by Joy Dettman
‘I never charge for faulty merchandise,’ he said, adding more tape.
No one else in his shop, neither assistant nor customer; the woman on the phone had said her husband would be at work all day. It was the right shop, and if he was repairing books, then he didn’t have an elderly assistant in a back room repairing them. He added tape to the cover, a colourful cover. No doubt the heroine was a redhead.
Charlie had never spoken Georgie’s name. From infancy, she’d been Rusty – as he’d been Charlie – until Granny had told her she should call him Mr White when she spoke to him in town. She had for a time.
‘How many has she written?’
‘Leticia’s Wardrobe is her eighth. It’s set in England. She lives there. Her early books are set in Australia. I’d say she’s spent a good few years over here. She knows the country well.’
He removed his glasses to polish them, and with only the counter between them, she saw the green of his eyes, and a choking lump of sadness rose up from her stomach to suck the air from her lungs, not because he was less than she’d hoped to find, not because he no longer looked like a movie star, but because she’d stood at this same counter eight years ago and she hadn’t known her own father. That’s how much blood meant. Nothing. The human race was no higher up the evolutionary chain than the chimp. She’d believed her friendship with Cara had been based on blood. They’d been friends, that’s all, friends who had gone their separate ways – like Simon had moved to Sydney, like John who had bought a house way out east. They’d seen him only once since his wedding.
Wanting out of that shop, out of Geelong, Georgie placed a ten-dollar note on his counter, praying for a cloudburst over the MCG and for Paul to be at home when she got there.
‘You live down this way?’ Laurie Morgan asked.
‘No,’ she said, willing him to take her money and give her the change, but he’d found a few more pages threatening to leave home and was painstakingly applying sticky tape. Wasted a lot of time, a lot of tape, before placing both books into a plastic bag.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I’ll hang on to Leticia’s Wardrobe for you if it comes in.’
‘I won’t be back,’ she said, and she got away from the man she’d been wanting to find for forty years, walked out to the street, the four year old kid inside her striving not to bawl her eyes out.
He followed her out. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be the redheaded Morrison solicitor young Mike told us about, would you?’
With six or eight paces between them, she turned. ‘Gina Dunn,’ she said, borrowing Paul’s name, and right then it sounded a damn sight better than Morrison.
‘I was hoping you might have come across Uncle Bert’s lost millions.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just a checkout chick looking for a good read.’
‘For the record, you’re a dead ringer for Uncle Bert’s sister – my mother,’ he said. ‘She was a redhead.’
‘We all look much the same,’ she said and, her stomach trembling like Elsie’s white ant riddled house in a windstorm, she forced a smile, lifted her hand in a wave, then walked on.
‘Not many of them look like you, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Enjoy your read.’
A DOG’S LIFE
Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Queensland’s benevolent dictator premier, decided to make a push for a seat in federal parliament, believing that he alone could save the Liberal Party from internal combustion. They’d been kicked out of office because of infighting and had not yet learnt their lesson. They were still playing musical chairs for the job of leader of the opposition. Joh’s ambition may have encouraged the Hawke government to obtain a double dissolution of parliament. Anyone who’d driven on Queensland goat track roads could see how much Joh had done for Queensland.
In July when Australia returned to the polling booths – where they’d queued too often these past few years – what did it matter which boxes they ticked? It made little difference to the general population which parrot-mouthed, self-serving coot occupied the lodge. As it happened, Bob Hawke retained the keys, even increasing his majority. He’d aged in the job, hadn’t matured into the role of statesman but become more shifty eyed, and who could blame him? Paul Keating, his treasurer, who fitted the general image of a mafia hit man, had his eye on the keys to the lodge. Australia’s politicians had gone to the dogs and the country was going with them.
Lacy’s brother and his wife were self-funded retirees, and with interest rates higher than they’d ever been, they were living off the fat of the land. They bought a brand new car, then bought plane tickets to Brisbane to spend the last of winter with their middle son. They had five offspring, and an obese, spoilt-rotten, ginger-haired, squashed-faced, evil-tempered little mutt of a dog they dropped off at Lacy’s unit before flying away. He spent the last of July and half of August snuffling, peeing and attempting to mate with Lacy’s mother’s immobile legs – or her fluffy pink boots. And he refused to eat dog food. He’d eat chocolates and fine slices of fillet steak if they were hand fed to him. He’d eat sliced chicken livers.
He tried to mate with one of Sissy’s tree stump legs in August, and it responded to his advances. He climaxed mid-flight, hit the crystal cabinet and didn’t get up. With his owners due home in a week, Lacy panicked and rang for a taxi to take him to the vet. Sissy had to sit with Lacy’s mother.
‘Who are you?’
‘Cecelia Duckworth.’
‘I don’t know you.’
‘Lacy’s coming soon.’
Not soon enough, and when she came, she didn’t have enough money to pay the taxi driver. Sissy had to lend her five dollars. No bingo to spend it on. No overnight trips to the country to play the pokies. No pleasure for Sissy in visiting Lacy just to watch her mop up dog pee or change her mother’s bed sheets. She stopped visiting.
Two days after her brother and his wife picked up their limping mutt, Lacy capitulated and the shell of what had been Mrs Ellen Hopkins was moved onto a four-bed ward where the un-dead lay in various stages of decomposition.
Not a good winter for Sissy, the winter of ’87.
*
Nor was it for old Joe Flanagan. He’d been hospitalised with pneumonia in late June, and when his sons drove him home, his cows were missing and his bitch of a wife wasn’t. He called her the winter boomerang. She spent most of her winters with him. He liked a warm house, as did she. He accused her of selling his cows. Then his sons came clean. They’d sold them. They told him that the money they’d got for them was in the bank, then left him with his winter boomerang, who would release them from their obligations until the weather warmed up.
There were days when Joe didn’t recognise his wife, which had nothing to do with pneumonia or dementia. Many Woody Creek residents failed to recognise Lila Jones/Roberts/Freeman/Macdonald/Flanagan. If it wasn’t for her outfit, Jenny might not have recognised her when she turned up at her door twelve months after absconding with Joe’s bank cards. Before he’d come to his senses and cancelled them, they’d paid for a facelift and breast implants. She’d been a short-haired blonde for a time. Joe had been greeted by a fire engine redhead this winter.
By October ’87, Lila was piebald. Her red had faded to pink and her silver roots were an inch long. The couple spent their days snarling. They snarled at the breakfast table. She snarled when he drove her into town to shop, then followed her around, putting back on the shelves what she’d tossed into the trolley. She wanted spring. She wanted a dye job. She wanted Melbourne. She snarled at him while he attempted to watch the six o’clock news, which in October ’87 wasn’t good.
Following the collapse of Wall Street, the Melbourne All Ordinaries index crashed by 20.3 per cent, wiping $37 billion off the value of share prices today . . .
‘Shut your flapping mouth and turn that bloody thing up,’ he ordered. Lila turned the volume up until the television howled its bad news at him.
With the markets in free fall, the crisis threatens the stability of the
international economy.
‘Thousands wiped off,’ Joe bawled over the news broadcaster.
‘Serves you right, you mean old bastard,’ Lila snarled.
‘Turn the bloody thing down.’
‘Who was your bloody slave last week? Turn it down yourself or buy a decent television you don’t have to get up to turn down.’
‘Get off your wrinkled backside and turn that bloody thing down, I said.’
She got off her wrinkled backside and turned it up.
The collapse eclipsed the crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression.
The volume blew the speakers. Lila, or the stock market crash, blew an artery feeding blood to old Joe’s brain. His heart was still beating when the ambulance carried him out on a stretcher, though not before Lila had emptied his pockets of car keys and wallet. For eight hours more old Joe’s determined heart beat on, time enough for his sons to say their final goodbyes had Lila bothered to give them a call. The hospital contacted them the following day, when their phone calls failed to raise his widow.
His sons organised the funeral. They, their wives and children arrived at the house to tidy up before they went to church. Lila opened the front door to them, her hair red from the crown back, and black to the fore, a perfect match for her skin-tight floral frock, bought to display all bar the nipples of her marble breasts.
‘You will not make a laughing stock of that old man in church,’ a daughter-in-law said.
Lila had no intention of making a laughing stock of him in church. She’d loaded the car boot with his first wife’s wedding presents and anything else transportable and of value. Left them to lock up the house, and before the full mass was celebrated, before old Joe was lowered into the earth on top of his missus, Lila was halfway to Melbourne.
*
Lacy’s mother had been buried before the stock market crash. Had she waited a day or two more to die, her son would have chosen a less expensive coffin. He might have chosen cremation instead of interment. The crash hit him hard.
Her mother’s death hit Lacy hard. Since she’d allowed her brother to talk her into letting her go into the home, Lacy had taken one hit after the other. The Housing Department’s letter arrived first, then a letter telling her she was no longer eligible to receive a carer’s pension. She’d made an appointment with Dr Kemp, had gone to him in tears, but he’d refused to fill in the forms to transfer her onto the invalid pension.
‘With your trade, you could walk into a well-paid job this morning,’ he’d said.
‘I’m in no fit state to work, doctor.’
‘I’m in no fit state to pay your dole, but I pay it,’ he said.
Over a cup of tea she told Sissy about her morning. ‘He took no notice that I was bawling. He just stood up and held his door open, like telling me to go.’
Sissy didn’t want her to get a job. She had a best friend for the first time in forty years. She didn’t want her to move in with her brother at Glen Waverley either. She wanted Amber in Lacy’s mother’s vacated bed at the nursing home and Lacy in Amber’s room.
Two overweight witches, stirring a cauldron while packing up a two-bedroom unit, will eventually raise a broth of trouble, and on a Wednesday morning in late October, at ten minutes past eight, Amber opened the door to the aging Dr Kemp, there to assess the ninety year old mother of Mrs Duckworth.
He was expecting bedridden and demented, not the diminutive, apron-clad old soul who told him her daughter was still sleeping, then invited him to breakfast. He observed her over a cup of tea and raisin toast in an immaculate kitchen. He asked her date of birth, asked the prime minister’s name, the names of Queen Lizzie’s children. She replied to each question without thought. He asked if she had other children to care for her. She told him she’d given birth to five babies but only Cecelia had survived.
His hostess was refilling his teacup when the surviving daughter came to stand in the kitchen doorway, her hair uncombed, her dressing gown gaping across the bulge of her stomach.
‘Ask her about her earmuffs,’ Sissy said. ‘Ask her about poisoning the lawns, and two of the neighbour’s dogs with weedkiller, and throwing my clothes and everything else in the rubbish bin.’
As the odour of the unbathed infiltrated the immaculate kitchen, Amber rose to show Dr Kemp to the door. He patted her shoulder before he left.
*
Harry, who still kept an eye on Gertrude’s land, asked Jenny what had happened to Joe’s kelpies.
‘His sons probably got rid of them when they sold his cows.’
‘They were there last Saturday. I heard them,’ Harry said. ‘There’s not a sound out of them this morning.’
That evening he drove down to the deserted property to take a closer look. The dogs didn’t bark. He found out why, found the two lying at full stretch of their chains, eyes glazed and close to death. He filled their empty water containers then called in to tell Jim that the dogs were dying, and that old Joe’s place looked deserted. Jim had little interest in dogs. John and Amy were there. They were dog people from way back.
Come morning, John went shopping for dog food but, uncertain of Lila’s whereabouts, he called by Hooper’s corner and asked Jenny to drive with him to Flanagan’s. A shy man, he was afraid of the woman he’d named the Wild Witch of the East. There was no sign of Lila, but Harry’s water had revived the kelpies. John changed his mind about scraping dog food into their upturned bowls and sprang out of reach of the two crazed mongrels.
‘They’re ravenous,’ he said.
‘They’re rabid,’ Jenny said, watching him spoon out and toss the contents of the tins. The kelpies didn’t refuse the meal. They swallowed it along with the dust.
‘He bred the best dogs in the district until a few years back,’ John said.
‘Their forebears found little Tracy,’ Jenny said.
They had no idea how long those dogs had been tied there, but going by the stink, they’d been chained since Joe died.
‘We’ll need to have them put down,’ John said. ‘It’s a hell of a pity. They’re a breeding pair.’
Jenny might have been able to pick the male from the female had she been able to get close enough to look at their undercarriages. Before returning to the car, she’d named them Vern and Lorna.
John didn’t phone the vet, not that day. He bought more dog food. Again, Jenny drove with him down to Flanagan’s. Still no sign of the maroon Toyota or Joe’s sons.
They used the hose to refill the water containers, then John started tossing dog food, and the pair, preferring their meals not covered in dust, started catching the lumps of congealed meat midair, so John started ordering ‘Catch’ before tossing the dog food.
A dog’s trust, its love, is stomach related. The next time Jenny drove in through the front gate, the duo recognised her car and started yipping. They sat, tails almost wagging as their meal approached, and remained sitting until John ordered ‘Catch.’
After five days of regular meals, when John yelled ‘Sit’ they sat, tongues lolling, then ate their meals out of bowls. On the sixth day, John offered the back of his hand to the male. Jenny stood back waiting for him to lose it, but Vern sniffed it, smelled kindness and dog food on it, then licked the hand that fed him.
Jenny’s dog experience limited to John and Amy’s variety of well-groomed breeds, she started regretting her early choice of names. Vern sat when she told him to sit. He lifted a paw to pat her when she’d had enough of patting his stinking flea-riddled coat. She bought flea powder and two of Trudy’s old hairbrushes, Vern wriggling in ecstasy when she brushed the flea powder into his coat. Lorna, perhaps worn niggly by too frequent motherhood, was less effusive but tolerated John’s powdering, his brush.
The stink they lived in was intolerable. At ten paces their wolf-pack odour was overpowering, and for his own comfort, John decided to move the dogs to the shelter of Joe’s veranda.
He tied ropes to their collars, then while he attempted to release the
rusting chains from bolts secured to the shed’s doorway, Jenny held the two ropes. So occupied was she in watching John’s progress, she was unaware the maroon Toyota had joined the white Holden in the drive until the dogs sat without command and started wagging their tails and yipping for old Joe.
No more Joe. Lila got out of the driver’s seat and Joe’s dogs again became rabid killers, wanting fresh meat. In their desire to eat Lila, they almost pulled Jenny from her feet.
‘Sit!’ John bellowed. His voice was commanding. They sat. Didn’t want to – Lorna’s fine set of teeth showing exactly how much she didn’t want to.
‘What do you think you’re doing with them?’ Lila yelled from behind the car door.
‘We’re taking them home,’ Jenny yelled back.
She’d had no intention of taking them home until witnessing their response to Lila, which was much like her own response to that woman who had allowed a surgeon with a knife to deduct ten years from her face and to give her the breasts of a marble statue, and who shoved Jenny’s extra two years up her nose at their every meeting and bruised Jim with her breasts if he didn’t dodge fast enough. With Vern at her heels and Lorna looking back at the bitch she wanted to fight, Jenny headed through the long grass of the top paddock, John close behind.
‘What’s going on?’ Jim asked, half-in, half-out of the front door.
‘Lila’s back,’ Jenny said.
‘Then what are they doing here?’
‘They don’t like her facelift and neither do I,’ Jenny explained as John took both ropes, freeing her to go indoors to fetch old bowls she could live without, and four eggs and the remainder of a bottle of milk. She served up two meals on either side of a veranda post, and while the dogs lapped eggs and milk, one eye on Jim and one on their feeder, John tied their ropes to the post and Jim placed more than his artificial leg out of doors.
The men drove together to Flanagan’s to pick up the Holden. Jenny went shopping at Fulton’s for dog bowls, worm pills, dog collars, chains and flea collars, guaranteed to keep a dog flea free for three months. She called into the butcher’s on her way home to buy bones and, on John’s instructions, and for the first time in her life, to pay for a liver she would have buried in Armadale.