of home, of Granny’s home. She reached up to a cluster of leaves and stole one, crushed it and held it to her nose until a taxi turned into the court, when she stepped out to the rain to wave it to her side.
‘Greensborough,’ she said.
The driver, an Indian or Arab, knew Melbourne’s freeways. Peak-hour traffic had choked the outbound lanes but not a lot was inbound. They made good time to Greensborough. She tipped the driver five dollars for his efficiency and for his silence.
Paul and Katie were cooking dinner. Georgie was still out on those roads.
‘We thought you were staying the night,’ Katie said.
‘I hit him,’ Jenny said. They didn’t ask who she’d hit. They knew what had happened the last time she’d seen Nick in Woody Creek. ‘Tell Georgie to cancel that restaurant booking,’ she said, then walked through the house to the guest room.
LUGGAGE
Acrowded room, Georgie’s guest room. They’d squeezed Amy’s desk into a corner, placed Jenny’s near-new office chair beside the bed. Her big cases were beside it, the new case on top of them and a small, aqua-blue case on top of it.
Katie had bought the aqua blue at a local garage sale. It was small enough to travel as cabin luggage but too small for a twenty-eight-day tour. Her coat off, shoes off, Jenny sat on the bed, staring at aqua blue but thinking of that slap.
Raised by Norman, the original pacifist, little Jenny Morrison hadn’t known how to hit back, or not until Amber came home. After seven years of being alone with his girls, Norman had employed Amber to housekeep and he’d given her Jenny’s room. Sharing a bed with Sissy and her BO had taught little Jenny how to pull hair.
She had fire in her blood. Vern Hooper had raised that fire on a few occasions. She’d cursed him to hell and would have liked to brain him with the wood axe. Then Ray King. She’d been a fool to marry him and for eighteen months had kept turning the other cheek – until the night he’d smashed her face to pulp. She’d armed herself with a tomahawk. Had he come near her again, she would have killed him. Her mother’s hot Italian blood was in her.
In Itchy-foot’s diaries he had described Juliana Conti as a
fighting, clawing tigress protecting the cub in her belly. She’d died before she’d had the chance to mother her cub. Tonight Jenny knew that environment didn’t have a chance against genetics. She’d hit that swine of a man – and enjoyed it.
And she had to stop thinking about it. Had to force her mind to Thursday, to the flight, to the cruise, to the long jump she’d planned to take between one Greek island and the next. She wasn’t going to jump. She was going to tour Juliana’s land after the Greek island cruise. For years she’d wanted to see Italy. Trudy had spent a lot of time in Greece and a little in Italy. She’d been everywhere – and she was jealous of Georgie who’d been working like a slave since she’d turned fourteen, who’d been raised fatherless in what most would classify now as a hovel. Trudy had had the best of everything. She’d been Jenny’s adored final chance to do something right.
Hadn’t given her enough of something. Should have given her Jim’s cheque, Jenny thought as she continued to stare at that aqua case Katie had presented to her on Sunday. It might have been big enough for the Greek island cruise. Then Rome, Pompeii, Venice – and Switzerland too. Then London.
Jimmy lived forty miles from London, or he had forty years ago.
She shook her head to shake him away – as she’d been shaking him away since the twins had been born, when she’d promised Jim that she’d forget him. Most of the time she’d kept that promise, but Jim was dead and all promises ended at the grave – and she’d never forgotten Jimmy nor ever would.
The past was eating her alive tonight, Ray, Raelene, Bobby Vevers, Vern Hooper. All dead, along with most of those she’d loved, Granny, Elsie, Amy. Granny had seen the world. Amy had seen a bit of it. Elsie had seen Woody Creek.
I’m going to see the Sistine Chapel, to see bodies turned to stone, she thought. She stood then and reached for the aqua case, bought with Katie’s own pocket money. It was inches smaller than the one she’d packed for the tour, but how could she tell Katie it was too small?
She’d be flying into summer. She wouldn’t need the sweaters she’d packed. One cardigan maybe. If she took only items that didn’t crush, she might squeeze enough into that case. She lifted her tour case to the bed and opened it, then placed the aqua blue at its side. The blue looked happier than the brown. She’d packed three frocks. She rarely wore frocks. One would do. She chose the lightest, a frock of muted blues she’d bought to wear to Donna Palmer’s daughter’s wedding. It was uncrushable, would roll into nothing. She removed a pair of lightweight beige slacks, was digging for uncrushable tops in one of her large cases when she uncovered the rubber-banded pages of We’ll Meet Again.
She’d almost burnt that manuscript. Jim’s red pen edit of page one had stopped her. He’d put his red pen aside on page eighteen. She knew why. On page eighteen her poorly disguised lovers had become Jen and Jim – with different names.
She sat with her cases on the bed, reading that old love story. She was on page five, still seeing red when Georgie knocked then entered.
‘Did you flatten him, mate?’
‘He grabbed the stair rail, or I might have.’
‘What did he do to you?’
‘Trudy had a bruise beneath her eye. “Daddy went whoosh and Mummy falled down and cried.” The twins saw it. They saw me go whoosh too. I wish they hadn’t.’
Georgie didn’t reply but stood looking at the loaded bed while Jenny slid the rubber bands back onto her pages.
‘That’s the new one you were working on?’
‘It’s the draft Jim read. There’s a later draft in my laptop I never got around to printing,’ Jenny said.
Georgie changed her mind about reaching for the pages. She moonlighted as Juliana Conti’s agent and editor – without the red pen.
‘Much later?’
‘I’d just about called it finished.’
Laptop zipped into its bag, which was leaning beside Amy’s desk, Georgie unzipped it and took out the laptop and cord.
‘What did you name the file?’
‘Time,’ Jenny said.
Minutes later, the pages of Time were being spat out, hot and fast, from Georgie’s laser printer. It spat three hundred and forty pages before it was done.
There was better light and seating in the family room. Three readers sat until eleven, reading those pages – until Katie started reading over Jenny’s shoulder, too impatient to wait for what came next.
‘Go to bed. You’ve got school tomorrow,’ Georgie said.
‘You’ve got work,’ Katie said.
‘I have,’ Georgie said. ‘I’m taking this with me and posting it, Jen.’
‘It’s Jim before the Japs stole who he was, Georgie. He was . . . was a beautiful boy.’
‘It’s the girl he fell in love with too. It’s going tomorrow, Jen. Now we’re all going to bed.’
She sounded like Granny. Close that book and go to bed . . . and don’t even think about taking that lamp into your bedroom. One lick of flame and this place will go up like matchwood.
Jenny gave up her pages. She knew how that tale ended. She’d altered little of her meeting with the older Jim at the station, of her mad run to get to him before his train came in and stole him away. She’d deleted Raelene. In the novel, she’d never lost Jimmy. He’d been the one holding her hand, running to his daddy, a happily ever after ending for everyone.
Life doesn’t end happily ever after. Life turns to ashes, as had Granny’s old house. She’d been right about open flames and cigarettes and kerosene lamps. Her old house had burnt like matchwood.
Jenny went to her room but didn’t go to bed. She packed and repacked that aqua case until the house settled, when she crept into the study to retrieve her laptop. There was a power point beside Amy’s desk. She plugged it in, moved her office chair into place, then turned on the computer.
And her friend of many sleepless nights woke up to greet her. She didn’t reopen the Time file but created a new file she named Parasite. She was going to write Trudy and Croydon and the parasitic growth out of her head.
*
If there’d been roosters in Greensborough, they would have been crowing before she moved the cases and crawled into Georgie’s guest-room bed. It raised crazy dreams. She dreamt that Jimmy was a drug lord, dreamt that Raelene had arrived home with that aqua case full of tiny babies, dreamt of Juliana too. She was wearing a burka but Jenny knew her because of the brooch she’d pinned above her visor. She may have dreamed longer had her mobile not woken her at eleven.
It was Trudy. I hope we are still having dinner tonight. We need to clear the air.
Jenny didn’t reply. Couldn’t. Each time she thought about her she saw that bruise beneath her eye – or heard her laughing with Nick in bed. Her mobile needed charging. Had forgotten about it last night. She didn’t charge it but showered, dressed, turned on her laptop, then made tea and toast she shared with her keyboard.
She added Raelene to the Parasite file. Nick’s eyes had always reminded her of Raelene’s.
I’ve seen apes with more humanity in their eyes . . .
She wrote of Raelene’s infancy, of the seven-year-old who’d sat down on the station platform and screamed the day Jenny ran to Jim. That was the day she’d made her choice. She’d allowed that brat to sit and scream while she’d kept on running, then a month or so later, without a fight, without the need of a courtroom or judge, she’d handed Raelene back to her natural mother. She’d been a brat at seven but controllable. Five years later, Florence Dawson had washed her hands of an out-of-control twelve-year-old and given her back to Jenny.
She’d tried, Jim had tried. Raelene hadn’t liked the competition of a little sister. She hadn’t liked school. She’d liked the Duffy pack. Trudy was going on twelve when they’d sent her to a city ladies’ college, to protect her from Raelene.
Shouldn’t have sent her away. Should have allowed her to learn about the ugly side of life.
Two o’clock when Jenny came up for air and a cup of tea and to c
harge her mobile.
Georgie had texted. Trudy, having received no reply from Jenny had contacted her about their dinner tonight.
Cancel it. I’m not going, Jenny replied.
You were going to tell her about Margot.
It will do more harm now than good.
I’ll tell her next time she asks, but it would be better coming from you, Georgie texted.
Trudy had known Margot. She’d been told of Margot’s connection to the Macdonalds, a rape connection, pack rape, when the Macdonald twins had been eighteen and Jenny fourteen. Jenny had to tell her the truth to combat the lies Raelene scraped up from Woody Creek’s gutters.
Raelene had spent a lot of time wallowing in gutters. She’d been on drugs at sixteen and selling herself to feed her habit. At twenty-one, she’d been responsible for the death of an elderly woman. Hadn’t been charged with murder or manslaughter. A judge sentenced her to twelve months for robbery with violence. It wasn’t Raelene’s fault that the old woman died. All she’d wanted was the handbag. If that frail old lady had given it up, Raelene wouldn’t have had to knock her down to get it, and her victim wouldn’t have spent the final month of her life in a hospital bed.
Raelene, pregnant when they’d locked her up, gave birth in jail. Until the night of the fire, Jenny had assumed that her baby had been fathered by Dino Collins – and whether it had or hadn’t, it wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference. She wouldn’t have given it a home. One Raelene in a lifetime was one too many.
That baby’s parentage had been important to Cara. She’d demanded blood tests before agreeing to foster it. Tracy, she’d named it, or Raelene had named it. Cara had cared about that baby – as Jenny had once cared about its mother.
They’d heard about the kidnap on the news before Cara had arrived that night in Woody Creek, or heard that a four-year-old infant had been stolen from her bed in the night.
It was Cara who’d told them that Tracy was Raelene’s daughter. Cara who’d told them that Dino Collins had been involved, that he’d left his calling card, a circle of glass, cut from a window.
Raelene hadn’t taken her daughter to love, to mother, but to murder her.