The Tying of Threads

by Joy Dettman

  Some people never change. Maisy hadn’t, or not in personality. She took up a lot less space these days, ate only a portion of the lemon filling, all of the meringue, but didn’t touch the pastry. Egg whites were full of protein, she explained. Dieters required plenty of protein and as she no longer used sugar in her tea, the body needed a certain amount of it to supply energy.

  She’d been the best cook in town for sixty-odd years, had won first prize at the CWA’s cooking competitions every year until she’d started counting calories.

  ‘You know how people say, “She went as white as a ghost”? They do, or Lorna went yellow – except for her nose – and all I was going to say about it was that whoever did the work ought to be sued for malpractice. She used to at least have a nose that matched the rest of her hatchet face. It’s a scarred blob of a thing now.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. Go on.’

  ‘There’s nothing to go on with. I hotfooted it back to the taxi and told the driver to go. I wouldn’t have seen as much as I did if Maureen hadn’t told him to wait.’ She hunted a fly eager to taste her pie, then ate a little more of the lemon filling. ‘That day I ran into Amber in Woolworths, I should have twigged. I mean, seeing her, and then Lorna on the same day, and sort of in the same place, should have got me wondering, but I didn’t even think about them in the same breath. I mean, it would have been too ridiculous. And it is – or it was.’

  ‘Did Amber say anything to Sissy?’

  ‘Not while I was watching. She was watching Lorna, not Sissy.’ Maisy pushed the plate from her reach and sat back in her chair. ‘Remember that Reginald cousin of your father’s?’

  ‘Charles the parson’s son?’

  Maisy nodded. ‘That’s who she’s married to.’

  ‘Who who is married to?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Sissy.’

  Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘He’s old,’ Jenny said.

  ‘He’s ten years younger than me. I remember thinking what a nice sort of boy he was when he came up here that time to bury Norman’s mother. He looks like a walking skeleton and I could smell the drink oozing out of his pores, and at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning out front of a church.’

  ‘What the hell possessed her to marry him?’

  ‘God knows, but she’s married to him. Did your father ever talk about a cousin Alma?’

  ‘He had a million cousins, Maisy.’

  ‘She seems a nice enough woman. Sissy told me on the phone that Alma was engaged to a bloke during the war and he didn’t come back to do the right thing by her. She’s got a daughter. They lived with Alma’s father until he died, then the sisters and brothers – there’s about ten of them – anyway, they all put in money and bought them a house near Lorna’s.’

  ‘Dad told me once that his mother was one of thirteen.’

  ‘An army of them came up here to bury her. We had trouble finding enough beds. I squeezed in three of your father’s male cousins. Vern took two or three couples, Lonny and Nancy Bryant had five staying out at their farm the night you turned up.’

  ‘Fifty-five years ago,’ Jenny said.

  ‘You can’t be fifty-five!’ Maisy said, then shrugged. ‘I suppose you must be. Which reminds me – Alma was saying when we were out front of the church that her sister saw your mother – that Juliana woman – or what she said was that her sister Clarice saw the foreign woman who was found dead up here that night – saw her while she was alive and pregnant – on the train up here – which seems like yesterday, not fifty-five years ago,’ Maisy said.

  ‘Did the Duckworths buy Reginald a house?’

  ‘They got them a Commission flat in one of those big blocks of units they’ve built in Collingwood, or near Collingwood.’

  ‘That’s miles from Kew. Why go to church at Kew?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘The Duckworths take turns at having them out for Sunday dinner,’ Maisy said. ‘Sissy told me she’d spoken to Lorna at the church before and that they’d seen your mother before but didn’t recognise her until she heard her voice – while Sissy had her back turned. It’s funny that. I used to be able to pick Bernie and Macka by their voices if my back was turned, but face to face I never could. We never hear from Macka, you know. Not once, not that I’d expect him to write; neither one of them wrote more than half a dozen lines all the time they were away in the war, but he could have phoned. I thought he’d have the brains to see through that woman in a week and come running home.’

  Disinterested in talk of the twins, Jenny ate the last of her vanilla slice then pushed the plate to the edge of table where a beady-eyed sparrow might steal the crumbs. He wanted them. He flew in to perch on the back of a spare chair but failed to find the necessary nerve to fly to the plate.

  Norman used to feed the sparrows at the station; they’d pecked around his shoes for crumbs. She stole a corner of Maisy’s discarded pastry and tossed it towards the gutter, and a flock emerged from somewhere for a free meal.

  ‘You’ll have every sparrow in town coming here to eat,’ Maisy said.

  ‘They might keep the flies away.’

  The birds left as fast as they’d arrived, apart from that one bright-eyed hopeful who returned to his perch to eye Jenny’s plate. She stole another piece of pastry, this time offering it on her palm, prepared to sit with her hand extended until greed got the better of that cheeky little coot. Norman had sat with crusts on his palm until temptation had got the better of the station’s birds. My bright-eyed friends, he’d named them.

  My Bright-Eyed Friend, Jenny thought. Amy and Jim had been at her for months to come up with a rhyme. Amy had suggested a witch and goblin rhyme, only because she’d found half a dozen tiny goblins in a box of junk she’d bid on at an auction.

  They were magical books. They reminded Jenny of the fairy book Jim had brought one morning to Norman’s station where four year old Jenny had fallen in love with it, then up in Sydney, at a secondhand book stall, she’d found an identical copy and bought it for herself more than for Jimmy. She still had it, and it was still intact. They’d designed their first book, The Lady’s Garden, along the lines of Jenny’s old fairy book.

  She’d written that rhyme to explain to six year old Trudy how she’d grown in another lady’s tummy garden. Their second book they’d built around one of Jenny’s reworked childhood rhymes. The butterfly book rhyme had been conjured up one night after she’d seen Joey Hall, Elsie’s son, who Jenny had grown with. They’d spoken about chasing butterflies on Granny’s land, spoken until dawn. He lived in Queensland and rarely came home, but when he did, the years slipped away.

  Little family going places, Daddy sparrow has the cases . . .

  The female half of Taylors’ drapery frightened Jenny’s rhyme and her bright-eyed friend away when she came with her teapot to refill their cups. She was a pleasant woman who had the right personality to make a place for herself in this town. The B half of the Wallis duo had been given the right initial.

  Jenny turned to look at the shop she had known all her life. Same window, same veranda, though not quite the same. Concrete had been laid beneath it; a concrete footpath now led to it and away, or away as far as North Street. The once open drain out front was now concrete and the road was sealed, or its centre was sealed.

  The last time she’d seen Sissy she’d been standing at Miss Blunt’s counter. They’d had words. After Margot’s birth they’d rarely met, but when they had, they’d always had words. May have had a few more that day had Ray King not parked his motorbike out front, had Jimmy not wanted to take a closer look at that bike. Jenny had gone one way, Sissy the other. Sisters? They’d never been sisters. From that day to this they hadn’t set eyes on each other. How many years ago? The war was over; the boys had started coming home.

  Sissy and Cousin Reginald. My God. The one and only time Jenny had set eyes on Reginald had been the day of Norman’s funeral. He’d eyed her. She’d been the town scandal
and no doubt the family scandal, an unwed mother of three – though apparently not the only scandal. Alma Duckworth had also produced a daughter out of wedlock and raised her.

  ‘Sissy used to send me a Christmas card until around eight years ago,’ Maisy said. ‘She didn’t say, but that could have been when she married Reg. She probably didn’t want me to know. By the way she talks about him on the phone, she can’t stand the sight of him.’

  ‘God help him.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be easy to live with. She was a bugger of a kid,’ Maisy said.

  ‘I lived with her, Maisy, and she couldn’t stand the sight of me, either.’

  ‘Your mother was much the same as her when she was young. She led your gran a terrible dance. I was down there the day she tried to talk Amber out of marrying your father.’

  Granny had tried to talk Jenny out of marrying Ray. She hadn’t listened either, nor had she when Ray had come back to town with his two babies. Should have told him to go. Instead she’d spent years caring for Donny and Raelene. Wasted twelve years of her life—

  Maisy was talking, and when she mentioned Norman, Jenny reined her mind back from its wandering. ‘I always had a soft spot for him, and the things they wrote about your father in the paper that time when they were trying to get your mother released from the asylum. They should have been sued. Your dad worshipped the ground Amber walked on. He came to life when she walked into the room. She could be charming when she felt like it, and some nights she’d play up to your dad and he’d almost wriggle like a pup with pleasure. I remember one day she came over to my place in hysterics. Norman had got down on his knee and asked her to marry him. She’d had no intention of marrying him then.

  ‘It was later,’ Maisy said. ‘I was pregnant again, and she asked me what it was like having kids to a man I didn’t love. She knew I’d married George for his house. I remember telling her that I loved his kids and they loved him, so I loved him too. Then the next thing I knew, she and your father had set the date.’

  ‘He didn’t own a house?’ Jenny said.

  ‘He lived in one in the centre of town, and it was furnished better than most. You’d remember the parlour and the crystal cabinet. Amber and your gran used to eat off tin plates and drink out of enamel mugs – not that I’d ever say a word against your gran. I loved her and her cosy little hut. I spent half my life running down there when I was a kid. Anyway, six months after the wedding your mother told me she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. “And don’t you dare tell Mum I said that,” she said to me. She hated your gran for being proved right.’

  ‘Why would she call herself Miss Duckworth?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘That’s got me beat. It led to her downfall. And telling them that her father Charles had been an Anglican minister. For a while, Alma thought she might have been their Parson Charles’ illegitimate daughter, except Miss Duckworth had said she’d lived with her father in Launceston until his death. It was the Tasmanian branch of Duckworths who found out there’d never been a Charles Duckworth parson in Launceston, which is what got them suspicious.’

  A mill hooter let the town know it was midday. Maisy stood. ‘I’ve got to go, love, but to cut a long story short, Alma found out that Lorna skittled her Miss Duckworth around the same time as Amber went missing from that Brunswick place, which wasn’t far from where Lorna skittled her – and I’ll have to go. That pretty little blonde one is pregnant and they’re going to tell us today who she’s pregnant to.’

  *

  Days of Our Lives followers knew who the little blonde was pregnant to before Amber ascended those fifty-three steps back up to hell. She let herself in with the loaned key, smelling tinned fish before sighting Reginald, who was seated before the television, forking tuna out of the can. No sign of Sissy.

  She carried her shopping bags through to the kitchen table, cleared when she’d left this morning, now filling but not full. She cleared it again, delved into one of her shopping bags for a packet of her favourite kitchen sponges. She removed one, wet it and wiped the table before unpacking her shopping bags.

  She’d bought fresh milk, butter, cheese, bread, a writing pad, biro, envelopes, a scrubbing brush, rubber gloves, a bottle of Handy Andy and a bottle of bleach. Large bottles were more economical but heavy. The small bottle had grown heavy before she’d climbed a dozen of those steps, but she’d done it.

  With no sign or sound of Sissy, she assumed she’d gone out, and set about boiling the kettle and making tea. She was eating a cheese sandwich, her writing pad open beside her plate, when a sneeze penetrated a wall and closed doors. Amber closed her pad and looked towards the doors as the first sneeze was followed by half a dozen more. Then the cistern flushed and water began burping down the pipes behind the wall. The pad again opened, the sandwich placed down, Amber returned to the letter she’d been composing in her mind since riding the Kew tram back to the city. During the years she’d spent with Lorna, Amber had become adept at . . . at covering her tracks.

  My dear Miss Hooper,

  How can I ever repay you for your kindness to a stranger in her time of great need? I fully understand your response on Sunday. Your shock was no doubt as great as my own. Had the deception been a conscious ploy for your sympathy, I would not beg your forgiveness now, but until yesterday I was unaware of my cruel deception.

  Never a writer, nor a reader, or not until Lorna had required her sight, practice over her twelve-year close association with an over-intelligent tyrant had polished Amber’s seventh-grade skills.

  I learned yesterday that my daughter’s married name is Duckworth and that her father-in-law was a minister of the church.

  Those of a devious nature, when obliged to bend to a tyrant’s will, will become more devious.

  Then Sissy emerged, wet hair hanging. Amber closed her pad.

  ‘You told Reg that you were coming back to get your case.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Duckworth,’ Amber said.

  ‘Don’t you “Mrs Duckworth” me. You know who I am,’ Sissy snarled and stomped out.

  Amber returned to her letter.

  When roused from my stupor at the hospital, no doubt I grasped at the few pleasant memories I had retained . . .

  Not so pleasant memories. Sissy was back and two slices of fresh bread hit the table opposite the pad. Amber closed it to watch a knife spread butter – as a bricklayer might spread mortar on a brick – to watch her block of cheese attacked, thick slices gouged from it to be buried in butter. Watched the second slice of bread slapped on the first, flattened with a palm then, uncut, the sandwich lifted and a massive jaw clamped while with one hand Sissy tested the weight of the teapot. Judging it full enough, she found a mug, judged it clean enough, poured tea, then the dressing-gown-clad humps and lumps of Sissy flopped down onto a chair to add milk and sugar.

  Reginald came to place his empty can of tuna on the table. The smell of dead fish overpowering, Amber picked up the can with finger and thumb, placed it into one of the empty supermarket bags, sealed it, then again sat.

  They were watching her, he blinking, Sissy staring. Unable to write her letter, Amber opened her handbag and removed the borrowed key. She’d had four duplicate keys cut this morning, one each of Lorna’s three and one of the borrowed unit key. An expensive exercise, but necessary to her plan, which she’d altered since counting those fifty-three steps down, since the tram she’d caught this morning at a very conveniently positioned tram stop, which she’d catch again when her letter was done.

  Reginald returned to the sitting room to eat his cheese sandwich and to flick channels. Sissy set about the construction of a second sandwich, and Amber, pressed for time, returned to her letter.

  I have spent this morning attempting to sort out the confusion my loss of memory has created. As you, my dear, are aware, I have no personal income, and although I know you have been hurt deeply by my unconscious deception, it would be greatly appreciated if you could hold my mail at Kew until I find alterna
tive accommodation.

  The gentleman I spoke to this morning at the Social Security Department told me it could take some weeks before the confusion is sorted out and his office can issue me with a pension in my own name . . .

  Sissy’s stomach bulges moulding themselves around the table, she leaned forward to better see what was being written, and again Amber closed the pad.

  ‘As if I’m interested, and what’s the use of writing to her? She’s supposed to be blind.’

  ‘Miss Hooper’s loss of sight is severe but not complete, Mrs Duckworth.’

  ‘I told you my name. I told you yesterday. I told you last night. I’m not telling you again.’

  Her raised voice brought Reginald back to the door, and Sissy turned to face him. ‘I lived with her acts for twenty years – except when she was selling herself on the streets down here, and if she thinks I don’t remember that, I do, and everything else she ever did too.’

  Amber lowered her head and again took up her pen. She had today and half of today was already gone. She now had money in her handbag, and Elizabeth Duckworth had none – or little. It would have taken more time to close the account. She left two dollars ten in the book which was now swimming in the pipes that ran beneath the city. Dropped it onto a street grating, edged it through with a shoe and – goodbye, Elizabeth.

  Though not quite goodbye. The twin vases, found at an opportunity shop, paid for and carried home to Kew by Elizabeth, decorated Lorna’s sitting room mantelpiece, and Elizabeth’s delightful crystal bowl lived on Lorna’s blackwood sideboard.

  As you are aware, my Royal Doulton vases have great sentimental value to me. I thank you for not placing them at risk with my other belongings. I can only assume that one of the young street louts vandalised my case’s contents. As to my Waterford crystal bowl, I am sure it and my vases will be safe in your care until I can arrange to collect the last of my belongings.

  This morning when I awakened, back again in the bosom of my family, my first thoughts were for you and of how you will manage alone, my dear. I beg you not to drive your vehicle without me at your side, and feel sure that Mrs Duckworth and her daughter would be more than willing to take you shopping.