by Joy Dettman
Elizabeth
The card was returned promptly to Box 122, Richmond.
*
Georgie, who’d been selling shoes in Hornsby and spending her Sundays sightseeing, having ascertained that Amberley, once a boarding house, was now a block of four units, owned by a John Summerhill, not Robert Norris or a Cara Grenville, packed her case and drove away from Sydney.
She spent a week in Woody Creek, because Jenny wanted to have a family Christmas. She watched a bride walk from the Catholic church in her virginal white, because Jenny wanted her to see the fairytale gown she’d created. A few brides still vowed before God to obey their husbands. Many were forgoing the old vows and the aisle to seal their unions in gardens. Marriage, multiple children, a mother at home to raise the kids belonged to an era now kicking its last. Large families and stay at home mothers had become the prerogative of the unemployable and the unwed.
The Duffy clan, always breeders, had been raised to new heights by Gough Whitlam’s single mother’s pension. Two Duffys, their many offspring, current boyfriends and umpteen dogs now rented the old Roberts house in King Street, and God help Bobby Dobson and his wife, who’d built a new house behind the old Roberts place and worked their guts out in Willama to pay for it.
Woody Creek’s new post office opened its doors for business that Christmas. Built on land that had once been Charlie White’s backyard, it was a small box of a building. The afternoon sun in its face, few loitered there. It might be a pleasant place to work come winter.
The decorations and lights purchased for the Centenary celebrations had been dragged out from beneath the town hall’s stage and strung again from light pole, shop and veranda. The butcher did a roaring trade with his pre-ordered hams and pickled pork and legs of lamb. Christmas puddings were boiled. Heavy fruitcakes were baked early to mature in tins, spare beds aired before being made up with clean sheets for Christmas guests.
Then Macdonald’s mills closed down, as the town mills had always closed down between Christmas and New Year. It wasn’t the tatty decorations, the lights, hams, pork or puddings that meant Christmas in Woody Creek, but the silencing of those screaming saws and the roads empty of logging trucks.
Maisy’s house, already half-full on Christmas Eve, would squeeze in more tomorrow. Her cake and biscuit tins were full and, determined to keep them full, she was making more mince pies. Bernie was walking the house sniffing the almost forgotten aroma of plentiful food when the phone rang.
‘Grab it for me, Bernie,’ Maisy said. ‘I’m covered in flour.’
He stopped its jangling.
The call was from Brisbane, a brief call, and when Bernie returned to the kitchen his face was as white as the flour on Maisy’s hands.
Cecil George Macdonald, known locally as Macka, had passed away in Brisbane three days ago. To date, the hospital had been unable to locate his wife.
A VERY BAD YEAR
Men don’t cry. They tremble. Bernie trembled when he shook the hands offered along with the condolences. He trembled at the thought of driving to Melbourne, of catching a plane to Brisbane so he might bring his twin home, his twin, his left arm, the second half of who he’d been.
Dead?
His fork trembled at the dinner table. His razor trembled while he shaved. His other half may have been a brainless bastard, unheard from since early ’78, but Bernie, as with the rest of the family, had known Macka would wake up to himself one day and come home.
He was dead. He wasn’t coming home. He was locked into a freezer like a slab of beef and Bernie had to bring that slab of beef home and bury it.
Maisy couldn’t stop howling. Mothers weren’t supposed to outlive their children and she’d now outlived two.
They were all there, the daughters, the in-laws, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, no longer there to celebrate Christ’s birth but to mourn Macka’s death.
And later to accuse. And what use was it to accuse the hospital that had let him die, to accuse those faceless doctors. Lila Jones/Roberts/Freeman/Macdonald had a face. It was she who had dumped Macka at the hospital two weeks ago and who hadn’t been sighted since.
‘She poisoned him, that’s why no one has heard from her,’ Macka’s sisters and a few of his nieces said. ‘She murdered him like she murdered that Freeman kid she married that time.’
‘Macka never had kidney trouble,’ Maisy howled. ‘He never had a day’s sickness in his life that Bernie didn’t have.’
‘She poisoned him, that’s why. She got him up there away from his family and she poisoned him,’ Jess said.
The howling and the accusations kept coming. Bernie and a few brothers-in-law escaped to the hotel to do their own accusing.
‘She wore the bastard out in bed,’ they said, and they filled Bernie’s glass and the glass trembled on its way to his trembling mouth.
A nephew flew to Brisbane with him to bring Macka home. They brought him back to Melbourne where an undertaker took charge of the box, and when 1980 was still brand new, the Macdonalds buried Macka.
On that same day old Joe Flanagan buried his missus and the town was shocked to hear that Rosie Flanagan was dead. The last time anyone had set eyes on her she’d been out in the paddock with the cows and she’d looked twenty years younger than old Joe. Not a soul in town had known she’d gone down to the city. Not a soul had known she had cancer, not until her funeral notice came out in the Willama Gazette, above Cecil George (Macka) Macdonald’s column and a half of notices. Joe had always counted his pennies, a habit none of the Macdonalds had learnt.
And how could anyone have known Rosie Flanagan was dying? There wasn’t a woman in town who’d knocked on her door. Let a Jehovah’s Witness, a salesman or a kid wanting to sell five-cent raffle tickets approach old Joe’s front gate and he or his red kelpies changed their minds about opening it.
A handful attended Rosie’s service at the Catholic church. Jenny and Jim put in an appearance. If not for the Flanagans – or their dogs – little Tracy would have been found dead in that carton, and they had to put in an appearance at Macka’s funeral, not for him or his twin, but for Maisy and her daughters, and if they were putting on their funeral suits for one, they may as well attend the two.
Shouldn’t have bothered fronting up at the Catholic church. When Jim approached the sons to offer his hand, both of the ferret-faced swine eyed Jenny as if they expected her to drop her knickers out the front of the church. Joe’s sons had been twelve or thirteen year old neighbours when she’d been an unwed mother of three living on Granny’s land.
In the car before Jim, Jenny claimed the driver’s seat, and with an hour to fill before the next funeral, she drove out to Mission Bridge where she parked in the shade.
‘I want out, Jim.’
‘Out of what?’
‘Out of that town, out of the obligation to go to funerals I don’t want to go to. Out of your father’s house. It’s too big for two people and I miss the girls.’
‘They were home for Christmas.’
‘Trudy was home for a day and Georgie for five. It’s not enough – and that town is too much. Sell up and move.’
‘I don’t want to move, Jen.’
‘What about what I want?’
She didn’t want to be at the Anglican church, which was packed solid with every Macdonald – every Macdonald offspring, every Macdonald mill worker, driver, tree-feller and retired mill worker was there. Harry Hall got a foot inside the door. Jen and Jim stood at his side.
The mills had been silenced for Macka. The mill workers weren’t silent when his coffin was carried out. They formed the old guard of honour, axes over the shoulder, and gave him the last hooray, Harry lining up with them. Men appreciate a bit of ceremony.
Jenny waited long enough outside the church to kiss Maisy, then she got away. Drove home to smoke in the garden so Jim couldn’t count her butts.
Five o’clock; they were in the sitting room, the air conditioner pumping out cool air while they
sorted through a pile of photographs Jim was fitting between slices of Jenny’s My Bright-Eyed Friend rhyme. John had taken a photograph of Norman’s station and somehow managed to slot in a train and a family of sparrows – or Amy had slotted them in. Jenny’s mind was back with Norman at that station when she heard the rumble of a car motor, then heard it die. It sounded close, and she rose to lift a curtain.
‘Who owns a yellow sports car?’ she asked, then dropped the curtain fast. ‘On your feet, Jim. Check the back locks and get the case down. We’re going to Melbourne.’
He didn’t argue. He didn’t ask why. He knew why.
The photographs returned to the dining room table, Jenny’s high heels back on her feet, she snatched her handbag up from the hall table before opening the front door where she stood barring Lila’s entrance.
‘We’re just leaving,’ she said.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Melbourne.’
‘I’ll look after the house for you while you’re gone,’ Lila said.
‘It’s locked. Are you coming, Jim?’ Jenny called.
‘I slept in the car on the way down,’ Lila said. ‘I’ve got three dollars to my name and I’m damn near out of petrol. Can I borrow twenty?’
‘We need what we’ve got on us,’ Jenny said, which was no lie. It was too late to get to a bank today.
Jim came with the case. He deadlocked the front door, the security door.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Lila asked.
‘Move your car so we can get out,’ Jenny said. ‘The girls are expecting us.’ They weren’t, nor were Nobby and Rosemary, but they’d have house guests tonight.
*
Given a week Jim might pack a case. Give him five minutes and you were asking for trouble. He’d packed no change of socks, had forgotten to toss in Jenny’s nightgown. She slept in her petticoat the first night then went shopping the following day.
They saw the girls. They had breakfast with Trudy. She worked nights. They had an early dinner with Georgie, who sold shoes in the city until five thirty and processed data in St Kilda from seven to midnight.
‘What data?’ Jenny asked.
‘A bank’s. You write a cheque to pay a bill. I tell a computer to transfer money from your account to the account of whoever you paid.’
‘How do you tell a computer?’
‘By punching holes into the cards.’
‘How?’
‘With a keyboard.’
It sounded like science fiction to Jenny. ‘Why two jobs? You don’t need the money.’
‘I’ll be giving up my shoe shop job in February. I’m starting another course,’ Georgie said.
‘What are you doing this time?’
‘I’ll tell you if I make it through the first week, Jen.’
‘Where are you living?’
‘I’m moving into a shared house at the weekend. I’ll call you when I get settled.’
And that was that.
They took the long route home, out through Lilydale, but Jenny didn’t want to go home, so they booked into a motel in Benalla.
‘If you don’t want to live in Melbourne, we could buy a house here. It’s a nice town.’
Jim wasn’t interested in buying or selling, he didn’t like the motel bed and he wasn’t fond of eating out. He wrote a cheque for the room then turned the car’s nose towards home.
‘She’ll still be there,’ Jenny said.
‘She’ll be long gone,’ he said.
No sign of her or her fancy car that night, but the following morning, Jenny was in the shower, and with Jim having just popped up to the newsagent’s to pick up a week’s worth of newspapers the back door was not locked. Hearing movement in the kitchen, Jenny assumed he’d returned. She came from the shower in her dressing gown, her hair towel wrapped, and found Lila buttering four slices of toast in the kitchen.
‘I thought you were never coming back,’ she said, her knife dipping into homemade apricot jam. ‘I haven’t eaten today. The caravan park bloke couldn’t get any money off my card and when I went over to the loo the bastard put a padlock on my van.’
‘Take your toast and go, Lila.’
‘He locked my case in the van, and where am I supposed to go without money?’
‘Find yourself another loaded rapist,’ Jenny said.
‘That’s what you’re niggly about, me and Macka? You’re still friendly with his mother, aren’t you?’
‘She didn’t hold me down on a tombstone and get me pregnant at fourteen.’
‘I didn’t either, and it’s not my fault who I fall in love with.’
‘The only person you’ve ever been in love with is yourself, now get out of my kitchen before I say worse.’
‘Can you lend me enough money to get my case – and for a bit of petrol?’
‘Go.’
‘I’ll pay you back every penny I owe you when I get Macka’s money.’
‘Let me know when and I’ll post you an account for the last twenty years.’
Lila hadn’t moved from her chair. She was eating toast, drinking tea, and when she placed her cup down, Jenny snatched it and poured it down the sink.
‘Take your toast or it goes in the rubbish bin.’
‘We’ve been friends for thirty years.’
‘You’ve got a nerve to pull that after what you did!’ Jenny said, but Jim was back. She snatched her cigarettes from the table and walked out as he attempted to walk in. ‘You knew I was in the shower. Why didn’t you lock that door?’
He followed her out to the east-side veranda where she lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke towards the yellow car blocking him out of the drive.
‘Have you got any money on you?’
‘Not much,’ he said.
‘Is the chequebook still in the glove box?’
‘I didn’t take it out.’
‘Drive out and pay the caravan bloke what she owes him, and get her case. It’s the only way I’ll get rid of her.’
For the half-hour it took him to drive out to the park, pay the man and drive back, Jenny stood on the veranda smoking, her hair drying wild. She took the case from his hand at the gate, tossed it onto Lila’s passenger seat, then told him to drive around to Teddy’s garage and buy her a packet of smokes. He didn’t approve of her smoking but he was scared of Lila. He went, and Jenny returned to the kitchen to rid herself of the ‘friend’ who had plagued her life for thirty years.
‘The case is in your car. Go.’
‘It’s out of petrol,’ Lila said.
Jenny opened her handbag, found two dollars eighty in coins and threw them on the table. Coins roll. Lila rose to retrieve then count them.
‘That won’t get me far, and who helped you out when you got yourself up the duff in Sydney?’
‘Get out of my house and my life, and stay out of it,’ Jenny said.
‘I came up here for my husband’s funeral, expecting to get a bit of sympathy, and everyone is treating me like poison.’
‘If they’d been able to find you when he died, you might have got a bit of sympathy. If you’d let his mother know he was dying she might have got up there to say goodbye.’
‘How was I to know he was dying?’
Jenny was a pacifist at heart. Blame Norman for that. She walked away from confrontations, most confrontations. She’d doused Lorna Hooper with a dish of pan fat and water one night. She’d smashed Vern Hooper’s windscreen one day. There was fire in her belly when she allowed it to burn. It took a lot of bad words to move Lila Jones/Roberts/Freeman/Macdonald from her kitchen, and more to get her into her two-seater car, and before it roared out of town, Jenny was shaking.
By midday, she had a migraine, which might have been the reason why she walked away from confrontations. She swallowed a handful of aspros, and when they refused to hit the spot, she tried to walk it off. Walked out Forest Road, walked on towards Granny’s land, needing the peace of that land today, and Granny. Still caught glimpses of her mov
ing around in the orchard. Still heard her voice in the call of a bird. But not that day. She wandered those fifteen acres cursing the fool of a girl she’d once been.
But she hadn’t been a fool in Sydney. She’d been Jenny Hooper, the young mother of a beautiful boy with a husband away fighting a war. When he’d been listed as missing she’d found work, doing the only thing she’d known how to do, sewing at a clothing factory while Myrtle, her landlady, had looked after Jimmy.
She’d worked hard, had saved her money so she and Jimmy could stay safe with Myrtle until Jim was found and brought home. Didn’t know how she’d become involved with Lila, but there’d been no real harm in her, not in those days. She’d been a beautiful, brainless kid with twin sons, a mother-in-law in Newcastle and a nineteen year old husband in the army. Then everything turned bad.
Jenny had been six months pregnant with Cara when she’d been forced to leave the factory, then a week or so later she’d cut her ties with Lila and hidden for three months in Myrtle’s private rooms. Three weeks after that Yankee baby was out of her, she’d gone home to Granny.
Had never told her about Cara. Had never told Jim, and she was scared stiff of Lila’s mouth. She didn’t know there’d been a baby. Years ago Jenny had lied to her about having a late abortion, but she still knew too much.
‘I have to get out of this town, Granny.’
*
On the following Tuesday afternoon Jenny learned from Maisy how far her two dollars eighty had taken Lila.
‘That Scott solicitor rang me up yesterday demanding that I give Lila access to her husband’s money,’ Maisy said. ‘Macka had nothing left to give her access to. They’d been living high on the pig’s back, renting a fancy apartment, where they haven’t paid their rent for the last month – and they owe two payments on that car she’s driving around in. The finance company tried to repossess it up there, a bloke told Bernie, which I told Scott. If you’re looking after the widow’s affairs, I said, then we’ll post down their bills to you. You should see their credit card bills.’