by Joy Dettman
Disbelief at her own stupidity was behind the swing of a backhand that sent Raelene stumbling into the rear of the lone easy chair. ‘You lying bitch!’
She hit her again while she was off balance, and this time Raelene went down hard on her backside.
‘You’ve gone crazy,’ she yelled. ‘He’s my fiancé.’
At that moment, Cara was very sane. She snatched up her umbrella, leaned last night beside her front door. It had a sharp metal point on its end and she’d use it. She’d shove it through that foxy little bitch’s eye if she had to.
And he was still out there. The door strained on its hinges.
A swordsman in blue pyjamas, Cara danced away from it to the phone, umbrella at the ready before her. Never before had she dialled those zeros. She dialled them now.
‘Let me out and I’ll go with him!’ Raelene said.
‘Stay where you are, or I’ll kill you before the police get here.’
‘He came around to pick me up, that’s all.’
‘You set me up, and he drove you here to set me up.’
Someone was on the line. ‘Police,’ Cara said. ‘James Collins is attempting to break into my unit.’
A shoulder put to her door, it shuddered on its hinges.
‘She’s on the phone to the cops,’ Raelene yelled. ‘Go.’
One final thump of HATE on wood, then, ‘You’ll keep, moll.’
Same voice. Same words.
A second voice was on the line.
‘James Collins,’ she said. ‘Also known as Dino Collins. He was convicted of rape in the mid-sixties and he’s trying to break into my flat.’
He’d stopped trying. She could hear voices on the landing. Other tenants would have heard that thump. Others would be dialling triple zero.
Raelene backed off to sit on the fold-up bed, and that dear old loyal ex-Amberley bed folded, bucking her off. She picked herself up, and stood while Cara gave the voice her address and told him that the intruder appeared to have lost interest in her door. Hard to juggle an umbrella and a telephone. Impossible to untangle a phone cord trapped behind a pile of books. She pulled on it, scattering library books as she dragged the cord around to the kitchenette side of the bench, where, stretched to its limit, she could speak while looking out to the street.
‘There’s a car parked out front. Two shapes are in it.’
‘You recognised the intruder?’
‘I saw his hand while he was reaching in to undo my safety chain. He’s got a tattoo on his left hand – HATE. And I know his voice.’
Knew the lean shape of him too, his slouching walk, as he came into view around the corner.
‘He’s downstairs. One of the people in the car has long hair. It’s probably a Holden or a Ford. Modern.’
Raelene was stripping off Cara’s pyjamas, fighting her way into her own cotton frock, probably expecting Cara to mention her name to the voice on the phone. The cardigan, still wet, she balled and flung at the bench, then pulled on the borrowed sweater.
‘He’s in the car and they’re heading towards Toorak Road,’ Cara said. ‘It’s blue, a powder blue.’
The voice told her there were patrol cars in the area, that one would be by shortly.
She didn’t want him to go and leave her alone with that feral bitch she hadn’t mentioned.
Why hadn’t she mentioned her?
Because I let her in, and in some convoluted way I’m connected to her – and I want no record of that connection.
‘Out!’ she said when the phone was down.
‘You said they’d gone,’ Raelene snapped.
‘The police will be here in five minutes. Leave under your own steam or with them. It’s immaterial to me.’
‘I would have been gone now if you hadn’t gone crazy.’
‘You’re a liar. You set me up for him.’
‘You’re the liar. You told him Jenny was your mother.’
She’d told Rosie, her best friend at fourteen, fifteen. She’d told Rosie everything.
You have trust issues, Cara.
She hadn’t until Rosie.
Every light in the flat turned on; a front flat, easy to identify when the police came. Cara stood at the window, watching for them, watching Raelene.
A police car cruised by. She watched it cruise back, then park on the far side of the road. Waited, expecting its occupants to come to her door. And what would she tell them if they did? The bed was proof that she’d invited Raelene in.
Watched until the car moved on; and when it did, Cara felt something akin to relief.
The umbrella placed on her bench, she boiled the jug, made coffee for one, then drank it while watching out the window. Twice more the patrol car cruised by, then the street out front stilled and Melbourne slept.
As did Raelene.
At three thirty, Cara moved her easy chair so its back was against her front door. She moved the television a metre to the left, then turned it on. Sat watching a moronic show she’d watched a few times back when Robin had been a headless bulge with eight legs. Watched some minor celebrity attempting to sell himself and his band. Watched the early-morning news with an early-morning coffee.
Rain was pelting down at seven thirty when Cara threw her guest’s sandals at her head and told her to get out.
‘I’m not going out in that,’ Raelene said.
Cara dialled the first zero before her guest moved from the fold-up bed. She dialled two zeros to get Raelene out the door.
‘You’ll keep, you stuck-up schoolmarm bitch,’ Raelene said.
The last view Cara had of her was her struggling to get into the lightweight plastic coat Cara had thrown at her head when she’d been halfway down the stairs.
SCATTERED PAGES
A night of minimal sleep and maximum stress, followed by five hours in a classroom full of sniffling, sneezing kids and a staffroom full of coughing teachers, and Cara’s throat was raw, her head aching. No little red car waiting to carry her home, she rode a crowded tram to her local shopping strip with more of the sneezing, sniffling horde. Bought aspros and tomato juice from a woman with a hacking cough, bought vodka from a germ-laden licensed grocer, then walked the last block home, bribing her aches and pains with the promise of a long hot shower, a bloody mary, three aspros and a full night’s sleep.
Climbed the stairs, key in one hand, shopping bag in the other, and before gaining the top step knew her key wouldn’t be necessary tonight. They hadn’t even bothered to close her door.
Man is a creature of habit. He becomes accustomed to fitting that key into its familiar lock, accustomed to seeing that blank-faced television in the corner when he opens his door. She stood in the doorway, searching for the television she’d moved from its corner last night, a heavy television, purchased a few months after Robin’s birth. Gone.
Didn’t notice that her whiz-bang, near brand new electronic typewriter she’d paid a fortune to own was gone, not immediately. Only a clutter-free space marking its place on her desk. That space moved her from the doorway. She ran by the fold-up bed to her bedroom.
No longer her bedroom. Wardrobe doors hung open, dressing table bare of drawers, clothing strewn everywhere.
Along with typewritten pages.
She snatched up a handful and held them to her breast. Snatched more from her bed. Quilt gone. Four fat pillows gone. Pages everywhere. She was standing on pages. Lifted a foot to pick up another.
‘Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.’
A litany of thank Gods followed as she took the pages she’d collected out to the kitchen bench and placed them down with her keys, with her handbag and shopping, before returning to the bedroom to collect more pages, one by one, two by two, a clump of five. Chapter Nine . . . Chapter Twenty-three. Stacked them with the others on the bench, then found a larger clump that had slid beneath her bed. The End.
‘Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.’
A confusion of unnumbered pages. But most of them were here �
�� maybe all of them.
Carried the last handful with her to the bathroom. Face creams, makeup, shampoo gone. Mirror wearing a large Moll and a lipsticked X – a kiss from the thieves.
‘You gullible fool,’ she moaned. ‘You mindless, gullible fool.’
But how would not inviting Raelene in last night have saved her from this? Nothing would have saved her from this.
Stood, phone in hand, looking down at that jumble of pages, most of them still unnumbered. How could she begin to sort them? There had to be four hundred pages of Angel. And she shouldn’t have touched one of them. Shouldn’t have touched anything. Her finger poised to dial, she dropped the phone and stepped back.
Who slept in that bed last night, Miss Norris?
Raelene King.
And what is your connection to Raelene King?
She was Cara Norris, daughter of Myrtle and Robert Norris, schoolteacher. Cara Norris had no connection to gutter-crawling ferals.
Get rid of that bed and it’d be just another robbery. She’d reported an intruder last night. He’d threatened her.
You’ll keep, moll.
She stripped the bed, folded it and carried it back to its space beside her wardrobe – and found another page, unnumbered. And noticed her cases were missing. Of course they were missing. Robbers required something in which to carry their haul away. Couldn’t see her new black overcoat. Not Raelene’s size? The expensive blue frock she’d bought for her wedding was gone too. She’d told herself that she’d owned nothing of value. Everything she’d owned had value.
Why hadn’t someone seen them? It had taken two men to carry the television up those stairs. Why hadn’t someone seen it carried down?
Because all of the someones in this building worked to pay their rent. Because all of them left their homes and possessions at the mercy of parasites who didn’t work, who lived off what they could steal from those who did. The Arabs knew what to do with thieves: cut off their thieving hands. You can’t carry away another person’s possessions with one hand.
Soiled sheets stuffed into her laundry hamper, she glanced around for more evidence of her visitor. When she found none, she made the phone call.
Twenty minutes until they came, two men in blue, looking too young for the job. Enough time to swallow two aspros, wash them down with vodka from the bottle. Flu germs or not, it felt cleaner than anything else in her flat.
She showed the men her bedroom, told them about the missing television, her brand-new typewriter, told them about her call to triple zero last night and her previous involvement with Dino Collins. Told them how she and two college friends had been instrumental in having Collins arrested for the rape of a minor, had given evidence at his trial.
‘He served five years for raping Michelle Hunter – in Traralgon. He was sentenced in 1965. He threatened me back then, and threatened me again last night. He’s been threatening me since I turned fifteen.’
She didn’t mention Raelene’s name. Wanted her caught and locked away, but if they got him, they’d get her. Her fingerprints would be all over this place, and on record too. According to Georgie, Raelene had been in strife with the police since her thirteenth birthday.
The receipts, the guarantees, for her television and typewriter were in her central desk drawer. She found them, offered them. She described in detail her blue frock, her near-new black overcoat.
‘Do you have contents insurance, Miss Norris?’
Shook her head. Yesterday she’d owned nothing of value to insure. Hadn’t known a three-year-old electric jug had value, not until she looked for it to scald a mug and make a coffee. She needed a coffee. No jug. Hadn’t known a Kmart feather quilt had value, or pillows – pillows encased in ex-Amberley slips, each one marked with Amberley’s name for the laundry service.
Told the police about those laundry marks, but they weren’t overly interested in tracking down Kmart pillows and quilts.
They told her of the difficulty in tracing any household items. They told her that the lock on her door wouldn’t keep a determined ten year old out.
She asked about better locks, the best locks. Maybe all robbery victims decided to have decent locks fitted when they had no more to lose.
Strange how the mind worked. How, when the police left, she stood turning in circles, afraid to touch her own kitchen bench. Everything felt unclean. She stared at the chaos of the bedroom, moved clothing with a shoe, kicked aside a suit jacket she’d loved yesterday. Strange, too, how she’d thought she’d caught the flu, but the shock of being robbed seemed to have knocked the virus for six.
Always look on the bright side of life.
She walked the small area, attempting to find somewhere to start, knowing that there was only one start to make and here wasn’t the place to do it.
She rang the hotel she’d stayed at with Myrtle and Robert during her years at college, then rang a taxi to deliver her there, her only luggage a shopping bag, aspros, a can of tomato juice, an opened bottle of vodka and her confusion of pages.
Given the key to a pristinely clean, slightly perfumed room, she mixed her promised bloody mary, drank it, lit a cigarette and began her sorting.
The pages she’d numbered were easy; the numbered chapters helped. She made separate piles of chapters, the wide bed her workbench. Standing was too hard on her back, so she worked on knees protected by a pillow. Knowing the story as well as she did made the sorting easier than she’d expected. Worked for hours, all the while telling herself it could have been so much worse. Had they known of the manuscript’s importance to her, they would have shredded it, pitched it out the window for the rain to turn to mush.
She worked until exhaustion, or vodka, made her want her workbench bed. Looked at her watch then. Ten minutes past midnight. Half an hour past midnight before she’d moved the last batch of piled pages to the floor. She should have slept, but the bed felt strange, and her mind refused to lay down its load.
What if the safety chain hadn’t been on last night? What if the knob hadn’t been missing? What if he’d got inside, if she hadn’t woken? He would have raped her in her bed while Raelene held her down. Or murdered her, left her dead in that bed until someone missed her.
Who’d miss her? Myrtle on Sunday. The school on Monday. Chris. He would have called from Sydney tonight. Called every other night at ten thirty. He’d think she was out on the town with Marion. He’d met Marion once and didn’t approve of her or her lifestyle.
Why didn’t I think to call him?
She had his Sydney numbers. She hadn’t thought about him until now.
For an hour more, she tossed and turned, and when sleep finally claimed her, she woke in fright from crazy dreams. No dreams of Morrie that night. Dreamed of being buried alive, the grave filled not with soil but with potatoes, each one wrapped in a page of her manuscript. She unwrapped them, attempting to make sense of the words on dirt-soiled pages. Dreamed she was riding a motorbike across a bridge, but the bridge broke away and there was no more road on the other side–
Barely daylight when she woke, panting for air.
Dressed and slid her arms into her overcoat, still damp around the shoulders. It hadn’t been dry for a fortnight. Thought about the new black coat she’d paid too much for. At first sight, she’d loved it. She’d seen it at Myer’s and couldn’t afford it, so put it on lay-by and paid it off for a month – then considered it too expensive to wear to school on a rainy day. Had left it at home, hanging safe in her wardrobe, for that gutter-crawling feral to steal.
She’d worn it to Sydney.
‘You’re too young to wear black,’ Myrtle had said.
‘Perfection,’ Chris had said.
He recognised class when he saw it. Thought she was classy enough to be his wife. He didn’t know much more than her surface, and never would.
If he’d been in town, would she have thought to call him? If she had, he would have arrived like a knight in his shiny silver Merc to carry her away to his flat. Wouldn
’t have appreciated her pages spread all over his white carpeted floors – or his kitchen bench.
*
At seven thirty, she placed the pages back into the shopping bag – in better order than when she’d taken them out – then they, her aspros and a little over half of the vodka rode a tram home.
Didn’t want to unlock that door. Had to. Entering the dogbox was like entering a lion’s den. She was still at the door, looking in, when a youthful male swooped out from Number Seven and saw her there.
‘I was robbed,’ she explained and took that step inside.
‘Did they get much?’
‘Pretty much everything of value.’
‘Last night?’
‘While I was at work yesterday.’
‘She was robbed,’ he said as two more workers joined him at her door.
How did three live in a single-bedroom unit? She’d seen their faces before, nodded when they’d passed on the stairs. She’d spoken to one of the girls in the communal laundry.
‘I tried to get the agent to fit a decent lock when I moved in,’ the woman from Number Nine said, joining the group. She might have been forty. ‘I ended up paying for my own.’
‘What did they get?’ a young girl with glasses asked Cara.
‘My television, my new typewriter, bedding. I’m not game to find out what else.’
Workers are slaves to the watches on their wrists. One by one her neighbours clattered off downstairs and into the rain. Cara closed her door and slid the safety chain into its slot. Funny how you got to know your neighbours only after you’d decided to leave the neighbourhood, Cara thought. Knew that morning that she was going home, the decision she’d been unable to make for herself made for her by Collins and Raelene. Knew too that she had to wipe Woody Creek and all who lived there from her mind. Only trouble had ever come from that town.
She glanced at her watch. Still too early to phone the school. No flu to blame. Being robbed would need to be excuse enough.
She emptied her refrigerator, poured leftover milk down the sink, tossed butter, cheese, fruit into her kitchen tidy – anything that fox-faced bitch might have breathed on. Emptied her cupboards onto the bench; checked the seal on a new jar of coffee, then tossed the opened jar into the bin. Tins were clean. Placed unopened tins side by side, unopened packets; tossed the rest. Washed her refrigerator and turned it to defrost, then washed her cupboards inside and out until it was time to make her excuses to the school.