by Joy Dettman
‘We’re a long way from Kew,’ Georgie said, ‘but we’ve got two spare rooms and a spare bathroom between them. Tell John he’s more than welcome to one.’
‘I can’t leave the dogs, love,’ Jenny said.
‘Harry will feed them.’
‘His leg might. They don’t like him. I’ll try the Willama kennels and get back to you, Georgie.’
She wanted to stay at Greensborough. She’d heard about Georgie’s house but had never seen it. In recent years she’d seen too little of Georgie, and as for Paul Dunn, he’d been up here twice, briefly. She might have spoken ten words to him and heard ten back.
On the phone half an hour later, she was discussing immunisations, unaware dogs had immunisations, and she didn’t have a clue whether old Joe’s dogs had been immunised or not. Knowing him, probably not, and the kennel wouldn’t take her dogs until they’d had their shots, and how was she supposed to get them down to Willama to have their shots—
John tapped her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll look after the dogs,’ he said.
HATE
They left John, installed again in the rear room, the refrigerator full of easy meals for him and the dogs. He’d done most of the food preparation this past year and, unlike Jim, wasn’t useless in a kitchen. Left him on the Sunday morning, a dog at each heel. Hoped he’d be okay.
‘We’ll phone you tonight,’ Jenny called.
With the aid of a Melway’s directory, they found Georgie’s street, and eventually her house, a brown brick with a terracotta tiled roof, triple fronted, relatively modern but with a narrow drive, where by seven that evening, five vehicles were parked nose to tail. Trudy was spending the night in Georgie’s second spare bedroom, and before the morning traffic was too heavy, she’d guide Jim via an easy route across town to Kew.
The house woke at six and by seven thirty four of the five vehicles had cleared the drive, leaving Georgie’s old ute to stand alone, and Jenny to wait alone in a strange house in a strange land. That Monday morning may have been the longest of her life. She weeded the garden, made a pot of soup out of what she could find – and she couldn’t find much. She baked a lemon cake to use up a few of the stockpiled eggs. Could find no icing sugar, and had used most of Georgie’s butter in the cake.
The keys to the ute hung on a hook beside the fridge. Georgie now drove a cream Datsun and went to work in a business suit. She didn’t look like Jenny’s Georgie. She looked like half of a business couple, and Jenny felt out of place in that couple’s house. Wanting out of it, she took the ute keys from their hook, locked the back doors, deadlocked the front door behind her and walked down to the ute. She’d seen shops on a corner when they’d driven in yesterday. She’d find them.
The ute coughed. It coughed, caught, shuddered then died. She persevered until the battery died. Locked it and looked at her watch. She still had almost five hours to fill before the workers came home. Reversing her actions, she unlocked the front door and phoned a taxi. Waited twenty minutes for it to arrive, then told the driver that she needed to go to a big supermarket somewhere. Should have been more specific. He took her touring for miles, then pulled into a rank out front of a huge enclosed centre where she spent the next half-hour searching for a supermarket.
Dangerous things, supermarkets. They offer you a massive trolley and somehow you manage to fill it. And she got lost on the way back to the taxi rank.
Taxi drivers used to open their door for passengers. There were three lined up waiting for a fare. She opened the rear door of the first in line, tossed in three bags, propped the trolley against a no parking sign and crawled into the taxi with the last two bags.
‘Greensborough,’ she said, and she gave him Georgie’s address.
Smell of stranger in the taxi – of stale stranger sweat. She opened a window, just a little, considered lighting a cigarette, glanced at him, hoping the driver would light one and give her leave to. He didn’t. Dark greying hair, something familiar about the back of his head, or the way it was attached to his shoulders. She shrugged her own shoulders down and told herself that she was in Melbourne where one in ten people looked familiar. She’d seen a younger Maisy at the supermarket.
He knew the roads, or she hoped he did. She sat back, found the end of the seat belt beneath her shopping, buckled herself in then settled back to watch the traffic, pleased she was being driven and not driving in it.
It wasn’t only his hairline and neck that was familiar. She could see his left ear and she knew it.
Idiot, she thought. Ears all look the same.
But they don’t. Ears could be as different as eyes. Jim’s ears were big. John’s ears were small and the driver’s ear looked like . . .
She was being ridiculous. She’d last seen those ears in a courtroom, their wearer strapped into a wheelchair, oxygen bottles strapped to that chair. The driver wasn’t sucking on bottled oxygen.
She checked the money in her purse. Taxis were expensive these days. Back in the forties she’d caught one once from Spencer Street Station to Armadale and paid the driver a few coins – her last few coins, which back in those days would have fed her and her kids for a week. She’d empty her purse today. Supermarkets swallowed money.
Again her eyes were drawn to the driver’s ear. There was not much else she could see of him – his ear, his neck and his hairline. Wished he’d say something. Most taxi drivers wouldn’t shut up. This one hadn’t said a word. His concentration was on the road, as it should be, she told herself – and no longer believed herself. He’d recognised her when she’d walked out with her trolley. That’s why he hadn’t spoken.
His ear had no lobe. The first day Raelene brought him to the house, Jenny had spent a lot of time looking at that ear. Hadn’t liked it, or his eyes. If she could see his eyes, she’d know him. Determined to get a look at his eyes, his face, she moved her shopping bags, eased more of the seat belt free and slid a little towards the centre of the seat.
He was wearing the taxi driver’s cap, its visor pulled low to meet wraparound dark glasses. She could see the side of his jaw. Dino Collins had been left with scars, very few teeth and a section of his jaw caved in. Which side of his jaw? The jaw she could see wasn’t scarred or caved in.
Closing her eyes, she attempted to see the face in the courtroom. Saw the oxygen bottle. Saw the nurse seated beside her patient, saw his bandaged hand—
Knew how she’d recognise him! H A T E had been tattooed across the knuckles – of his left hand. She sat higher in her seat, sat forward. His left hand wasn’t on the wheel, or not until he made a right-hand turn – and he was wearing a leather half-glove, skin toned, fingers free. Why, on a day like today? Because it covered up his H A T E as he’d covered it up in the courtroom, as he’d covered it with bandaids the first day Raelene had brought him home . . .
It was him, and she’d given him Georgie’s address and, her heartbeat quickening, she cursed herself for a fool. Then cursed herself for being a fool with an overactive imagination and for giving herself the jim-jams over nothing. Even if it was him, he had no way of knowing that it was Georgie’s address – and taxi drivers’ hands on the wheel all day in heavy traffic probably sweated – as were her own.
She’d know his voice anywhere.
‘A lot of traffic on the road,’ she said.
His reply was barely intelligible, a comment on school holidays, his accent marking him as some breed of European, newly arrived on Australian shores, and every nerve in Jenny’s body screamed with relief as she sat back to watch the meter.
He found the street and the address. She handed him a ten-dollar note, didn’t wait for her change, then, her hands loaded with five heavy shopping bags, she closed his door with her hip and walked towards the house next door, hoping to get a look at his face when he turned the car around. He continued forward. There must have been an alternative route back to the highway.
Everyone has a double, she thought, the shopping at her feet, her fingers fumbling to unlock
the front door. She’d seen John McPherson’s double once in Willama and had almost spoken to him, and everywhere she went she saw Maisy’s double.
She stocked Georgie’s pantry and fridge, placed the pot of soup back onto a hotplate, added a pinch of ground ginger, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, a shake of black pepper and four chicken drumsticks. Stood watching it until it settled down to a simmer, then had a shower, needing to wash the thought of Collins from her skin, her hair. By five thirty when Paul walked in, she was seated in the kitchen, doing a crossword.
‘I didn’t hear your car,’ she said.
‘It’s out the front,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a class tonight.’ He lifted the lid of the soup pot. ‘Smells good.’
‘I had a long day to fill,’ she said.
‘They are all long,’ he said.
That was the extent of their conversation. He disappeared into his study and fifteen minutes later, Jim arrived, or came as far as the back door where he took his shoes and shirt off, asked if Georgie was home and, when Jenny shook her head, removed his wallet and car keys from his pocket then dropped his trousers and removed his socks and singlet.
‘That bad?’ she said.
‘You don’t want to know,’ he said. And she did want to know, but he’d walked inside, clad in his boxer shorts.
With finger and thumb Jenny transferred his clothing to Georgie’s washing machine, fifteen years junior to her own. She was still attempting to work out which buttons to push when Georgie came in via the rear door.
Solicitor Georgie started the machine, in her white shirt and grey skirt, grey stockings and smart shoes, her hair pinned up in a roll. She’d never been a stocking person, or a shirt and skirt person.
‘I smell home cooking,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a fast shower then we’ll eat if it’s ready. Paul’s got a class at seven thirty.’
Fast had always meant fast with Georgie. She was back in the kitchen five minutes later clad in t-shirt and shorts, barefoot and her hair hanging – Georgie again. With still no sign of Jim, Jenny went to their borrowed room and found him seated on their borrowed bed, considering his leg.
‘Get it on. We’re ready to eat,’ she said.
‘Start without me,’ he said.
‘How bad?’
‘Uninhabitable,’ he said.
She picked up his boxer shorts. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘She’s got two filing cabinets full of every piece of paper she’s received in her life. The old stuff will be there. We need to clear some space before I start going through the cabinet.’
‘Your trousers were filthy.’
‘We should have thought to pack my gardening clothes,’ he said, and his leg on, he hitched his trouser leg down then followed her out to the kitchen. The laundry was next door. Jenny lifted the lid to toss the boxer shorts in with the rest, then the machine worked on, unsupervised.
Fifteen years ago, her twin tub machine had been modern. Thirty years ago, the old Pope washing machine with its built-in mangle had been a miracle of modern man. Forty-odd years ago, she’d almost bowed down and worshipped running hot water and a scrubbing board. Georgie’s machine had inbuilt intelligence. Where would it end? Would it end?
The house was eight years old, but to Jenny it was another miracle of modern man’s ingenuity. The kitchen was down one end of a large family room which opened out to a paved barbecue area. Where the paving ended, the garden began. A door in the kitchen opened into the laundry. Jenny had to walk through sun, wind and rain to get to her own laundry. Georgie’s kitchen had a built-in dishwasher with its own intelligence. At home, Jenny was the dishwasher.
Space for a couch and comfortable chairs in the family room, and for a good-sized television, positioned so the eaters could keep up with the news while they ate. Jenny had to screw her neck around to see it. Jim’s back was to it, but his mind was elsewhere tonight.
A mother and her three small children died in an overnight house fire.
Thirty-five year old male arrested for the rape and murder of a nineteen year old girl.
New leads in the investigation into the murder of Lorna Hooper, found dead in her Kew home . . .
Jim flinched.
‘Have you heard anything in recent years about Dino Collins, Georgie?’ Jenny asked.
‘Not in years,’ Georgie said.
‘Do you ever hear from Jack Thompson?’
‘I saw him on the box a month ago. He looks like his father.’
Paul left before seven, with a slice of lemon cake to eat on the way. Georgie stacked the dishwasher and Jim went into the sitting room to watch the ABC news – or to sit alone and process his day.
‘Is he okay?’
‘He’s been quiet since he heard about her murder. He said the other night that she’d been more mother than sister to him when he was a kid. A dominating bitch of a mother, but there, I suppose,’ Jenny said.
‘He looks shell shocked,’ Georgie said. ‘Are you going with him tomorrow?’
‘I told him at home that I was having nothing to do with that house – and I’m not – and I’m not going to feel guilty about it either.’
And she had more on her mind than Jim’s shell shock. She couldn’t get that taxi driver out of her head. Kept seeing his gloved hand. Kept seeing that covered-up H A T E. And though his accent had made her feel mistaken about recognising him, anyone could put on a convincing accent for half a dozen words. Get a few glasses of wine into John and he could do a perfect Scottish accent. She could do a half-reasonable Italian. If it was him, he would have recognised her before she’d recognised him. He’d hated her. He’d hated Georgie more. She’d been closer to his age than Raelene and she’d spurned his advances.
And I’ve led him to her.
Of course it hadn’t been him. Driving a taxi would be the least likely occupation Dino Collins would choose. He wasn’t the type to spend his days at the beck and call of passengers.
Jim went to bed early. Had they been at home she would have gone with him. She wasn’t at home so she phoned John, just a quick call. He said that all was well with him and the dogs, so she phoned Nobby and spoke at length to him, or he spoke at length. He told her of a house full of newspapers, of clothing piled in corners, of empty tins and packets, plastic rubbish bags spilling their loads of rotting food. He told her of unwashed dishes, and a car rusting in the drive.
‘Trudy was worth her weight in gold. She got Jim interested in the furniture. He said he’d grown up with it. There are a few nice old pieces, neglected but intact.’
Jim was still tossing when she slid into bed at eleven. She told herself that she had to go with him tomorrow, but by one she’d changed her mind. Tossed until two, when she dreamed of Collins. He was inside Georgie’s house and she was alone. Woke gasping for air, and decided to track Jack Thompson down in the morning, or ring Maisy and get Maureen’s number. Sammy would know if Collins was alive or dead. She’d talked herself out of that come daylight and decided to go into the city with Georgie. She could fill a day there. She and Jimmy had filled many days riding city trams when Ray had been on the nightshift. No way was she staying here alone tomorrow, not after that dream.
*
They were in the city before eight thirty, as was everyone else. She caught a tram to Armadale, got off at the old tram stop then walked the streets that were no longer familiar. Tall brick houses now stood on blocks of land where small weatherboard homes had once stood. Ray’s house was unchanged apart from its concrete driveway and its altered garden. The woman watering the garden might have been Flora Parker. Jenny’s footsteps slowed to stare at her back, but forty years ago she’d had nothing in common with Flora, so she walked on to the corner, where Wilma Fogarty had hosted her Friday night card games. No sign of her ramshackle old house. A block of double-storey units now stood on Wilma’s land, and God help Doreen’s little house next door, which would see no sunlight.
No one to visit now in this sprawling c
ity, only Nobby and Rosemary, who’d be at Kew again with Jim and Trudy – where she should have been but wasn’t.
Walked back to the tram stop and returned to the city. Trams hadn’t altered. Still rattled down the same lines, stopped at the same stops, squealed around the same corners and shed their load in the middle of Swanston Street. She went shopping for workman’s overalls for Jim, and two t-shirts, a pair of drill trousers, then she walked down to Fletcher Jones to order a replacement pair of grey slacks. The company had Jim’s measurements on file. The last pair they’d made for him she’d left swinging dolefully on the clothes line this morning.
She found a theatre where The Man from Snowy River was playing and, her shopping on the seat beside her, she watched a movie she’d been wanting to see for months. There was no scent in the world like the scent of Melbourne theatres. She loved it, or the memories it raised of sitting in old theatres with Jimmy at her side. He’d sit as quiet as a little mouse, watching anything that flashed on that screen. He’d liked going to Coles cafeteria for an ice-cream sundae, so that’s what she ate for lunch there, a raspberry sundae, Jimmy’s favourite, three big scoops of ice-cream and a wafer cut into triangles. The sails, Jimmy had named those pieces of wafer. In the forties, Coles had served their sundaes in metal, boat-shaped bowls. Their metal bowls had given way to glass, but she scraped it clean.
A dragging day and, weighed down by her load, she envied a woman hurrying by with a small shopping buggy so decided she was old enough and went in search of one of those shopping bags on wheels. Found one in the doorway of a cluttered little shop, and it was her colour, a deep peacock blue. She went on her way then, just another elderly shopper walking free and filling up its emptiness on the way back to where Georgie had parked her car. She bought a ton of fruit and, just for fun, a kilo of sausages.
‘Sausages? How rare,’ Georgie would say.
She’d started it as a twelve year old, the day Jenny had come home from Willama with sausages for dinner, halfway between cheeky brat and woman then. Her ‘How rare,’ had continued through thirty years. She’d be forty-eight in March, two years away from fifty, and to Jenny the idea of Georgie being fifty was ridiculous. Only yesterday Jenny had been fifty, only the day before yesterday she’d been fifteen.