by Joy Dettman
Cara turned away, walked away from braised chicken and mashed potatoes.
Robert rose to follow her.
‘Leave her,’ Myrtle said, and moments later, Cara came back carrying the heavy family Bible.
‘Swear on it. Both of you.’
Myrtle took the book. ‘You were born to a twenty-year-old lodger. Her name was Jennifer Hooper. She had a small son, Jimmy, and two daughters living with their grandmother.’
‘I said swear.’
‘I swear by Almighty God that what I’ve told you is the truth, pet,’ Myrtle said and handed the Bible across the table to Robert, Cara’s eyes following it. She knew what that Bible meant to her parents.
‘Me too, poppet. I still have the telegram Mummy sent to me about her lodger. I swear,’ he added then placed the book on the table, and Cara sat.
‘If she already had three kids, why give me away?’
‘Her situation was complicated,’ Myrtle said.
‘How?’
How could she explain Jenny Hooper’s situation? Tell an already confused child she’d been born of rape. That was a truth which must never be told.
‘Jenny had a brief association with an American sailor. I know little else about him, pet.’
‘What was his other name?’
Myrtle shook her head. ‘She mentioned only his Christian name, Billy-Bob.’
‘She must have been a moll,’ Cara said and Myrtle’s serving spoon flinched at the word, spilling gravy.
‘Rules alter in wartime.’
‘What did she look like?’
Look in the mirror, Myrtle thought. Cara was Jenny around the eyes, the brow. She had her colouring, her hair. Taller than Jenny. At twelve she’d outgrown Myrtle, at fourteen she stood eye to eye with Robert, measured by the army doctors at five foot eight.
‘You’re very much like her,’ she said. And perhaps in more than appearance. ‘Eat your meal, pet, before it gets cold.’
Cara picked up her fork and used it, with her fingers, to break the meat away from the bone. Myrtle caught Robert’s eye, willing him not to demand acceptable table manners tonight.
Is a child’s destiny set in stone at birth? she thought. John and Beth had daughters. They’d given their parents not one moment of trouble, had met boys who fitted so well into the family. Until puberty, until high school, Cara had been perfection.
Perhaps they should blame themselves for Cara’s rebellion. They’d disrupted her life when they’d moved to Traralgon, taken her away from a home she’d loved, from her friends.
‘Stop staring at me,’ Cara said.
‘I was thinking of the night Jenny placed you into my arms. I didn’t doubt that God had sent her to my door to bring me a priceless gift.’
‘Now you wish she’d had me in a public toilet and flushed it.’
Robert placed his fork down to butter a slice of bread. ‘Remember when you used to nag us daily for a black and white puppy? Imagine for a moment what it might have been like had you given up all hope of ever owning your own puppy, then along came a stranger and placed Bowser into your arms.’
‘You would have made me give it to a lost dogs’ home,’ Cara said, mouth full.
She had Myrtle’s voice, but Jenny’s tongue. She had Jenny’s hands – and perhaps her table manners.
‘Imagine we’d allowed you to raise that puppy,’ Robert said. ‘That you’d loved it, fed it, cared for it for fifteen years, then one day, instead of greeting you with a wagging tail, it snarled and bit your hand. Would you stop loving it, or decide that poor old Bowser had a pain, that his bite was the only way he could tell you about it?’
‘I asked both of you if I was adopted.’ Cara’s fork was down. Her plate was clean. ‘You said I wasn’t.’
‘We didn’t adopt you. Had we lied to you then, you would have asked more questions. We told Robert’s mother we’d adopted you and have spent our lives lying to her,’ Myrtle said.
‘You would have had to adopt me somehow to get my birth certificate.’
‘You were registered as our daughter. Mrs Collins and Miss Robertson believe I gave birth to you. To this day they believe they witnessed your birth.’
‘How?’
‘Your mother wandered around Amberley with a cushion tucked beneath her pinny,’ Robert said.
‘She did not!’
‘I did,’ Myrtle said.
‘That old maroon cushion she won’t give up,’ Robert said.
‘You didn’t.’
‘Did so,’ Robert said.
Like the old game Robert’s shadow puppets had played on Amberley’s parlour wall, back when Cara was four or five, the two old hens arguing over who had laid that egg.
‘That’s why your mum won’t throw the raggedy old thing away,’ Robert said.
‘It fits my back,’ Myrtle said.
‘How could you do that?’
‘I did,’ Myrtle said, then told the tale of Jenny, a prisoner for three months in their private rooms at Amberley, how the passage door was never opened, how Jenny had stitched long tapes to that old cushion one morning then chased Myrtle around the parlour table with it, singing her own words to Greensleeves.
‘She sang?’
‘She sang beautifully.’
That’s when Cara knew it was all true, and when Myrtle sang Jenny’s ditty, indelibly imprinted in her mind.
‘There was a landlady named Myrtle, who lived in a shell, like a turtle,
Until one fine day, she decided to play, and Myrtle the turtle proved fertile.
Oh, Myrtle the turtle was glowing, her stomach was definitely showing.
The lodgers aghast at her colourful past, each week watched it growing and growing.’
Myrtle couldn’t hold a tune to save her life. Her off-key song was more convincing than ten thousand words. She couldn’t make a rhyme to save her life either.
For an instant Cara saw beyond her mother’s butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth facade, saw a forty-year-old woman so desperate to have her own baby she’d been willing to look ridiculous for months, to do something more illegal than forging a signature at a bank – and just to get a baby.
‘Is that why you called me Cara Jeanette, because she was a Jeanette?’
‘She was a Jennifer, Jennifer Carolyn,’ Myrtle said. ‘She chose your name.’ Myrtle reached out a hand, not touching Cara’s but placing it fingertip to fingertip. ‘I suggested Cecelia, for your grandmother, and she said she had a sister Cecelia and that I wasn’t saddling you with that name for life. I have always believed that she chose Cara Jeanette so she might leave you her initials.’
‘Turned-around initials,’ Cara said, then looked down at her mother’s hand. A small, plump hand with perfect almond-shaped fingernails. She looked at her own hand, longer and with flat, atrocious fingernails.
‘Did I get my rotten fingernails from her?’
Myrtle smiled and nodded. ‘When she saw your tiny hands for the first time, she said, “God help her, Myrt. She’s got my rotten fingernails.” She was intrigued by hands. Do you remember Mr Nightingale? He was our minister until you were six or seven years old?’
‘That tall one?’
‘Very tall. He had incredibly long, fine fingers,’ Myrtle said. ‘Spider-hands, Jenny named him. She told me one day that his hand dissolved into spider legs when she shook it. I recall a Sunday afternoon, shortly after I had begun wearing the cushion, which I dared not wear to church. He became –’
‘You gave up church to get me?’
‘I did. Mr Nightingale became concerned and he called on me one morning to see if I was well. An unmarried man, I had invited him to lunch on occasion, and had no choice but to invite him inside. His eyes fastened onto my cushion –’
‘Where was Jenny?’
‘In the bedroom. If we had someone at the door, or at the rent hatch, she hid in the bedroom. I can see Mr Nightingale’s hands now, his long fingers near dancing against the leg of his trousers, counting. He knew
your father was overseas and how long he’d been over there. Then Jimmy began slapping at the bedroom door, calling Jenny.’
‘Jimmy. He’s my brother,’ Cara said.
‘He was a delightful little boy.’
‘Were his hands like mine?’
‘I don’t believe so. Jenny once said that had he not inherited his grandfather’s double-jointed thumbs, she would have been better off.’ Myrtle’s hand had crept forward to cover Cara’s.
‘You didn’t call a doctor or anything for her when I was being born?’
Myrtle shook her head. ‘She was foolishly brave. I recall standing at the kitchen door, too afraid to enter, the wireless playing at full volume – Joseph Schmidt singing “A Star Falls From Heaven”.’
‘What if she hadn’t kept her word, and you were wandering around with the cushion up your dress? How did you know she wouldn’t change her mind?’
‘I knew Jenny.’
‘What was her other name?’
‘Hooper – though, I doubt she was married to her tall soldier. When he was reported missing, she wasn’t informed through the official channels. Her grandmother sent a telegram, addressed to Jennifer Morrison.’
‘Where was she from?’
‘Woody Creek. It’s a small town in Victoria.’
‘Daddy should have told me when I asked the first time.’
‘How do parents tell a child they have taken her illegally, signed documents dishonestly?’ Robert asked.
‘You could have told me at Easter time when we were driving home.’
‘You were not being very pleasant when we were driving home,’ Robert said.
Cara took Myrtle’s hand and turned it palm up, placing her own beside it. ‘They don’t even look related. I’m an alien.’
Robert placed his own hand on the table. ‘We’re all from different planets, poppet, but we’ve done well enough together for a lot of years.’
‘We did before we came to this town. I hate it here, hate everyone here.’
‘You don’t know enough people to make that statement.’
‘I don’t want to know anyone else. I want to go home.’
‘We will when I retire.’
‘That’s years away.’
‘Not so long, not once you get to my age,’ he said.
‘What did Dino do to get expelled from school?’
‘Who?’
‘Dino Collins – James Collins.’
‘He’s trouble, poppet. That’s all you need to know.’
‘It isn’t. I’m almost fifteen. Tell me why he was expelled.’
‘It was to do with one of the young female teachers,’ Myrtle said.
‘Was it about sex?’
That word was never used in Myrtle’s house. She flinched from it, but replied. ‘He molested her, Cara, and if not for the school cleaner, it may have been worse than it was.’
‘And that goes no further than this room,’ Robert said.
‘Why protect him if he did something like that?’
‘I want your word on it.’
Cara shrugged. ‘Take me up to live with Uncle John and Aunty Beth until you retire.’
‘That’s not an option,’ he said.
‘I can’t go back to school here.’ She looked at the clock. Quarter to seven already. She’d told Rosie she’d see her at half past seven to finalise their arrangements for tomorrow. She’d told her she’d get the money from her bank account too. Rosie would hate her for not getting it, and hate her more when she told her she wasn’t going to Sydney. They’d all hate her.
‘I want to live with Uncle John and go to school with Pete.’
‘Your home is with us, poppet.’
LIKE RIDING A BIKE
Driving a car is a little like riding a bike. Once learned it is never forgotten. A skill becomes rusty when unused for twenty years. Only surface rust; it brushed off easily enough. The road rules had altered. Back when Laurie had taught Jenny to drive, she’d learnt two road rules. Don’t hit anything, and it’s a good idea to give way to the man on the right. Vroni, self-elected driving tutor, presented her with a book of rules. A hard taskmaster, Vroni.
Then another letter came from the Keatings’ solicitors, and on the same day the hospital rang. Margot’s baby was ready to go home.
On the Friday, two weeks into July, Vroni at her side, Jenny picked up Raelene from school then she drove all the way to Box Hill, where Florence couldn’t look her in the eye. No time to waste then, Vroni at the wheel, they continued on to the hospital.
‘Fifty per cent of Maisy’s grandkids have got pale purple eyes. She’ll know who that baby belongs to the minute she sees it,’ Jenny said.
‘Is the other grandmother still planning to raise her?’
‘I haven’t heard from her. I think she’s got her hands full with Margot.’
The baby’s eyes weren’t purple. It didn’t have the Macdonalds’ stumpy hands. It was bald. Margot had been bald until she was eighteen months old. Probably end up with her snow-white hair, Jenny thought, but something had to be done about it, so she did it. By five, Vroni was fighting her way through peak-hour traffic, home to Frankston, Jenny in the rear seat, the hospital-scented bundle in her arms.
The hospital had supplied them with a sample of baby formula. They bought a large tin of it at the chemist’s shop, bought two dozen napkins at a department store, three tiny singlets, three flannelette gowns, three bunny rugs.
‘Three enough?’ Vroni asked.
‘One on the baby, one on the clothes line, one sicked on,’ Jenny said, her arm aching beneath the small weight, her eye on a cane carry basket. They bought the basket too, and half-a-dozen feeding bottles.
Two women with a new toy, one of them childless and, according to her, barely knowing a baby’s backside from its elbow. The other’s motherhood skills a little rusty. They were still fussing with the baby when Jim arrived in a taxi at eight and Vroni left them to it.
He read the solicitor’s letter while the baby slept in her basket on the table. They went to bed in a room smelling of baby. And were shocked awake at five-thirty by a tremulous siren.
Saturday disappeared in the sterilising of bottles, the changing of that minute backside, the washing, the making up of bottles of formula and in the watching of baby lips sucking life from that teat.
The Keatings brought Raelene home on Sunday evening, and Florence, uncommunicative in Box Hill, wanted to hold the baby, to smell the scent of her, and to drip tears for the infants she couldn’t conceive, while Jenny told her a tale of a Woody Creek mother, and of a baby born early.
‘How many children has she got?’
‘Seven,’ Jenny said.
‘Some people have all the luck, don’t they. I’d sell my soul to have one. What did they name her?’
Elsie had named her Gertrude, though Jenny couldn’t bring herself to admit it, not to Florence.
‘Trudy,’ she said.
‘That’s pretty.’
It was a definite improvement on Gertrude.
Jim got a lift back to Box Hill with them. Raelene wouldn’t have a bar of him or the baby.
‘Why do you have to look after her?’
‘Because her mummy can’t look after her yet, like Florence couldn’t look after you when you were tiny.’
‘She can now, and I want to live at her house, not here.’
‘The baby will be going soon.’
‘And him too?’
‘No,’ Jenny said. ‘Not him.’
No driving lesson that day. No school, no work, and the sky threatening to rain on a clothes line full of napkins. Day gone before Jenny saw daylight, and Jim arriving with the rain.
‘On a Monday night?’
‘I don’t want him to come here again,’ Raelene said.
Jenny did. Tonight she needed him.
There’s something about grandchildren. They’re not yours, but they’re somehow connected into your bloodstream. Deny it you may, but they kno
w. They see your face, and their silly little gummy mouths open in a gaping twisted smile. You know it is only wind, or your logic knows. Your heart doesn’t. It starts to melt.
Not by any stretch of the imagination could Trudy be called a pretty baby. Some were. Raelene was. She’d looked like a kewpie doll with her mob of black curls – Florence’s kewpie doll. Her behaviour that day, that night, was more demon than doll.
Jenny got Raelene settled sometime after ten, in the double bed. Jim would have to sleep in the kitchen.
They sat late then, Jenny balancing baby and bottle with one hand, drinking tea and eating toast with the other. There had been no time to cook a meal that night.
‘Not much of her,’ he said, watching her place the baby into her basket. ‘Doesn’t it scare the daylights out of you, handling her?’
‘I’ve handled a few.’
‘You look good together,’ he said.
‘It feels weird. She’s not mine. She’s a whole patchwork of genes accidentally come together. A smidgen of old black Wadi, a pinch of Harry, a sprinkle of Juliana Conti and Archie Foote – not too much Macdonald – and she feels like mine.’
‘A blending of nations,’ he said.
‘What would you say if I said I wanted us to raise her?’
‘That you were giving me a second chance to do something worthwhile,’ he said.
Margot’s bed was still there in the kitchen. Eighteen years ago, he’d picked Jenny up and carried her to his camp bed in Monk’s cellar. Joint will drew them to Margot’s. He’d grown accustomed to Jenny seeing him take that leg off, to sleeping with it beside the bed.
That was the night they made love, the night the butterflies flew again. That was the night Jenny’s world tilted, then righted itself, the night she kissed the tears from his face while Trudy slept on in her basket, on the table.
Dear Florence,
I’m not having Raelene taken away from me by some judge who hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about, so if you are willing for us to work out our own arrangements, I’m willing to talk about it . . .
Dear Elsie and Harry,
Jim and I are going to raise Trudy. We know you love her and want to be in her life, and the only way we’ll manage that is if we move back there, which we are not going to do until Teddy and Margot sign the enclosed papers giving up all claims to her. Jim and I are going to adopt her, through the courts. I suggest you don’t tell Margot what it is she’s signing.