by Joy Dettman
‘She wouldn’t recognise her. Lorna didn’t recognise me at first.’
Or didn’t want to, Maisy thought, but if you can’t say something nice or helpful, it’s better to keep your mouth shut and listen.
‘Alma Duckworth, one of my cousins, has been going to the Kew church for years. We go with them sometimes, and last Sunday I heard this woman talking to the minister and she sounded exactly the same as Mum used to sound when she was putting on the jam for the Hoopers. And she walks like her too.’
‘Does she look like her?’
‘She’s as old as you are. She looks like Methuselah.’
‘He had whiskers, love,’ Maisy said, wondering what Sissy might look like. As a girl, she’d been the living image of old Cecelia, Norman’s mother.
‘There’s more to it,’ Sissy said. ‘She calls herself Elizabeth Duckworth, and Alma and her daughter have been trying for years to connect her up to the family, and they can’t. She’s the only Duckworth that Alma has come across that she hasn’t been able to connect up to one of their dead relatives.’
‘I still say that if she was with Lorna Hooper it’s not your mother.’
‘Lorna wouldn’t know who she’s living with. Alma reckons she’s as blind as a bat.’
‘Someone is having you on about that,’ Maisy said. ‘Lorna Hooper drove herself up here a few years ago in one of those tiny little Morris Minor cars. When we watched her folding herself into the driver’s seat, Jenny said she—’
‘Don’t mention that little slut’s name to me, Maisy.’
‘—looked like a praying mantis folding its legs into a matchbox,’ Maisy finished, or not quite finished. ‘Lorna was seeing well enough to drive that day.’
‘Why would she be visiting her?’
Maisy scratched her neck and eyed the phone, aware that whatever she said would be the wrong thing to say. Sissy had been engaged to Jim Hooper at one time and had damn near gone off her head when he’d broken the engagement six weeks before the wedding.
‘Are you there?’ Sissy asked.
‘Yes, love.’ Then she said it. ‘Lorna was visiting her brother. He and . . . and your sister got married.’ Silence at the other end of the line, a painful silence, until Maisy killed it. ‘They’ve got a daughter, a lovely kid who’s training to be a nurse in Melbourne.’
‘As if I care,’ Sissy snapped. ‘And if you’d seen Amber, you’d know her like I did.’
‘They say that everyone’s got a double.’
‘It’s her, not her double. And there’s more. Alma’s old minister’s wife told Alma that Lorna ran over Elizabeth Duckworth near Brunswick, and that they ended up in the same hospital, and when they let them out, Lorna brought her Miss Duckworth home with her. And,’ Sissy said, ‘and – one of the Duckworth cousins is a journalist, and he found out that Amber Morrison went missing from that place in Brunswick at around the same time that Lorna ran down her Miss Duckworth. He said that the accident was in the newspapers, and that they didn’t know who the other woman was for three days – and if that’s too much of a coincidence for you then it’s not for me, or Alma – and if you heard her talking, you’d know I was right about it being Mum. Do you ever get down to Melbourne?’
‘I used to drive down when George was alive but the traffic is too mad for my liking these days.’
‘Is Maureen still living down here?’
‘She’s still in the same house at Box Hill, love.’
‘Would she recognise Mum?’
‘I doubt it. She left town when you and . . . when you were only a bit of a kid.’
Beeps on the line warned them that Telecom’s allocated three minutes were up.
‘I’ll have to go,’ Sissy said. ‘It costs a fortune ringing the country during the day. If you’ve got a pencil handy I’ll give you my number and you can give me a call if you’re ever down here.’
Maisy had a pencil tied to her telephone pad. She noted Sissy’s number, then the line went dead.
And it wasn’t going to end like that – Maisy had never looked at a phone bill in her life. She dialled the new number.
An hour later, the phone back in its cradle, Maisy picked up her car keys and drove around to Jenny’s.
‘You’ll never guess who I’ve been on the phone with!’
‘Who?’
‘Your sister, and she swears that your mother is living with Lorna Hooper in Kew and calling herself Miss Elizabeth Duckworth.’ It was all out before the front door closed behind her. Her news continuing to spill, she followed Jenny through the entrance hall and into a short passage leading to the kitchen, where she claimed her chair at the western end of the table. Handbag and car keys placed down, she continued with her tale.
‘Remember that day I told you how I almost bumped into Amber in Willama, in Woolworths?’ Jenny nodded and went about making a pot of tea. ‘Well,’ Maisy said.
‘Well what?’
‘Well, who just happened to be in your sitting room talking to Jim when I came running in to tell you I’d seen your mother?’
‘Come off the grass, Maisy. As if Lorna would have Amber within spitting distance.’
‘That’s what I said – at first, that’s what I said, but there’s more to it, and the more I heard the more convinced I was. Sissy swears she recognised your mother’s voice while her back was turned to her. She said that when she turned around and saw who that voice was coming from, she almost fell over. She said she looked old, that her hair was white and curly and that she was dressed like a toff. The woman I saw in Woolworths that day was dressed up to the nines and she had short curly white hair underneath her hat.’
‘Ten thousand people live in and around Willama and a good percentage of them are old – and wear hats,’ Jenny said.
‘Okay, now you tell me why two people who hadn’t sighted some woman for thirty-odd years – and who hadn’t sighted each other either – could come up with the exact same description of a woman they thought was your mother – if it wasn’t?’
Jenny offered a biscuit with the cup of tea. Maisy broke it in half then ate the small half while giving a rundown of its calorie content.
‘You’re looking good,’ Jenny said.
‘I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in ten years. I’m off all but one of my blood pressure pills.’
‘Jim,’ Jenny called. He came from the dining room, his typewriter’s summertime residence – he came as far as the doorway. ‘Maisy just had a phone call from Sissy, and she swears that Amber is housekeeping for your sister.’
‘I can think of no two people who deserve each other more,’ Jim said, then returned to his typewriter.
*
It took a month for Maisy to talk Bernie into making the trip down to Melbourne. He hadn’t been back since Dawny’s death, and had no desire to.
‘I’ll take you down on Saturday night if you’ll ride in the ute.’
‘I’ll ride in the ute if you promise to keep your speed down, but it’s not worth going just for one night. We’ll leave Friday night and come home on Monday.’
‘I need to be at the mill on Monday or another one of the old buggers will go me for compo.’
They left on Saturday morning, in the ute. Maisy phoned Sissy five minutes after they arrived and arranged to meet her out the front of the Kew church at ten thirty on Sunday. Then Bernie refused to drive her to the church.
‘Mandy will drive us,’ Maureen said.
Mandy also refused. ‘If she’s who you think she is, Nan, then she’s not someone to go messing about with. Let sleeping dogs lie.’
Six of Maisy’s girls had their driving licences. Maureen wasn’t one of them. She had no desire to disturb murdering Amber, but she’d known Sissy well as a kid, and she wanted to get a look at her.
‘We’ll get a taxi, and ask him to wait,’ Maureen said.
‘No good will come of it, Mum,’ Mandy warned.
They should have listened to her. The taxi arrived late, and they wer
e late getting to the address. Three women and a male stood at the kerb, one of the women glowering. Maisy recognised that glower, and that’s about all she recognised.
‘Oh my God,’ Maureen said, cowering back low in the rear seat as Maisy opened the door.
‘You’re coming with me?’
‘I’m not,’ Maureen said.
Maisy crossed the road alone to greet a giant of a woman clad in a maroon frock straining to fit and not quite managing it. It hugged her swollen stomach, clutched her broad backside, revealed the backs of bare dimpled knees and legs the size of tree stumps. She was her grandmother, old Cecelia Morrison, on a bad day. Taller though, broader, different hair. Old Cecelia’s had been sparse, grey/white and pinned into a bun. Sissy’s was a shoulder-length salt and pepper, sprayed to hold its bouffant style.
There were two women with her, shorter, one not a lot slimmer, and a male who looked like death warmed up – and not warmed up enough. He was skin stretched over bone, and hairless; his oversized skull appeared to be contracting around his eye sockets, attempting to force his eyeballs out.
The introductions were made while Maisy stood gaping, the names going in one ear and out the other as she followed the trio to the cemented area close to the church door. Maisy, stunned silent, stood at Sissy’s side. She wasn’t silent, or not until the organist stopped playing and a chubby, middle-aged parson emerged, his shrinking congregation behind him.
‘That’s them,’ Sissy said.
As if she needed to point out Lorna Hooper’s elongated black-clad bones, or her man-sized lace-up shoes. She was gripping the arm of a fluffy-headed little woman clad in dusty pink.
‘Oh my God,’ Maisy breathed.
‘Is it her?’ Sissy hissed.
‘Oh my God.’ Maisy hadn’t set eyes on Amber Morrison in forty years the day she’d seen her in Woolworths, but she’d known her. She knew her today. ‘Oh my God.’
‘Is it her?’ Sissy demanded, louder.
Maisy nodded and stepped back.
Sissy wanted her to step forward. ‘Get up close and listen,’ she hissed.
There was no need to listen. She knew that stretched-lip smile, which someone had once described as a chimp’s grimace, the smile Amber was offering to the minister as she shook his hand, the smile Maisy had known since the classroom. They’d started school on the same day. Had been girls together, young wives, mothers, close neighbours. She’d seen that smile the day Amber had turned up late at little Barbie Dobson’s funeral, had seen it the day the police took her away from Woody Creek, poor Norman rotting in his bed, his face caved in by a cast iron frying pan, a carving knife jammed between his ribs.
A forgiving soul, Maisy, she’d forgiven Amber a thousand unforgivable sins, and as many stings, but poor, pompous Norman hadn’t deserved to end his life like he had.
Memories are long in Woody Creek, she’d written to Amber when the Salvation Army people contacted her to let her know Amber was being released from the asylum. Maisy’s memory was as long. She wouldn’t have been game to turn her back if she’d given Amber a bed.
She stepped back again as the emaciated Duckworth male began to offer his opinion.
‘She appears . . . to . . . to have made a . . . a new . . .’ His sentence commenced with no expectation of completion, or of anyone listening even if he had bothered to complete it. Maisy didn’t. She turned tail and hotfooted it back to the taxi.
‘Get me out of here,’ she said.
‘Wait,’ Maureen said.
Sissy and the Duckworth women had approached Amber.
‘Who do you think you’re fooling, Mum?’ Sissy said.
Rarely in her sixty years of life had she considered the likely repercussions of any action. She’d given no thought as to what might come after Amber’s unveiling.
The minister stopped shaking hands. His congregation stood staring. Lorna Hooper froze, the blood draining from her chin and brow to what the accident had left of her battle-scarred nose.
Sissy hadn’t expected Lorna’s response. The pink-clad arm she’d been clutching might have been a striking snake. She flung it from her, and the little woman attached to it teetered, then, blind as a bat or not, Lorna made a beeline for home.
Sissy should have expected Alma Duckworth’s response. For the greater part of her life, Sissy had lived comfortably enough on Duckworth charity. Alma, well positioned to catch Amber, caught her, then she and Valda, her daughter, supported her back into the church. Sissy followed them. She’d been invited to lunch today at Alma’s, and it was almost lunchtime.
She stood in that quiet place staring at her mother, who hadn’t said a word, who sat on a rear pew, her mouth open, panting like Alma’s white poodle.
And she shouldn’t have been in that church. She’d committed murder and Alma knew it, yet there she was fanning a murderess’s face with her hat – and calling her dear. And Valda knew it too, and there she was patting her shoulder. The minister didn’t know who his church was sheltering. He fetched her a sip of communion wine.
Sissy stood well back, her arms folded across her breasts, the thinnest part of her. She was considering enlightening the parson as to whom he was offering his communion wine to – except a church didn’t seem like the right place to talk about murders and insane asylums.
She watched her mother sip that wine, listened to the minister suggest they drive Miss Duckworth home, where any misunderstanding between the elderly companions could surely be sorted out over a cup of tea. Valda agreed with him. She wasn’t married and nor was he. She’d had her eye on him for six months.
And as if Lorna Hooper would take Amber back. In what now seemed like another lifetime, Sissy had been overly familiar with Lorna.
Maisy had let Sissy down. If Sissy had given a split second of thought as to what might come later, Maisy had been heavily involved in that later, but she’d taken off like a scalded cat and left Sissy holding the bag – which having so recently claimed she was now eager to be rid of.
*
At Box Hill, Maisy was urging Bernie to take her home. She’d packed her case. It was waiting at the front door, but Bernie had seen a leg of lamb slid into the oven before Maureen called the taxi, and he wanted some of it.
Sissy’s need for lunch got her into Reg’s car. They followed Valda and her mother and the minister to Lorna’s street – and got there in time to see a suitcase follow a bundle of clothing onto the nature strip, to watch a hat escaping merrily down the road, to witness Lorna clip a padlock to the chain locking the tall black gates before her back disappeared into her hard-faced red clinker brick house.
Valda retrieved the hat. The minister and Alma collected the scattered clothing and a shoe. They forced what they could into the case then loaded the lot into Reg’s boot.
The Duckworth clan had always looked after their orphans, their widows and fallen women – and their alcoholic sons. Would Jesus have done less? Like Jesus, the Duckworth clan possessed a wizardry with food, and that Sunday, Alma and Valda stretched a midday luncheon for four to feed the six seated around their dining room table.
The sixth guest wasted her share. Amber stared at her plate of cold roast mutton, potato salad and greens, and she cursed her stupidity. How many times had she decided she must move on, then changed her mind? She’d been lucky on the night of the accident, and for too long had trusted her luck to hold. As any gambler knew, luck can swing in an instant.
She dared a glance at Sissy, revolted by what the years had done to her. A bulging hump of rounded shoulders, of ballooning belly, of mud-green eyes sunk deep into a tub of well-used lard. A black bush of mono eyebrows, a mastiff jaw, working on cold mutton and greens.
She dared a glance in Cousin Reginald’s direction. Wouldn’t have recognised him in a million years. Should have. She’d known him for a month or two – in the biblical sense.
In ’26 she’d been a young married woman, mourning the loss of four day old Leonora April. Cousin Reginald had been sympathe
tic. A pleasant-faced, overeducated but inexperienced youth, studying the word of God and preparing to follow Charles, his parson father, into the ministry, he’d driven Amber to doctors’ appointments in his little green roadster, had driven her later to theatres, and one night he hadn’t driven her directly back to the manse.
She’d initiated young Cousin Reg into the joys of sin. An eager student, too eager. Parson Charles had smelt a rat and put an end to their association. Packed Reginald off to the tropics to re-find his commitment to God, and sent Amber home to Norman, her sin growing in her belly.
Some months later, another name had been added to CLARENCE, SIMON and LEONORA APRIL’s tombstone. Norman had chosen the name. REGINALD, the letters cut larger, deeper. From that day to this, Amber had not given Cousin Reginald a second’s thought.
Her mind reassembling, rearranging, she sat staring at her plate, attempting to resurrect her old escape plans. Impossible to concentrate. A thousand memories buried beneath the dust of yesterday kept pushing through, mean memories, cheap memories, ugly – though not her memories of Reg. She’d dared to live a while, to feel, to laugh with him.
Dared a second glance in his direction – and caught him staring at her. His eyes shuddered and he looked down at his hands, shaking hands, spilling lettuce from his fork. Strong, inventive hands in his youth. A greedy youth’s mouth.
Tried to force her eyes up to the mound of female at his side. Remembered only the pain of her bones being ripped apart so she might birth that mound of female. Remembered the heavy months of carrying her weight. She’d carried it willingly, so certain her womb had been creating the most beautiful of babies. And why not, its mother had been the prettiest girl in town. For hours she’d pushed, screamed to free her beautiful Ruby Rose into life, and when she’d seen what she’d created, she’d been inconsolable. Her mother had handed her a swaddled, snuffling pig of an infant. A glutton at her breast. A glutton still.
Norman had named her, named her Cecelia Louise, for his mother, while somewhere out there in the stratosphere Amber’s beautiful Ruby Rose had remained forever unborn.
She glanced at the glutton’s plate, scraped clean. Couldn’t look higher. Knew too well what she’d see. That glutton’s eyes would be on Amber’s untouched meal. Minutely, Amber’s chin lifted, minutely her lids lifted, only to prove herself right. No joy in that proof. Anger, that mind-blurring, red haze of anger she dared not breathe into her lungs. Held her breath against it until her need for air was overwhelming, squealed the legs of her chair back, and the chair, too abruptly vacated, crashed to the floor.