by Joy Dettman
Multiculturalism was the parliamentarians’ latest fad. Very cheesy people, today’s politicians, with cheesy smiles and policies, one of which had given immigrants their own multicultural, multilingual television channel. They could tune into it and forget they’d left their homeland. There were days when Jenny tuned into their channel to forget she was in Woody Creek.
In November, she was informed, in Vietnamese, that America had elected a third-rate movie star as their new president. She laughed. In December, when a gun-toting maniac murdered John Lennon, she changed channels fast, distrusting the foreign-speaking announcer, and when an English-speaking reporter offered her the same news, she howled. She was still howling when she set up the Christmas tree, still sniffing while she stuffed chickens, peeled pumpkin and potatoes. Her tears curdled the custard for the Christmas pudding. It went lumpy.
And the girls, supposed to arrive at twelve, didn’t arrive until half past one, by which time the chickens were falling apart, the vegetables were overdone, the pudding boiled dry and the lumpy custard was cold.
‘Still off the smokes?’ Georgie asked.
‘I’m off all round,’ Jenny said.
‘You look ten years younger, Mummy,’ Trudy said.
‘I raised you to be honest, Trudy,’ Jenny said.
They left at three thirty. Trudy was on duty tonight. The dishes washed and put away, Jenny began pulling the plastic tree apart, fitting its plastic pieces back into their box to remain dust free until next Christmas. It looked like plastic, smelled like plastic, felt like plastic – as did the whole bloody world and ninety per cent of those inhabiting it.
Jim gave her an eternity ring for her birthday, a beautiful ring she’d admired the day they picked up her pearl in a cage pendant, and she hadn’t admired it because she’d wanted to own it, but because it was beautiful. And what did a woman of damn near sixty need with a beautiful ring? She had too many already to take off when she stitched expensive fabrics. And why the hell was a woman three years away from sixty still stitching beautiful gowns for others and buying her own clothing from Target?
She dripped tears for most of the day. She dripped on Juliana Conti’s antique brooch, which was worth thousands, which made it too precious to wear, as was that ring. How do you weed a garden with eight hundred dollars wrapped around your finger?
She howled too because if she willed Juliana’s brooch to Georgie, Jim would want to know why she hadn’t willed it to Trudy, and because if she gave Trudy the pearl in a cage pendant and earrings, they’d never see the light of day again. Trudy wasn’t into decoration. She rarely bothered with lipstick.
Imagine that there’d been no Florence Keating. Imagine she’d never hired a solicitor to get Raelene back. Imagine if I’d been waiting down at Granny’s for Jim when they brought him home from the Jap camp, Jimmy would have been . . .
Would have been. Could have been. Might have been. They were like that Christmas tree, made of non-biodegradable plastic. Bury a could-have-been one year and the next time she started digging in the past, up it came, still in pristine condition. Just give it a rinse off with tears and it was ready again to decorate her psyche.
She didn’t want to see 1981 so went to bed to howl for all of her buried might-have-beens, and he came in to ask why she was howling, and how did she know why she was howling? She was, that’s all.
He kissed her blubbering mouth and his kiss, his touch, had never changed. Up in Sydney, when she’d promised Granny she wouldn’t let him come within a foot of her, he’d only needed to reach out a hand and she’d forgotten her promise.
WHAT WILL BE WILL BE
Abare week ago Cara had phoned Cathy to ask if she and Gerry might like to be witnesses at a brief marriage service in the city.
‘If you’re going to bother doing it, then you’re not doing it hole in the wall again,’ Cathy had said. ‘And why do it now when I’m eight months pregnant?’
Because the reason why they hadn’t done it sooner was no longer around to disapprove, Cara thought, though didn’t say.
‘You are allowed to say no, Cath.’
‘Of course I’m not. Of course we want to be your witnesses, but you’ll have to do it up here. I can’t travel. We can have a bit of a party afterwards if you do it up here,’ Cathy said.
‘I just buried Dad, Cath. We don’t want a party.’
‘You buried him ten days ago and he’s been dead for two months,’ Cathy said.
He’d died in England, over two months ago, at a time when Cara couldn’t get away. Then it had taken time to arrange the flight and the funeral. They’d opened Myrtle’s grave – ghoulish, but what Robert had wanted – and he no doubt a happier man back with his beloved Myrtle than he’d been in England.
‘You’ll order the celebrant, Cath, or do we bring him with us?’
‘Leave it to me,’ Cathy said.
‘I’m in your hands,’ Cara had said.
Should have known better. They’d been friends since their college days, and back then, if given five minute’s notice, Cathy had been able to raise a party of fifty. In Ballarat she had parents, a mother-in-law, two sets of grandparents, Gerry, her doctor husband, four sons, friends she’d known since kindergarten. If there was anyone in town she didn’t know, Gerry knew them.
There’d been no sign of a party when Cara and Morrie and the children arrived at three, no sign of Cathy’s rowdy boys – no sign of Gerry, Morrie and Robin by the time Cara exited the bathroom.
‘What are you up to, Cath?’
She’d borrowed frocks. Tracy was a froth of pink. ‘It’s like a princess dress, Mummy,’ Tracy said.
It was, and how many seven year old girls won’t melt at the sight of pink frills and ballet shoes? How many can resist a long mirror when a coronet of rosebuds and ribbons is pinned into her hair?
Thank God Cathy had been unable to borrow a frilly bridal gown. The frock she’d chosen for Cara was white, but more Queen Lizzy garden party than bridal. She’d borrowed white sandals, gorgeous sandals, and a white broad-brimmed hat. The bouquets were new.
‘I didn’t go overboard,’ Cathy said.
‘No. You torpedoed the boat, you control freak,’ Cara said.
‘You’re the control freak, now get dressed, or we’ll be late.’
‘What time is he coming?’ He, the marriage celebrant.
‘I told you that you weren’t doing it hole in the corner. Our minster squeezed you in at four, as a favour to me, and he has to be at a dinner in Melbourne by seven, so we can’t keep him waiting.’
‘You . . .’
‘Your daughter is listening. Now get dressed.’
‘Did Morrie know what you were up to?’
‘As if I’d tell him so that you could start blaming him again,’ Cathy said.
Cara had never blamed Morrie for the fiasco of their first marriage. She’d blamed his mother for allowing him to believe that Jenny and his sisters were dead. In ’69, they’d made their first vows beside her bed and three days later, Margaret Hooper Grenville-Langdon had died – never knowing what her lie had done to their lives.
‘I’m sort of adopted,’ Cara had confessed to Morrie on their wedding night.
‘How can you be sort of adopted?’
‘You can if your mother and the biological mother pull a swiftie.’
Their marriage had been eight hours old when they found out that they’d shared that biological mother, Jenny.
Nothing had changed during the years since – or no new laws had been written into the constitution allowing unions between half-brother and -sister. Cara’s profession, her life, her outlook on life had changed, and she could put her finger on the exact instant it had changed.
She’d been standing with Morrie in the hospital corridor, Tracy a wall away and as close to death as she’d been to life. That was the moment. She’d looked at Morrie and known that nothing mattered in this life but living it, and if she’d walked away from him that night, she’d be senten
cing both of them to half-lives.
She loved him, had loved him since she’d turned nineteen, when he’d been introduced to her as Gerry’s pommy mate. She’d loved him for five years before that disastrous wedding night.
Blamed him for his carelessness when she’d realised she was pregnant with Robin, but that had been as much her own fault as his.
Robert had never forgiven him for deserting his pregnant daughter. Poor Robert. He’d believed what he’d been told. The truth of why her marriage had failed, the truth of what she’d been carrying would have killed him and Myrtle, so she’d lied, told them about the English cad who’d married her only to get his hands on his grandfather’s estate.
She’d never expected to produce a living baby. Not for one minute had she considered raising it. Her only thought during the months she’d carried Robin had been the getting out of him, the getting rid of him – and the guilt of his conception.
Myrtle and Robert obtained a court order preventing her from signing their grandson away. She’d left them holding the baby in Sydney and had gone home to Melbourne. But babies grow; they become little boys who look at you with big blue trusting eyes. Robin had smiled at her with Morrie’s mouth and she’d fallen in love for the second time.
Robert had loved him. He’d loved Tracy too and done his utmost to talk Cara out of moving to England. He’d had months to work on her. On that nightmare day when Tracy had been taken from her bed, Cara had learnt that Rusty, a novel she’d worked on for years, had been accepted for publication. Once upon a time she’d believed that the publisher’s acceptance of a manuscript was the end of the process for the author. It wasn’t. She’d been forced to stay in Australia, to see it through the editing process, then forced to stay longer for Dino Collins’ trial.
Flew away gladly when it was done, she, Robert and the children, Robin looking forward to seeing the little red MG he’d considered his own for seven years which had made the trip across the ocean months before them. Robin and Morrie’s mutual love of that car had given them a foundation on which to build a relationship. They were father and son now and they looked like father and son.
Robert had never built a relationship with the English cad. He’d flown with them for her sake and the children’s, certain that the cad would let his daughter down again.
Morrie would never let her down. Right or wrong, he loved her, and once back behind the stone walls of Langdon Hall where they’d been living as Mr and Mrs Grenville-Langdon since ’78, they’d be Mr and Mrs Grenville-Langdon.
The white frock was a firm fit at the waist, but Cathy got the zipper zipped. The sandal heels were ultra high, and shoes worn by another never feel quite right, but Cara walked out to the car in them, and Cathy got them to the church with five minutes to spare.
And it wasn’t empty. And she should have known. Somehow, Cathy had got the entire Sydney mob down here – Uncle John, Beth, the six cousins, their partners and a dozen of the cousin’s kids.
‘Cathy!’ Cara moaned.
‘Just walk when the organ starts playing,’ Cathy said. ‘Walk, don’t gallop,’ and she waddled down the aisle to Gerry and her boys, and the rest of her mob.
‘Why are they all here, Mummy?’ Tracy asked.
‘Shush, pet. Cathy’s having a party, and we have to do this bit first,’ Cara whispered.
‘Where’s Robbie?’
‘He’s standing with Daddy right at the front. We have to walk down to them now.’
They walked the long aisle holding hands, down to Morrie, to Robin who stood at his father’s side, a very serious, if undersized, best man, his big eyes agog at the transformation of his pixie sister, but the minister, eager to get this done and get down to Melbourne, got down to business.
‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here . . .’
With little interest in long-winded ministers and no previous knowledge of church, Tracy turned to stare at the silent crowd.
‘Why is the party in this place, Robbie?’ Young voices always sound loud in a church.
‘You have to be quiet,’ Robin warned.
Cara had expected trauma, nightmares, when Tracy was released from hospital, but she had no memory of her twenty-four hour ordeal in that carton. The police and their psychologist had spoken to her. She’d told them that she went to sleep in her bed with Bunny Long Ears and when she woke up she was in the sick children’s place and Bunny Long Ears was there too, and who brought him and her there?
Cara had told them more – told them everything. She’d relived her fifteenth year when she’d broken handsome Dino Collins’ nose and knocked out one of his teeth out with the spine of Mansfield Park. That’s when his harassment had begun.
She’d stood in the witness box at his trial, willing the jury to believe her, to find him guilty and lock him away forever, and when they hadn’t, she’d howled and wished him dead.
Hated him and, in a wheelchair or not, hospitalised or not, she feared him and wanted those oceans back between her children and him. Only four more days and they’d fly home. Only four more sleeps.
And this was her wedding day and she shouldn’t have been thinking about Dino Collins.
She glanced up as Tracy pointed to where the afternoon sun hit claret glass and shot a ray of red light towards the altar – just as the minister reached the bit about impediments, of anyone knowing just cause as to why this union should not take place, to speak now.
If Myrtle and Robert had found their way to paradise where all questions were answered, they knew of just cause. Were they aiming that shaft of red?
Stop!
Their aim was too high, and it was done and their daughter’s sinful union blessed by God.
*
By seven, Tracy, worn out by her day, was ready for bed. They’d booked a room at a motel, but Robin was watching a television movie with Cathy’s boys and he didn’t want to leave.
Cara took a copy of Angel at My Door from her case and placed it on Cathy’s pillow. It had been published in England six weeks ago and was not yet available in Australia. Cathy had been there at its beginning; she’d read a very early draft of it. Balancing Act would be ready for its final edit when they got home. There’d be more. With Morrie at her side, all things were possible.
Not all things. They could never have another baby – but they could adopt, and would, very soon. Morrie could never meet the sister he remembered – Georgie, the big girl with hair the colour of new-minted pennies. Cara could have no more contact with Georgie.
Morrie remembered his father, the man with one leg he’d visited in a hospital ward, the man who’d held a six year old boy too tightly and cried. Years ago he’d spoken about meeting his father. He could never meet him now.
Cara had met him, first in the dark of that awful night, then again in Georgie’s kitchen. An excessively tall man, he was a little like his son, but there was more of Jenny in Morrie’s face and personality.
He remembered her too, but had no desire to meet the woman who’d sold him like so much livestock. The aging paper he referred to as his bill of sale was still in his wallet.
But all else was possible.
Cara tucked her sleepy girl into one of Cathy’s son’s beds, kissed her and told her to go to sleep.
‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘He’s talking to all of the people,’ Cara said.
She changed out of her borrowed frock then and looked at its label. Someone had spent big money on it. Loved the sandals, but her feet were relieved to shed them, and the pantihose.
She’d lived in pantihose during her years of teaching. Rarely rolled on a pair these days. Lived in jeans, in comfortable tops and comfortable sandals, and tonight her feet sighed as she slid them into their own sandals.
There was a drip of something on the skirt of the frock. She hadn’t noticed it until she slipped it onto the hanger. It would wash. The label said so. Hand wash. Drip dry.
Tomorrow.
The frock hung, she returned to Cat
hy’s party.
The oldies had taken over the comfortable chairs in the lounge room. Cara crept by them and out to the yard to look for Pete, always her favourite cousin. Instead she found Cathy, seated beside her mother on the back veranda.
‘You look worn out, Cath.’
‘Why did you take your dress off?’ Cathy said.
‘I needed to breathe, oh mighty one,’ Cara said.
Cathy patted her mighty belly. ‘It’s on its way,’ she said.
‘She’s been having pains for the last hour,’ her mother said.
‘It’s not due,’ Cara said.
‘It is in ten days, which means it’s a girl. Our boys were all born late.’
‘You’re big enough to be having quintuplets,’ Cara said. ‘One ought to be a girl.’
JIM’S OBSESSION
Years come and go. Few cast reflections more lasting than our reflection in a shop window as we walk by. Yesterday’s melodies linger, but the big news of the day leaves little impression.