by Joy Dettman
At the post office they said, ‘Bloody Christmas cards.’
Jenny and Jim received a few. They posted a few.
Jenny was packing cases when Florence and Clarrie Keating’s card arrived, with a letter enclosed.
Dear Jenny and Jim,
You’ll think I’m the most terrible mother in the world writing this about my own daughter at Christmas time. I know that it’s my fault that she’s gone the way she has and that we never should have disrupted her life when she seemed so happy with you, but for your own good you need to know what’s been going on down here with her.
She’s got herself into big trouble this time. Our next-door neighbours, who we always got on with so well, kept a full set of the old money, and it was stolen, and they are telling everyone that the police have got proof that Raelene and her boyfriend stole it.
We offered to pay back the cost of it, but they say they can’t replace what they had, and they’ll see her locked up this time. And now they won’t speak to us and the police keep coming here thinking that we know where she is, and we don’t.
She’s with a chap who has been in jail. He rides one of those Harley motorbikes. Her father used to ride a bike when I knew him and probably still did when he was with you, and I’m wondering if she is seeing Dino as her father. He’s far too old for her to be mixed up with.
It’s probably not news to you that she’s been stealing. She has from us since she was nine or ten, just little things, but lately it’s got worse. She took our television a while back, which she couldn’t have done by herself. We know that bikie is mainly to blame.
Anyway, Jenny, why I’m writing all this is to let you know that we’ve sold Clarrie’s mother’s house and that we’ll be moving in the New Year. Neither of us wants to. Clarrie has a good paying job down here, but as he says, we have to think of the other children, who we both love dearly, and want to give them a decent life.
I’m so sorry that everything turned out like it did and I hope one day you can forgive me and that you have a good Christmas.
Yours sincerely, Florence Keating
There wasn’t much in that letter Jenny didn’t already know about, other than their selling up. Suffice to say that Juliana’s brooch was now locked in Georgie’s safety-deposit box, that new locks had been fitted to Vern Hooper’s doors and windows. They, too, were tired of strange police knocking at their locked doors.
They knew all about Dino, her bikie. They knew the mob shacked up on Monk’s land smoked grass, knew that he and Raelene had been shacked up with them until a month ago.
There must have been two dozen grass smokers living out there, males, females and kids, camping in huts, sheds, tents, old caravans.
Jenny had given up on Raelene. Sometimes that’s all you can do. You can’t do better than your best, Granny used to say. She’d done her best and now she was doing her best for Trudy.
She’d turn ten next April. She was too young to send away to boarding school, but that’s where she was going in the new year. They had to get her out of this town before she was old enough to understand what was going on with Raelene – if she didn’t already know.
Jenny would have sold up and moved to Melbourne tomorrow. Jim didn’t want to sell. He’d made a life for himself in Woody Creek. He was the local historian, and currently working on a big project with John McPherson. Woody Creek would celebrate its centenary in twelve months’ time. Maybe the town council might shout some new Christmas decorations. They’d already started slapping a bit of paint around.
*
Morrie’s father had packed his case for home. His wife unpacked it. She was well at Christmas time.
She remained well through summer, but summer ended in February, and by April ’69 she was dying by the inch, though not yet prepared to give up that final inch.
‘What happened to Cathy’s little friend you were so fond of?’
‘She’s fond of another,’ Morrie said.
‘I’d hoped to see you married.’
‘Want me to put an ad in the paper – Unemployed bachelor seeking wife?’
‘Nonsensical boy. What’s your father doing?’
Packing his case for the flight home. He did it regularly. To use Cathy’s terminology, he was losing his marbles. Gerry’s diagnosis was kinder, but whichever way you put it, it was hard to live with. Morrie spent a bit of time unpacking that case now. His mother rarely left her bed, and when she did it was in his arms. He carried her to the couch at night if there was a show worth watching on television. He drove the streets, searching for his father and manhandling him into the car.
His father’s loss of memory hadn’t been obvious six months ago, not to Morrie – perhaps to his mother. It was obvious to most now. He required supervision to dress, or ended up with his shirt on inside out and claiming that the buttons had come off in the wash. He couldn’t remember eating a meal five minutes after he’d eaten it, but that cut both ways. He couldn’t remember not eating it either. Morrie fed him when he remembered.
‘Did you sign those papers, Morrie?’
‘I’ll get around to it.’
Power of attorney papers he didn’t want to sign. Signing them would be admitting to something he wasn’t yet ready to admit to.
‘Has the postman been today?’
‘Yep.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing for you to worry about.’
Hope of a reply to a letter was keeping her alive and alert. The letter he’d posted for her a month ago had been returned last week, unopened, as had its predecessors. He’d burnt it, as he’d burnt its predecessors, needing his mother to hold on to hope.
She did through May, then June swept in with a sleety slush that wasn’t quite rain and not yet snow. Cruel June. Month of the district nurses coming by twice a day. Month of Gerry coming in each night, and of Cathy, constant Cathy, popping in at all hours, with her gran, always armed with soups, stews, biscuits.
He managed. He unpacked his father’s case, chased him down, fed him donated soups and stews at all hours. He poured him whisky too. Enough of it seemed to clear his foggy mind, or fogged up the unfogged parts sufficiently to create an acceptable balance.
Cathy popped in one foggy morning and caught him and his father sipping their breakfast – just another nightcap to Morrie. He’d spent his night sipping beside his mother’s bed, willing her to live until morning.
And she had.
‘He’s bad enough without you pickling what’s left of his mind,’ Cathy lectured. Then she rang Gerry to dob on him. Gerry knew a retired matron who specialised in easing the dying to their death. She’d move into the house – and Morrie’s bed.
‘I’ve got two nurses who don’t need my bed, Cath.’
‘She’ll make sure you don’t feed your father whisky for breakfast,’ she said and she went to his room to strip his bed and make it up for her nurse. She packed him a case, and slid it beneath the dining-room table, tossed sheets, pillows and a quilt over the couch. His knees would hang over the edge, but he could watch television all night.
The retired matron arrived that afternoon. She looked a fit seventy, and was super efficient. Morrie’s father left home. She watched Morrie manhandle him inside, to the couch, watched him turn on the television and pour two drinks.
She dobbed, and by nightfall, Morrie’s father was taken to the hospital. Cathy and Gerry caught him while his case was packed. He thought they were taking him to the airport.
‘Incidentally,’ Cathy said, once she and her ex-army major general had organised the house to their liking. ‘I rang Cara half an hour ago. She’s becoming Mrs Baah in September, in Sydney, and I’ll be six months pregnant, and I’m not being a six-month- pregnant bridesmaid.’
‘You’re no maid, Cath.’
‘I’m not being her six-month-pregnant matron of honour either. She doesn’t love him.’
‘Isn’t ruling my world enough for you?’
‘Well she doesn’t. She does
n’t even sound as if she likes him. And he forces her to go running with him, in this weather, and just thinking about her being married to him makes me want to vomit.’
‘Go home and do it, Cath.’
‘You’ll drink if I go home, so I’m staying until Gerry gets home, then you’re coming over to our place for the night and you’re going to ring her up and talk some sense into her.’
‘Did I tell you the joke about the solicitor?’
‘I’m too sick for your jokes, and you’re both stark raving mad. I knew you were made for each other the minute I set eyes on you.’
Eventually she went home. He could have taken his sheets and quilt to his father’s bed. Didn’t want to sleep in that bed, in that room, his mother’s room until two months ago. He spent the night on the couch and when he rose at six to check on his mother, the efficient retiree had beat him to it.
Made redundant by that old dame, he went back to bed – to couch – and when he rose again at seven, the major general asked if he wanted cereal or a cooked breakfast.
He picked up his car keys. ‘I’ll eat on the road,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
The MG found its own way to Melbourne, to Cara’s street. Uncertain if the day was Friday, Saturday or Sunday, he parked out the front and sat for a time, wondering if Con Baah slept in her bed.
He walked down to the rear of the flats. No silver-grey Merc parked in her bay. He walked back, checking the cars on the street. No Merc – which didn’t mean he wasn’t in there. He could have taken a taxi, caught a tram.
Phone box on the corner in use, and by the look of the occupant’s mouth, she was not to be tangled with.
He had two choices. He could walk up those steps and knock, or he could get into his car and go. If he walked up those stairs and her fiancé opened the door, he had two choices. He could sock him in the jaw, or make his excuses and go. The fiancé was a runner, not a boxer, and he might have come up to Morrie’s shoulder. Aware that choosing the first option would be like taking candy from a baby, he walked back to his car. Then remembered he had a third option, under the driver’s seat, a small bottle of Johnny Walker. He sat then, looking at her kitchen window and drinking his breakfast. It took the edge off his hunger, but made taking candy off a baby look like a better option.
And he was out again, the bottle slid into his hip pocket, and before he could start tossing up more options, he was climbing those concrete stairs.
‘Who is it?’
‘A redundant indigent,’ he said.
‘God Almighty,’ she said, but she opened the door.
‘He has arisen,’ he said.
‘It’s not even eight o’clock, you idiot!’
‘If I hadn’t got out, nursie would have had a bib on me and been force-feeding me Weet-Bix mush.’
And the safety chain was off. ‘Cathy told me about your parents,’ she said.
‘She hired an ex-army major general I feel obligated to salute,’ he said.
She filled the jug and set it to boil, measured coffee and sugar into matching mugs. He took his bottle from his pocket and added a dash to one mug. She poured it down the sink and, without a word, commenced the process again.
‘That cost money!’
‘As does coffee. Put it in the fridge or it will go down the sink.’
‘That’s schoolteaching for you,’ he said. ‘You’re as domineering as your friend, who incidentally said you can’t get married in September because she’ll be six months pregnant.’
‘She told me.’ He allowed her to take his bottle.
*
She knew him so well, knew how he took his coffee, how much sugar. Knew the way his hands held his coffee mug. Yet she’d seen so little of him. If she totalled up the weeks they’d spent face to face they may have added up to six. Met him on New Year’s Eve in 1964.
But seeing him this morning was good. He looked as if he’d been drinking all night, maybe all week, looked as if he’d slept in his shirt and trousers.
He was a boy, an irresponsible boy. Chris was a man, well established in his profession.
‘Where’s your engagement ring?’
‘Earrings,’ she said, showing her studded lobes.
‘Do they count?’
‘They’re diamonds.’
‘Hey, why do they bury dead solicitors twelve foot down instead of the usual six?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Because, deep down, they’re all good blokes,’ he said.
She smiled, shouldn’t have, but it tickled her funny bone. Solicitor, along with estate agent, would never make the list of most honourable professions.
‘Did you ever qualify for anything at university – other than drinking?’
‘Slinging hamburgers.’
‘You worked your way through.’
‘Drank,’ he corrected.
‘What did you study?’
‘Law for a while, until I realised I wasn’t a good bloke – even deep down. I had a go at medicine, but the buggers gave me a knife and expected me to use it. Con still in bed?’
‘Chris is on a big case up in Sydney. He’s spent most of the last month up there.’ She placed his bottle into the fridge and removed eggs. ‘One or two?’
‘Two. Got your novel published yet?’
‘I sent it to a publisher. They sent it back.’ Pan on the hotplate, heating, bread in the toaster. ‘I need someone honest to tell me that I’m wasting my time.’
‘Cathy not honest enough for you?’ He knew she’d read it. She’d told him it was brilliant.
‘Cathy’s taste in reading material isn’t everyone’s.’
She broke two eggs into the pan then went to her desk, selected twelve pages and tossed them to the table. ‘Read it if you like, but only if you’ll be scrupulously honest,’ she said and turned again to the eggs.
Familiar working around him, watching him place one page face down and start on the next. She buttered his toast, slid his eggs from the pan. He lifted the pages so she might place his meal down, but continued reading, eating and reading.
There was surprise in his voice when he turned the final page face down. ‘Please, miss, I want some more.’
‘That’s all I’ve retyped. The rest is messy. When it was returned, I attacked it with a red pen.’
‘I’ll read around the red.’
‘You’re just saying that so I won’t evict you.’
‘I’m saying it because I want to know what happens to Archie.’
‘Do you know anything about jails?’
‘I’m working on it. Why?’
‘Rusty visits her mother in jail and it’s an important scene and I don’t know enough about jails to make it believable.’
‘I saw a prison show on the box a while back.’
‘I watched it, but Chris says that Australian jails are different from American jails. I’ve tried to pick his brains, but he doesn’t visit prisoners as a prison visitor. They’re his clients. He speaks to them in private rooms.’
‘That’s why you hooked up with him? Research?’
‘I hooked up with him because he turns up when he says he’ll turn up.’
‘You’re supposed to say, Because I love him.’
‘That goes without saying.’
‘Not for us, it didn’t,’ he said.
‘Stop that or go, Morrie.’
‘Then give me the rest of your book. You’ve left Archie dangling.’
She picked up the rest of her manuscript and dumped it on the table, with a pencil. ‘Edit it while you’re about it,’ she said, then leaving him to it, she went to the bathroom.
He’d made more coffee when she returned. She checked his bottle. It was in the fridge where she’d placed it.
Washed his dishes, the pan, watching him turning pages, occasionally glancing back at a page before reading on. She watched his pencil make corrections, write comments in the margin, then at ten-thirty he stood, stretched, and asked if he could call Ballarat.
She gave him privacy
. She took a bag of rubbish down to the bins, and when she returned, he was back at the table, reading. She watched him for a moment, trusting his pencil, trusting him to give her an honest opinion too. Went to her desk then to write to Georgie and ask her to be a bridesmaid in September. What would Myrtle and Robert think of her? And Chris. She’d need to tell him she was adopted and had a half-sister.
Five pages later, one page filled with Morrie, with his parents, she sealed the letter into an envelope, then walked down to the postbox and sent it on its way.
He was still reading when she returned. The least she could do was to feed him. Fried ham and cheese sandwiches, opened a can of tomato soup – and felt Chris’s disapproval. He rarely ate bread. Fried bread oozing cheese! He’d be aghast.
Morrie dispatched his share. ‘What does Con think of your novel?’
‘He’s not into fiction.’
‘Have you got anything in common with him?’
‘Change the subject, Morrie.’
‘Cathy says you don’t.’
‘Cathy only thinks she knows everything.’
He moved from the table to the lone easy chair after lunch, a pile of pages on the floor, on either side of the chair. He read until seven, then again phoned home, just briefly.
‘How is she?’ Cara asked.
‘Sleeping,’ he said. ‘She’s . . . they’re keeping her pain-free with injections. She would have wanted . . .’
‘They know what they’re doing, Morrie. You have to trust them.’
They shared a tin of spaghetti at eight, on toast. She opened her last bottle of milk for their coffee.
Ten-fifteen before he placed the final page down, when he placed his pencil down and sat looking at her.
‘You hate it?’
‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Your characters are good. Your ending wasn’t what I expected, but to use Cathy’s word, it’s brilliant. You’ve got a novel.’
‘True?’
‘Fair dinkum.’
‘That sounds silly coming from a Pom, but thanks.’
‘I’ve served my time here.’
‘Fair dinkum?’ she said. ‘I can’t say I noticed much of it. Now you have to go.’
‘The major general will be in my bed.’