Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Police swarming in Woody Creek that night, road blocks on every road, on every dusty track leading in or out of that town. They’d got Collins on the Mission Bridge. He’d been driving Raelene’s car but neither she nor Tracy had been in it.

  Eleven o’clock when a police sergeant drove down to the old house to tell Cara that Collins was in hospital, under guard. He’d been relaying his news over a coffee when Joe Flanagan, who’d shared a boundary fence with Granny’s land, came bellowing up through the orchard. He and his dogs had found the little girl, sealed into a cardboard carton and left to die beside his fence.

  The police hadn’t found Raelene. They’d searched Granny’s land, Joe Flanagan’s, and the bush beside the creek.

  A dark place, Granny’s fifteen acres – a big old shed, two houses, chicken pens and trees to hide in. Raelene had hidden somewhere until dawn when she’d made her final attack. She’d firebombed the house where Georgie and Margot were sleeping and with its dying breath, the house had turned on her and got her. She’d been twenty-six.

  Those who were paid to know such things said that Margot would have died from smoke inhalation before she’d felt the flames of that inferno. Harry and two constables broke a window and dragged Georgie out. The old kitchen roof fell in on Raelene.

  Trudy, eighteen at that time, had been old enough to be told the truth. Jenny had wanted to bring her home for Margot’s funeral. Jim wouldn’t agree to it.

  She’d been hothouse raised, but by Jim, not Jenny. To his last days, she’d been his little girl. He hadn’t allowed her to build up immunity to parasitic life forms.

  Katie crept in at four, when she came home from school, to read the words pouring from Jenny’s fingers, and too deeply immersed in that other world, she was unaware of her onlooker until Katie moved nearer.

  ‘It’s unfit for general exhibition, darlin’,’ Jenny said, and closed the lid.

  ‘It’s about Raelene.’

  ‘Some of it is.’

  She didn’t open it again. Paul came in at five. He poured two glasses of wine then asked Katie what she wanted to eat. ‘Mum and Jen are going out for dinner.’

  ‘I told her to cancel,’ Jenny said.

  THE RESTAURANT

  Primed with a glass of wine at five, topped up with a second at six, Jenny saw little on the drive to Doncaster. Her mind a morass of things she wanted to say, things she had to say, things she mustn’t say, she sat staring at the traffic ahead and seeing nothing.

  They found a park close to the door, recognised Trudy’s Commodore two spaces away. She was punctual and was sitting alone in the near-empty restaurant. Georgie greeted her. Jenny took her jacket off, hung it over the back of her chair and was searching for something to say when the drinks waiter arrived. She found something to say to him.

  ‘A bottle of sparkling wine, and three glasses.’

  ‘I’m not drinking,’ Trudy said.

  ‘Not from your top shelf,’ Georgie added. She could afford top shelf but didn’t flaunt the fact.

  Direct opposites, Trudy and Georgie, they were of similar height but that was as far as similarity went.

  ‘We need to discuss yesterday, Mum. I know that Nick went overboard, but he worries about the boys,’ Trudy began.

  ‘I’m more worried about your eye,’ Jenny said.

  ‘If you’re going to start on that, I’ll leave.’

  ‘If you’re going to mention him, I’ll leave,’ Jenny said, and she took her nail scissors from her bag to trim back her deformed nail. She was snipping her other nails when the waiter brought a bottle and three glasses to their table and stayed on to fill them.

  ‘Could I have some water?’ Trudy said.

  ‘Please,’ Jenny added. She tasted the wine then asked, ‘What’s wrong with your mother-in-law?’

  ‘Her memory is going. That’s another reason I wanted to speak to you. Nick’s taking her home to Greece for a holiday in June. I was going to ask you yesterday if you’d like to move in with me and the boys while they’re away.’

  ‘I won’t be here,’ Jenny said.

  ‘When’s your settlement date?’

  ‘Eighteenth of June,’ Georgie said. ‘When are they leaving for Greece?’

  ‘The tenth. Tessa has sisters over there she hasn’t seen in almost fifty years. They’ll be away for three weeks.’

  ‘I’ll bet you a pound to a penny he doesn’t bring her back,’ Jenny said.

  Trudy sighed and looked for the man with her water. He wasn’t coming, so she turned again to Jenny and spoke with the tone she used when dealing with obstreperous patients, the tone she’d used on Jim when he’d refused her help.

  ‘Would you like to explain what would make you say a thing like that?’

  ‘I only saw her for five minutes and I’d leave her at a lost dogs’ home,’ Jenny replied.

  ‘Jen’s booked herself on a tour,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m having a taste of Europe –’

  ‘For twenty-eight days,’ Georgie said. ‘I’ve already told her it will kill her.’

  ‘It’s for seniors. They won’t expect us to climb the Jungfrau – or whatever mountain they’ve got down the bottom corner of Switzerland.’

  ‘You’re not capable of doing a month-long tour,’ Trudy said.

  ‘You don’t know what I’m capable of.’

  ‘The flight will kill you,’ Trudy said.

  ‘Not unless the plane’s hijacked. I upgraded to business class. More leg room, free wine, private television,’ Jenny said, and she emptied her glass and refilled it from the bottle. ‘I’ll be able to watch all the new movies . . .’

  ‘Make her cancel it, Georgie.’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ Georgie said.

  ‘She’s trying to kill herself and go to Dad.’

  ‘He’s in with the Hoopers,’ Jenny said. ‘And if either of you put me in with him, I’ll haunt you until your dying day – and nobody is cancelling anything. I’ve never been on a cruise.’ She sipped. ‘Or anywhere else. We spend a week in Italy. I’ve always wanted to see where Juliana came from.’ She turned to Georgie. ‘And I’m going to find Jimmy while I’m over there. We have three days in London before we fly home.’

  ‘He’d dead, Jen,’ Georgie said.

  ‘He’s not.’

  ‘He’s not in your Thames Ditton either,’ Trudy said. ‘When Nick and I went down there we asked about a James Langdon, a Jimmy Hooper and a Jim Morrison. No one had heard of any of them.’

  Because he wasn’t any of them. He wasn’t James, Jimmy or Jim, Hooper, Morrison or Langdon. Margaret Hooper had married Bernard Grenville. Jimmy would have taken his adoptive father’s name when they’d adopted him, as Trudy had taken Jim’s.

  Juliana, meet Morrie. He’s Cara’s husband, Georgie had said that day at the television studio. Had Trudy asked after a Morrison Grenville, someone would have known him. The night of the fire, the police had called Cara Mrs Grenville.

  Georgie’s eyes were boring a pathway into Jenny’s wandering mind, and tonight she mustn’t read what was going on in there. She’d introduced Jenny to Cara’s husband, not to Jimmy. For the best part of an hour Georgie had been with him, spoken to him and hadn’t recognised him.

  It had taken Jenny ten seconds –

  ‘You’ve got your father’s eyes,’ Jenny said, lifting her too-narrow wine glass to her brow to protect her neurons from Georgie’s penetrating gaze, then changed the subject. ‘Oh, by the way, Tru, the next time you’re pillow-talking to your parasite, you might mention that I’ve never been sorry for one day I spent with Laurie Morgan.’

  He’d fathered Georgie, and she knew it, had always known it. ‘Stop it, Jen,’ Georgie warned.

  ‘It’s true. He might have helped himself to what he wanted, but he went about it in a more honest way than . . . than one who shall remain nameless.’

  ‘If you’re going to keep bitching about Nick then I’ll go,’ Trudy said.


  ‘I’ll go,’ Jenny said. She’d seen an arrow with a ladies’ room symbol when she’d hung her jacket. The wine she’d drunk at Georgie’s was going through her.

  Only one cubicle. She used it, washed her hands in a tiny washroom then studied her face in the mirror. Jimmy hadn’t recognised the dark-wigged Juliana. He wouldn’t recognise that face in the mirror either. She looked like a pale-faced old woman with champagne-blonde hair.

  Cara would recognise her – and no doubt had at the television studio. She’d known the Juliana Conti story, had raised her eyebrows when the host introduced them, and several times Jenny had caught her staring.

  Morrie Grenville. Morrie would have been an abbreviation of Morrison. Would he have clung to Jenny’s maiden name if he’d wanted to forget her? Thames Ditton was only forty miles from London. Trains went there, and according to the bio in Cara’s latest novel, she still lived there.

  Ms Langhall lives with her partner in a five-hundred-year-old manor house forty miles from London.

  Georgie had bought a copy of Cara’s latest novel. The bio hadn’t altered. And if that wasn’t proof enough, then her pseudonym was. Why choose to write as C.J. Langhall if she didn’t have some connection to Langdon Hall?

  Jenny combed her hair, added a little lipstick, polished her glasses with toilet paper, delaying her return to that table. Trudy had disguised the bruise with foundation but makeup on a face unaccustomed to it only made what it disguised more obvious.

  We can’t choose who we fall in love with, Mum.

  Cara and Jimmy hadn’t chosen.

  What manipulative hand of fate had been behind the meeting of a Melbourne schoolteacher and the heir to a crumbling English estate? Somewhere, somehow, they’d met and fallen in love.

  Jenny had never fallen in love. She’d grown into it. She’d licked ice-creams with Jim, watched mesmerised while he’d turned the pages of his magical books, full of colourful pictures of elves and fairies perched on spotted mushrooms or hiding amid blossom in trees. She’d tailed bull ants with him too, poked sticks into their holes and run away laughing when they’d come out fighting. She’d discussed the world in general with Jim, and when his father and the rest of the town had treated her like the plague, Jim hadn’t. He’d driven down to Granny’s with his favourite books so she might read them, had sat late playing cards for pennies. How could she have not loved him?

  She’d sung for him that night in Monk’s cellar, because he’d wanted to hear how her voice sounded underground. Then he’d kissed her, just a sweet young boy kiss, but it had melted that hard lump of lead she’d had inside her since she’d been fourteen.

  They’d made love on a camp stretcher. Five nights they’d made love on that stretcher and from one of those nights had come Jimmy, Jenny’s one baby conceived in love. Loved him before his birth, loved him at birth, because she’d loved his father.

  A thousand times she’d told herself to forget her beautiful boy. Not while there was breath in her body would she forget him – and whether he remembered her or not, she was going to find him while that tour was in London.

  The girls were discussing estate agents when she returned to the table. ‘Tonia brought him in to give her a valuation.’

  ‘You’ve put her house of horrors on the market?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Not yet. The girls hope to move her into a nursing home when they get back from Greece.’

  ‘That’s why your . . .’ Jenny started, then washed the remainder of the sentence away with wine.

  ‘Why my what?’ Trudy asked.

  Why your father drowned himself – because you mentioned nursing homes to him, Jenny thought. She didn’t say it. She lied. ‘I must be drunk. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.’ She sipped a little more wine. The bottle was empty. She’d have to make this glass last. ‘So,’ she said. ‘So. We are all here to discuss your birth mother? Drink your wine and decide if you want to know or not.’

  ‘Of course I want to know.’

  ‘It’s no fairytale –’

  ‘Stop prevaricating, Mum. Who was she?’

  ‘Margot,’ Jenny said.

  That name wounded Trudy, but only for an instant. ‘You forget that I’ve seen the hospital records. Her name was Margaret Morrison.’

  ‘The hospital got it wrong. Your original birth certificate didn’t. Your father burnt it.’ She looked her in the eyes and saw only the bruise, and she reached for her glass. ‘Elsie and Harry registered your birth. Teddy Hall’s name was on it in the place that said father.’

  ‘Take her home,’ Trudy said.

  ‘It’s a fact, Trude,’ Georgie said.

  ‘She told me I was born at the Frankston hospital.’

  ‘You were. I was working at Vroni Andrews’ guesthouse and living behind it with Raelene. Georgie and her friend drove Margot down to me. She was with me for two months, with me and Raelene – and if you can imagine hell on earth, those two months were it,’ Jenny said, but Trudy was on her feet.

  She started towards the entrance, then turned and walked to the ladies’ room.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told her like that.’

  ‘You’re right about that, mate. You’re right about being drunk too,’ Georgie said and refixed a pin holding her hair high.

  ‘It could have been worse. I almost told her that Jim drowned himself because she’d mentioned a nursing home.’

  ‘Watch your tongue.’

  ‘No one said it was going to be easy.’

  ‘Nor will be wandering around Europe for a month. You’ve got top travel insurance. It’s not too late to pull the plug.’

  They were discussing travel insurance when Trudy came back to the table, pale faced, jaw clenched. She looked like a skeletal Margot. ‘You could have told me all of this on the phone,’ she said to Georgie.

  ‘It wasn’t my business to, Trude.’

  ‘Ted wouldn’t have gone within a hundred metres of that crazy bitch.’ Trudy liked Teddy Hall. She used to call him Uncle.

  ‘He slept with her for seven years,’ Georgie said. ‘Before and after you were born.’

  ‘She was repulsive, toothless –’

  ‘She had teeth when he slept with her,’ Jenny or the wine said.

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘He would have married her. She refused to admit to sleeping with him –’

  ‘Blamed her bloated stomach on indigestion and attacked anyone who attempted to tell her otherwise,’ Jenny added.

  ‘She was stark raving mad. You left me down there with Nan one day and she came across the paddock screaming.’ Trudy stood, her hands gripping the back of her chair, looking from one to the other, wanting one or the other of them to take back what had been said.

  ‘I thought about allowing you to keep on believing in your Margaret Morrison –’ Jenny began.

  ‘Teddy Hall is my father?’

  ‘Jim was your father,’ Jenny corrected. ‘Teddy and Margot signed papers releasing you.’ She reached for Trudy’s untouched glass of wine. Trudy snatched it and drank it standing.

  ‘We should have let you grow up knowing the truth,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Knowing that I was born to a mad woman, you mean?’

  ‘There was nothing wrong with her mind. She was just as mad as hell that she never grew big enough to take what she believed was rightfully hers,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Everything,’ Jenny added. ‘You name it and she wanted it, be it the last biscuit in the tin or the first apricot of the season.’

  ‘She could hold her breath until she turned blue in the face,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Elsie used to panic and give in to her, and make her kids give in to her.’

  ‘So did Jimmy,’ Georgie said.

  ‘She tried her breath-holding at the hospital after you were born. They transferred her to a city hospital, with a psychiatric ward, but gave up trying to cure her after a month or so and released her to me – with half a dozen bottles of pills. I would have flushed the l
ot down the loo but Elsie took her home and fed those bloody pills to her.’

  ‘They were the end of her – or Teddy breaking up with her was the end,’ Georgie said. ‘She attacked Maisy with a broomstick the night Teddy and Vonnie announced their engagement. An ambulance took her down to the Bendigo mad . . . psychiatric hospital.’

  ‘And you tell me she wasn’t mad,’ Trudy said.

  ‘Only as mad as hell that she had to sleep alone,’ Jenny said.

  Trudy sat, her chin low, Jenny watching her, hoping that the storm was over. It wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said, looking up. ‘She’s the reason I had twins. The Macdonalds.’

  ‘You had them because old Mother Nature knew she was running out of time –’

  ‘Then Georgie should have had triplets – and if Margot was my mother, Bernie Macdonald is my grandfather.’

  ‘None of the Macdonalds knew that you weren’t born to Jim and me –’

  ‘Their ignorance doesn’t alter my blood lines, does it?’ Trudy said, and she was on her feet again and walking to the ladies’ room.

  On Trudy’s recommendation they’d ordered garlic prawns. Their meals arrived before she returned to the table. She looked no happier as she sat and pushed her meal away. ‘You kept it from me because Teddy is part Aborigine. You didn’t want me to know I had black blood. Nick’s right. You’re a nest of racists.’

  ‘Nick doesn’t know his arse from his elbow and if you mention his name again, I’ll mention that bruise again. Eat your prawns,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Admit that what I said is true,’ Trudy demanded. ‘You didn’t want me to know that I had Aboriginal blood. Dad never accepted Nick because he was Greek.’

  ‘He found him unacceptable,’ Jenny said around a prawn. ‘And more so when he found out that he’d gone through the two hundred and twenty-odd thousand dollars you got from Lorna.’

  ‘Jen,’ Georgie warned.

  ‘Don’t bother “Jenning” me. You know where that money went as well as I do – on his bloody designer jeans and pigskin jacket . . . and God only knows what else. And she knows as well as you that Elsie was more sister to Jim than his ugly bloody sisters who conned him into signing Jimmy away when he was in no fit mental state to sign anything.’ She pointed to Trudy with a prawn tail. ‘You were his chance to undo what he’d done, his second chance at fatherhood, and he worshipped the ground you walked on. He didn’t want to share you with Teddy Hall, and not because of Elsie’s black blood but because of his Hooper possessive streak – and as for that blood-sucking louse you brought into the family, Jim wouldn’t have given a damn if he’d been black, white or a bloody green Martian, but you brought home a bludging, grab-all, wife-abusing bastard, who treated him like a geriatric fool.’