by Joy Dettman
Unwelcome visitor. ‘You’re not supposed to be here, Raelene.’
‘Twenty bucks will get rid of me.’
The sheet of pastry folded, placed on a plate to wait a while in the refrigerator, Jenny put her rolling pin on the sink bench then stood beside it.
‘Is he with you?’
‘Does it look like it?’
Flour wiped from her hand on a tea towel, she looked at the door, wishing she’d thought to lock it when Jim and Trudy had left. You can’t think of everything, and she’d been in and out to her washing machine all morning and hadn’t seen nor heard that bike in days – and you can’t live your life behind locked doors.
‘Where is he?’
‘The bastard pissed off to Melbourne without me,’ Raelene said.
Maybe he had. Maybe he hadn’t. That girl had never told the truth if a lie would serve as well.
‘I need you to go, Raelene.’
‘I need twenty bucks.’
‘Jim carries the money.’
‘Liar,’ Raelene said.
Such a pipsqueak, five foot two and a half of her at twelve, and she hadn’t grown since. She’d had more weight on her bones at twelve, more breast too. Jenny hadn’t been this close to her in months, and she looked half-starved and unclean. If he wasn’t in town, she’d be shacked up out at Duffys’.
She’d been a doll of a baby, a pretty little girl, dark as a gypsy, big heavy-lidded eyes and a wide, laughing mouth. Amy McPherson had cast her as a pixie in one of the school concerts and she’d made such a perfect pixie. No pixie left, and not a lot of pretty. A hungry face, sharp-featured, her lifestyle beginning to show on it.
‘If you’re hungry, I’ll make you a sandwich, then you need to go.’
‘Shove your sandwich up your arse, you mean old bitch. My father left you a pile of money and it’s more mine than yours.’
‘He didn’t leave it for you and your boyfriend to shoot up your arms,’ Jenny said.
‘He didn’t leave it for you to spend on your gimpy bastard and his snivelling bloody worm either,’ Raelene said and she walked into the passage.
Trudy and Jim had taken Raelene’s place in Jenny’s life – according to one city psychologist. She may have been right. Raelene loathed Trudy and hadn’t spoken a word to Jim in years. He’d woken up to her lies, had given up on her, long before Jenny.
She was awake now. Glanced at her watch, flour on its face. She wiped it. It was after twelve. Georgie sometimes popped in when she closed the shop. She picked up the rings she always removed when she baked and slid them safe onto her finger before following Raelene.
‘You’ll find no money.’
‘I need a shower,’ Raelene said.
Her hair could stand a wash, a greasy black today. ‘Use the back bathroom then. I’ll bring you in a towel.’
And the wire door squeaked open again and Jenny’s heart lurched in her breast, knowing it was him, knowing she should have locked that door instead of worrying about her rings.
‘Anyone home?’
‘Lila. I’m in the passage. Come through,’ Jenny called, and how long had it been since she’d been relieved to hear the voice of Lila Jones/Roberts/Freeman, pain in the backside to many, friend once to Jenny, back during the factory days in Sydney, long, long ago.
Raelene changed her mind about taking a shower. She turned on Lila. ‘You look like something the cat dragged in, you brainless old bitch.’
True enough. Lila followed every gimmicky teenage fashion fad, which on a woman of forty-odd looked ridiculous.
‘You look like something an alley cat wouldn’t bother to drag in on a wet morning,’ Lila countered, and Raelene left via the front door.
The women, watching her off the property, saw her aim a mule kick at the door of Lila’s battered Holden, more rust than its original cream.
‘I hope you broke your toe,’ Lila yelled. She walked down to the car, not to glance at her new dent but to remove her well-travelled case from the boot. ‘I hope I’m good for a bed for a night or two. I’m stoney motherless broke,’ Lila said.
She was a Raelene deterrent, but difficult to move once she’d settled in. She was a good cook and cleaner, which left Jenny to do what she was good at. She made a classy ballgown for Mrs Browne – with an e – the wife of one of the wealthy farmers, and with her earnings, bought Lila a full tank of petrol. She moved on.
Jim was relieved. Lila flirted mercilessly with him and he didn’t know how to handle it. Jenny returned to her vacuum cleaner and her kitchen.
It was a Friday, two days after Lila left, and Georgie, who had been dodging Lila, was coming to dinner tonight. She loved golden syrup dumplings, and Lila had used all of the self-raising flour.
Trudy was partial to syrup dumplings. ‘I’ll get you some,’ she said.
It was only a hop, step and a jump through the railway yards. ‘Grab my purse. It’s in behind my shoes in the wardrobe. And get me a packet of Bushells tea while you’re there,’ Jenny said.
*
Trudy was on her way home when they came at her from behind the station’s tank stand, Raelene and two of the Duffy girls. They half-circled her, bailed her up against the paling fence.
Trudy was no fighter. She’d never learnt how it was done. Taller than Raelene, armed with a string bag containing a heavy packet of flour, tea and the purse, another may have thought to swing it at the trio to keep them at bay. Trudy clutched it to her.
One Duffy grabbed a handful of her hair. Raelene grabbed the shopping bag, then they pulled Trudy’s T-shirt up, and then off.
A group of twelve-year-old boys, playing cricket out the front of the railway station, stopped their game to stare. Trudy wore no bra beneath her shirt; her eleven-year-old body had barely begun to take on the shape of womanhood. She cowered, covering her tiny exposed breasts with folded arms while the trio balled the T-shirt, pitched it over the paling fence, pitched the flour and tea then ran with Jenny’s purse.
Trudy ran the other way, blindly, ran into Mrs Dobson.
‘Trudy.’
Mrs Dobson picked up the string bag and its contents and turned around to follow the running girl.
Jim’s front door was open. He was on the hall phone, speaking to the constable. He beckoned Mrs Dobson indoors.
‘Tell him I saw who did it, Jim,’ she said.
Trudy, vomiting in the bathroom, had seen who did it. Jenny, kneeling beside her, holding back her long hair, wanted a rifle and a sack full of bullets.
‘Raelene,’ Jim said to the constable. ‘She was with two of the Duffy girls.’
‘That thickset blonde and the one with the twisted face they call Squish,’ Mrs Dobson said. ‘Tell him that he needs to clean out that rats’ nest before a few of us start taking the law into our own hands.’
PERFECT FICTION
Cara lay on her back in bed, watching late-night or early-morning television. Robert appreciated her television’s bulging belly as little as he appreciated his daughter’s. She’d taken both into her bedroom, where they spent most days together. Robert had denied television in Traralgon. When the neighbours had started buying those boxes, he’d considered them a passing fad, like the big old radiograms. The radiograms had fallen by the wayside. Televisions hadn’t.
No cigarettes. Myrtle wouldn’t buy them. At fifteen Cara had been unable to live with her parents’ rules. At eighteen she’d gone off to teachers’ college, and had lived away from home since. Stuck with them now, she’d returned to her old Traralgon habits. Stayed out of their way and didn’t argue unless it was important. The twenty-eighth of March was important. That was all.
They’d questioned her about Morrie, about her marriage. Every time she sat down to a meal, they questioned her. In mid-February, unable to get the answers they’d wanted, Myrtle wrote to Cathy. And received a reply.
Cara read it.
Dear Mrs Norris,
Like you, I’ve been trying to find out what went wrong with Cara and Mor
rie, and Morrie finally told us. It’s all about his grandfather’s will. There’s something in it that says that in the event of his parents’ death, a ghoul of an aunty was to become his guardian and guardian of his estate until Morrie turned thirty or got married – which he hadn’t known until after his mother died, and which Cara didn’t believe when he told her.
Apparently, she accused him of pushing the wedding through before his mother died just to shake off the old ghoul. As far as I can see, it’s a storm in a teacup. He loves her and she loves him, and what else matters . . . ?
Morrie should have been the fiction writer: he’d come up with the perfect story. Cara had met the ghoul. She’d heard her threaten to have Bernard declared incompetent, as had Cathy and Gerry.
Morrie told Gerry that the night he drove Cara home from the wake they had a blazing row . . .
He had driven her home from his mother’s funeral. He’d stayed that night, had sat with her, cried with her. She’d almost agreed to fly with him and Bernard.
Good fiction needed a basis of truth. That evening, at the dinner table, unable to improve on Morrie’s fiction, Cara adopted it and embellished it. Robert nodded; Myrtle tut-tutted. Neither had approved of Cara breaking her engagement with Chris Marino then rushing into marriage with a boy who had taken her for granted for years.
‘I knew at the time that he had some ulterior motive,’ Myrtle said.
Robert nodded, and stopped slamming doors. Instead, he resumed his complaints about his knee.
*
On 28 February, in a Vietnam jungle, nine Australian sons were slaughtered and two dozen more were injured in a war no one could win. A war that chose boys to die via a big birth-date lottery. Protesters marched in Sydney streets, demanding that those boys be brought home.
Good fodder for the television news.
Robert, a soldier in two wars, didn’t approve of the anti-war protesters. Had Cara been capable of marching, she may have been one of the protesters.
Myrtle shopped for her. She’d bought her two baby-doll maternity frocks. They covered the bulge. Cara asked her to buy a humorous card for Georgie’s birthday. She bought flowery, sentimental guff. That was who Myrtle was.
Dear Georgie,
Blame Mum for the card – she’s into hearts and flowers. Ignore it – other than the happy birthday. Have a drink and a smoke for me. I’m not allowed to smoke and drink up here. Will be home in a week or three, when I hope to see you on my turf.
Love, Cara
In Melbourne, Cara had circled 28 March on her calendar, the date given to her by her Geelong doctor. She had no expectation of it being over before 28 March. Her belly at bursting point, her navel threatening to blow its cork. Myrtle demanding she see a doctor, and maybe she should.
‘Here. I’m not going out,’ Cara said.
He came that evening. Cara remembered his name, but not his face.
He checked her blood pressure, which was within an acceptable range. ‘A large baby,’ he said, then, as had the Geelong doctor, asked Cara’s birth weight. Myrtle, itching to get at what was inside that swollen belly, remembered. He asked Cara if she knew her husband’s birth weight. He should have asked Myrtle, Cara thought – Jenny might have mentioned it.
Hey, Mum, did Jenny ever tell you Jimmy’s birth weight? Ought to. But Myrtle would howl, ‘Incest!’, and probably have a heart attack.
‘No,’ Cara said. ‘He’s over six foot. Big hands and feet.’
‘I’ll see you at the surgery next week, Cara,’ he said. ‘Walking is good exercise.’
She dragged her belly there the following week, Myrtle tracking her like a guided missile. She tracked her into Robert’s bank later; a more modern bank than it had been when Cara had been twenty, when she’d signed her life away on Robert’s loan. Her signature was registered there; her bank account had originally been opened there. She handed over her bankbook and a withdrawal form. The teller handed her fifty dollars.
Caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window as they left. ‘I look like a whippet pregnant to a Great Dane with a penchant for Laura Ashley.’
‘What?’ Myrtle said.
‘Nothing.’
Then home to clicking knitting needles – Myrtle’s. ‘The doctor said it could make its entrance any day, Robert.’
Not that day.
*
Queen Elizabeth, the Duke, Charlie and Anne arrived in Australia on 30 March. Cara was watching them on television when Myrtle delivered her lunch. A royalist to her back teeth, Myrtle, who had followed the lives of Elizabeth and her sister, remained to watch the Queen shake hands with dignitaries.
‘Buy yourself a television,’ Cara said. ‘You own the house. You’ve got your own income from the rent.’
‘If not for Robert, I’d have nothing. And there’s nothing worth watching.’
‘You’re watching Lizzie and her kids.’
Myrtle amended her statement, or Robert’s: ‘There’s very little worth watching.’
That night Robert and Myrtle drove Cara to the hospital, where, for twenty-eight hours, she attempted to scream that thing out of her. It wouldn’t come out because it had no head to find its way out. She screamed at the sisters, at Myrtle’s doctor, told them it was abnormal, that it had six legs and it was her fault. Didn’t tell them why it was her fault.
On 1 April, the fools’ day, they wheeled her away from that screaming place and put her to sleep. She woke in a narrow bed between stiff sheets, woke to calm and silence. When her hand could move, it reached to feel for the bulge and found a dressing. Didn’t know if it had no head or two, four legs or eight, was alive or dead. It was out. She was alive. And that’s all she knew.
Slept then, and woke to green screens and Myrtle’s presence and words that didn’t penetrate as far as her conscious mind. Felt Myrtle’s kiss, then slept again and woke to the bustle of a four-bed ward and a sister delivering babies to the other beds.
They brought it to her bed and she found energy enough to turn her face to the wall.
‘You’ve got a beautiful little boy, Mrs Grenville-Langdon.’
‘I asked for a private ward,’ Cara said.
They took it away.
Asked later for a private ward, spoke of her hospital insurance. No private wards available, not for two days; long enough to begin to know the Myrtle Norris who had lied, who had walked around with a cushion tucked beneath her pinny so she might pass Jenny’s Yankee baby off as her own.
The Myrtle Cara had grown up with had won her battles with tears. Not this one.
‘I’m signing it away,’ Cara said.
‘Of course you’re not. As if Daddy and I would consider for one second allowing that beautiful little boy to be raised by strangers. Get some rest, pet. You’re not thinking rationally.’ Kissed her, brushed the hair from her brow, held Cara’s face between her hands and kissed her again. ‘We love you so much and we’re so proud of you.’
‘I’m signing it away, Mummy!’
‘He’s your son and Morrie’s. Whatever happened between you, you’re still married to him, and we need to tell him he has a son.’
‘Go away.’
Another day spent in that torture chamber of mothers with husbands who came on the dot of seven and remained until the sisters told them to leave; where every time she opened her eyes, the sisters were delivering white, pink, blue-wrapped bawling bundles to those other beds.
Then they moved her to a private room, and there was silence, and a door to keep out the world, but not Myrtle.
‘If it will stop you making the greatest mistake of your life, pet, I’ll call Cathy tonight and tell her to let Morrie know that he has a son.’
‘Tell her, and you’ll never see me again, Mummy.’
‘If I’d raised the type of woman who would consider signing my grandson over to strangers, then I wouldn’t want to see her again,’ Myrtle said.
Unwed mothers had been signing their babies away for years, had been signing them
away at the hospitals, but no one would supply her with the papers; and the sisters, who had initially smiled at her, now did what they had to without the smile.
And Myrtle came again. ‘Morrie phoned.’
‘You told him!’
Myrtle shook her head. ‘He’s flying home today. He wanted to speak to you before he left.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That you’re not well. He needs to be told, pet.’
‘Call him back and tell him to take it home with him,’ Cara said.
Myrtle’s eyes, never able to hide what was going on behind them, widened; her lips parted, then closed. She looked down at hands, itching for months to hold her grandson. Plump, youthful hands, iron-strong fingernails, beautifully filed, each one like a perfect almond.
She’s a Rosemary, Cara thought. If that baby had been conceived by Lucifer, born with cloven hooves and horns, Myrtle would have fought to raise it.
No kisses that day. Myrtle turned away, walked away, her sensible rubber-soled shoes whispering out the door and down the polished corridor.
Wouldn’t stay away. Came with laundered nightgowns, very pretty, flowery, lacey nightgowns, conveniently buttoned down the front of the bodice. The milk had come; Cara couldn’t will it gone. It trickled, oozed, stained her gowns, and smelt of . . . smelt of a place where she didn’t want to go. She snatched a pink rosebud-sprigged gown as Myrtle placed it into the bedside drawer. They spoke of nightgowns that day. Myrtle made no mention of Morrie. She had no intention of allowing her grandson to be raised by his deceitful, stranger father on the far side of the ocean.
On the sixth day, she came into the private room, a blue-wrapped bundle in her arms, a flustered sister behind her. Given leave to hold her grandson in the nursery, she’d absconded with him, certain that one glimpse of his newborn perfection would be enough to swing the scales in her favour.
‘Hold him, pet, and you’ll never want to let him go,’ Myrtle pleaded.
No longer a prisoner of her bed, Cara escaped, Myrtle, relieved of her bundle by the sister, followed Cara.
‘What sort of woman have I raised?’
‘One you were too old to raise,’ Cara replied.