Ripples on a Pond

by Joy Dettman

  Georgie laughed at the old MG, so Cara took her for a spin around the block; didn’t admit that she wasn’t its owner. Didn’t mention Morrie’s name, but Georgie’s memory was too good.

  ‘Didn’t that Morrie bloke you used to write about own an MG?’ she said.

  ‘I’m babysitting it for him.’

  ‘Is he still in the picture?’

  ‘No,’ Cara said.

  ‘Do you ever think about being single thirty years from now? You’ve got property, money, but no one to leave it to when you die.’

  ‘I’ll have no property or money to worry about, Georgie.’

  ‘What about kids? Do you ever wonder what sort of a mother you might have made?’

  Cara, unable to look Georgie in the eye, looked at her watch. ‘The traffic is going to be bumper to bumper into the city. I should go.’

  ‘Let it settle down for an hour or two. I’ll shout you dinner somewhere. I’ve got money coming out of my ears and no one to spend it on,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Except your toy boy,’ Cara said and they laughed again, locked Morrie’s car and went off to find a place to eat.

  *

  The following morning, Cara had her class seated, writing out what they knew about the platypus, when the office woman knocked on her glass door.

  ‘Phone call, Miss Norris.’

  Cathy used to phone her at school. Knew it wouldn’t be Cathy. Unforgiving, selfish, secretive bitch. There’s something drastically wrong with your head, and there always has been.

  Something had happened to Robin. Or Georgie’d had an accident on her way home.

  Her class left unsupervised, she took the call from a woman who identified herself as Linda Watson. ‘I’m calling for Raelene King,’ the woman said.

  ‘Raelene King? I have no interest in discussing Raelene King.’

  ‘If we have any hope of rehabilitating these women, Miss Norris, they require the support of family–’

  Cara interrupted the social-worker spiel. ‘I have no idea where you found my name and number. I have no family connection to the girl.’

  ‘Your name is listed as a stepsister.’

  ‘Then I would strongly urge you to remove it.’

  ‘I was led to believe–’

  ‘I suggest you believe five per cent of what Raelene King tells you, and question four point nine-nine per cent of that five. Might I ask where I’m listed as her stepsister?’

  Linda Watson explained her position, that of a social worker attached to a women’s prison. While Cara listened, she started multiplying and subtracting. Raelene would have been released months ago. They must have locked her up again. Being listed as kin to the incarcerated made her feel unclean. Made her think of Georgie too. She hadn’t mentioned Raelene yesterday. Shouldn’t have gone to Bendigo. Woody Creek was an infection. She’d kissed Georgie goodbye and caught the pox of Raelene.

  Linda Watson was asking why Raelene had listed her name.

  ‘I’m distantly related to her stepmother. To explain my lack of interest in her welfare, two years ago I had the distinct pleasure of having my flat cleaned out by Raelene and James Collins, her then fiancé – and I have to go. My class is unsupervised.’

  ‘She expressed a desire to speak to you.’

  ‘Please tell her I don’t share her desire. Good morning.’

  ‘I’ll only keep you a moment more, Miss Norris. She has lost contact with her natural mother and siblings. Would you have–’

  ‘I’ve met the girl twice in my life – and lived to regret the second meeting. I have never met her natural mother, nor do I know where she might be located. Her stepmother, Jennifer Hooper, may be able to help you. She lives in Woody Creek.’

  The buses had arrived. Two weeks ago Cara had put her hand up to escort the grade threes to the Healesville Sanctuary and Raelene King wouldn’t take the shine off her day. Like her class, Cara had never seen a living, swimming platypus, nor a koala that wasn’t thirty feet up a tree.

  She was watching a huge eagle flying from one end of his wire-netting enclosure to the other when her mind turned to Rusty. Her main character’s mother had been sentenced to life in a cage. Cara had read what she could about prisons, had watched what she could on TV. That eagle could tell her what went on in the mind of the caged – as could Raelene.

  *

  Santa came to Amberley that year, left too many presents beneath the Christmas tree, and even drank the milk and ate the cake Robin and Cara had left out for his supper. It was a different Christmas, a fun Christmas, when shared with a little boy. May have been even better if Miss Robertson hadn’t joined them for Christmas dinner, but since Mrs Collins’s death, Myrtle had inherited the retired teacher.

  Cara spent five of the six weeks of the summer holidays in Sydney. When she called the taxi to leave, Robin told her he wanted to go on the airplane too. And why couldn’t he?

  ‘Mummy has to go to work, and she hasn’t got a proper house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she hasn’t got any money.’

  ‘Papa has got some.’

  ‘Papa needs his money.’

  ‘I want you to stay here.’

  She would if Miss Robertson would move out. Cara had tried sharing Unit Two with her, but could no more stand life in Unit Two than she could in Unit One.

  Left Robin crying and flew home.

  Cara had never planned to renew her lease when that first six months had been up, and she hadn’t. She’d told the agent she’d sign a new lease when her shower stopped dripping. They’d been locked into a cold war since. And with no lease, why bother unpacking, why bother dusting venetian blinds and cleaning the oven, which hadn’t been clean when she’d moved in? Myrtle would have been disgusted. No chance of her seeing it. Robin or Robert’s age kept them close to home.

  There were six units in the block, three up and three down, two girls shared Number 6, a rear flat; a fifty-odd-year-old single woman was in the middle flat, her balcony a few metres from Cara’s, the older woman’s furnished with a tiny outdoor table, two chairs and pot plants. Cara’s was bare.

  She saw little of the downstairs tenants. One of them owned a Maroon Toyota, one had a school-aged boy, and that’s about all she knew of them.

  She’d bought a television; at times she considered lounge suites, but any spare money she came by was better spent on getting rid of Robert’s bank loan. He was tutoring two nights a week, but sooner or later they’d consider him too old – and he was – and her name would still be on that bloody bank loan.

  It annoyed her that Miss Robertson paid a pittance for Unit Two. Yes, she was old. Yes, she was a pensioner – and she’d probably outlive Robert. According to Myrtle, she’d arrived in Australia in the early thirties, then a few months after stepping off the boat she’d moved to Amberley. She was their first lodger, and at the time had appeared to be in her forties. She’d taught Latin and maths at a girls’ school when Cara had been a kid. Always Miss Robertson – as Cara was destined to remain Miss Norris.

  RESEARCH

  Miss Norris returned to her classroom. Same old school, just different faces, different names to learn. Two new faces in the staffroom, younger faces – they made her feel old. She’d turn thirty this year.

  She’d been back at work a week when the office woman knocked on her door. ‘Phone call, Miss Norris.’

  If it was that Linda Watson woman again, Cara was in the right mood to tell her where to go. She recognised the voice – or smelled that feral bitch on the line . . .

  ‘Don’t hang up,’ Raelene said.

  Cara hung up and returned to her classroom, where two minutes later the office woman knocked again on the door. Same stink on the line. Same voice.

  ‘I want to see you, Cara, to apologise to your face.’

  The phone about to hit its cradle and . . . she saw the caged eagle and thought, Rusty.

  Stood there, the contaminated phone held well away from her ear, the voice smaller bu
t still recognisable.

  ‘I was out of my head with drugs. I’m clean now, and I need to talk to you.’

  You need that prison scene in this chapter, Morrie had said.

  In England she’d spent weeks attempting to write the scene where Rusty and her mother meet for the first time. Had never been able to find the mother. Couldn’t visualise her or her prison.

  Bloody fool. Hang up, her inner voice demanded.

  ‘I’m begging you, Cara. Just for five minutes.’

  Cara hung up, but couldn’t shake Raelene from her mind. The mother had murdered her rich in-laws. She was important to the story, but barely sketched in. Cara had mentioned Rusty’s visit to her in prison, she’d got into Rusty’s mind when the gate had closed behind her, but that was all.

  Went to bed that night with the murderer on her mind and dreamed of shadowy places, long corridors, dark figures. Maybe it was Leticia’s house with prison bars. Georgie was there, or Rusty. A crazy night, filled with crazy dreams.

  When she woke from one and saw daylight, she rose to search her desk drawers for the carbon copy of Rusty she’d carried home from England in her zip bag. Found it buried beneath its mates in the bottom drawer of her desk, its pages rubber-banded.

  She stood turning the pages, searching for the scene where Rusty drove to the prison to meet the woman who had deserted her as a two year old.

  ‘The reader’s been waiting for the meeting between Rusty and her mother for fifty pages,’ Morrie had said when they’d read the manuscript together in England. ‘Give it to them.’

  He’d asked for a love scene too. Cara had known how to do that, she’d written a beauty. Couldn’t make herself, or him, believe the prison scene.

  Why not use Raelene?

  Don’t be a fool.

  Doing anything better this weekend?

  Cleaning her oven would be more productive, or finding a plumber to fix that drip, which had recently become a splat.

  What harm could she do? She was locked up.

  Plenty.

  She found the bedroom scene Morrie had demanded; had written it in an afternoon at his kitchen table. Could see him now, standing silhouetted against the small-paned windows, reading it. Could hear him too: ‘That’s what they’ve been waiting for, clever lady.’

  And his kiss.

  Couldn’t keep their hands off each other . . .

  Stop.

  Didn’t want to stop. Ached for him.

  That’s what she ought to be doing this weekend: going out with Marion and finding a man – Marion’s cure for most of life’s problems.

  Only wanted one man. That was the problem.

  Georgie lived man free. Her grandmother had lived man free.

  Cara stood and packed Rusty away, along with Angel and Balancing Act, had a shower then washed her hair, determined to wash Raelene out of her head.

  *

  It worked until Saturday, until she bought a spray can of oven cleaner, which, according to the television commercials, would cut through baked-on grease and grime and make her oven sparkling clean. The girl on the checkout could have been a younger version of Raelene – without the feral stink.

  Prisons were on her mind while she emptied the can’s foaming contents into her oven – then had to run from the fumes to her balcony, where she read the label. It demanded good ventilation and rubber gloves. Myrtle owned spares for her spare rubber gloves. She looked after her hands and perfect fingernails. On principle, Cara had never been guilty of buying rubber gloves.

  Held her breath while locking the balcony door, while grabbing her handbag and keys. Out on the landing, she could still smell that tainted air and it followed her downstairs – or maybe some of the foam had lodged in her nostrils and was making them sparkling clean. The television commercial hadn’t mentioned choking fumes. Had the attractive model worn rubber gloves?

  *

  Her oven was clean, though not sparkling, and the unit still smelled of cleaner. At one o’clock on Sunday, she closed the door on the smell. Two phone calls had told her all she’d needed to know. A five-minute visit wouldn’t kill her.

  It embarrassed her. They checked her purse. Only a few dollars and her car keys in it – no drugs, file or hacksaw blade. In her best schoolmarm voice, she told them she’d been contacted by a Miss Linda Watson, a social worker attached to the prison; that Raelene King had expressed a desire to speak to her. As if they cared why she was there.

  Walked where she was directed to walk, followed where she was led, mentally recording her every step, and learned a lot without needing to set eyes on Raelene. Learned that prison visitors lost their identity, that they automatically became one of the lower order in the eyes of the . . . what did the inmates call them? . . . the screws. Knew the instant she set foot inside that place that her typewriter would be rattling that night, writing the scent of caged women, their eyes, the odour of anger. The so-clean polished floors, and the brisk cold sound of shoes on them; the sound of heavy doors closing.

  Wanted to turn around once she’d seen enough, then saw Raelene seated at a table: older, harder, heavy breasts sagging, foxy face more rounded.

  ‘They’re obviously feeding you well,’ Cara greeted her.

  ‘Rub it in why don’t you.’

  ‘You called. I came.’

  ‘You’re supposed to sit down.’

  ‘I believe I prefer to take your apology standing.’

  In and out, that’s what she’d told herself when she’d walked through those gates. Take what you need then run.

  The screw was signalling her to sit. She was in the system. She sat.

  ‘I can see by your face that anything I say would be a waste of time.’

  ‘Change my face. Convince me, Raelene.’

  ‘I was on drugs. He got me onto them when I was a kid. It wasn’t me that robbed you. He got three years for it.’

  ‘And.’

  ‘I’m sorry I let him know where you lived.’

  ‘Not convinced yet. Perhaps you could try harder.’

  ‘What did you bother coming out here for?’

  ‘It’s a very pleasant day outside.’

  ‘What did the Watson dame tell you?’

  ‘That you wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘She’s running the program they’ve got me on. I’ve got a kid,’ Raelene said.

  ‘And where might he/she be while you are . . . otherwise engaged?’

  ‘That’s the program. They bring them in and we line up like goats to be milked.’

  Georgie hadn’t mentioned Raelene or a baby. It explained Linda Watson’s need to locate Florence Keating.

  ‘Is your mother aware of your current predicament?’

  ‘That fat bitch hates my guts. All she wants to hear about me is that I died.’

  She’d found Rusty’s mother, as tough as boot leather. That fat bitch hates my guts. She could write that prison scene now, rewrite all of the mother’s chapters and find her right name. She was no Doris. Leave her a fading redhead, but otherwise Raelene. She’d need to retype it anyway.

  She stood, ready to leave; was looking around to find someone to show her the way out.

  ‘I know that Jenny’s your mother,’ Raelene said.

  Cara had never seen a smiling snake; had never seen a snake up close enough to look it in the eye. Raelene’s eyes were snake eyes, watching to see if the venom had hit her victim’s bloodstream, flexing her snake jaws to swallow her prey.

  ‘I suggest you do a little research before beginning a blackmailing career. And jail may not be the optimum place to begin it.’

  ‘I’m just letting you know what we know, that’s all. You told Dino.’

  She’d told Rosie Thomas.

  ‘Contrary to common belief, the repetition of a lie doesn’t make it the new truth.’

  ‘I only said it because that time when I first saw you in Woody Creek you looked and sounded so posh. I wished I’d had a bit of what you had. I want my kid to have that
sort of life.’

  ‘Two parents is an excellent place to start. Are you in touch with the child’s father?’

  ‘I don’t get their names and addresses,’ Raelene said. ‘They want you to sit down.’

  Cara looked at the approaching female in uniform. She sat down.

  ‘What did you do this time?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Consider me your confessor.’

  ‘I consider you a stuck-up bitch with a silver spoon shoved up your arse.’

  ‘Your social worker gave me her phone number–’

  ‘I knocked an old dame over for her handbag.’

  ‘Jenny?’

  Raelene laughed. ‘Wouldn’t she love to hear you calling her an old dame.’

  Cara wished she’d brought a notebook and pencil. Raelene scattered gems with her every word and action.

  She shrugged. ‘I was seven months gone with the kid and the old battleaxe started belting into me with her walking stick. If she hadn’t broken her hip I wouldn’t be in here.’

  ‘Careless of her,’ Cara said.

  ‘Shit happens,’ Raelene said.

  Shit happens filed away in her fiction cache, Cara leaned her elbow on the table, chin resting on her palm, studying a thing in a zoo. She’d felt pity for the platypus locked in at the sanctuary, and the eagle who’d had no sky to fly, but felt no pity for the odd being seated opposite.

  There was a clock near the door Cara had entered by. Raelene glanced at it from time to time, until the hands pointed to two thirty.

  ‘Milking time,’ she said, and rose.

  Cara felt a glimmer of pity for the kid who sucked Raelene’s poison, and perhaps a whisper of annoyance that her research trip was about to be terminated.

  ‘They’d let you look at her if I told them you were going to take her,’ Raelene said.

  ‘Take her?’

  ‘They get sent to the family or put into a foster home when they’re six months.’ Those snake eyes were looking at her again. ‘The Watson dame thinks you’re thinking about it.’