Ripples on a Pond

by Joy Dettman

  He had a million scattered memories of Jenny. One of the strongest was of her singing on a stage in a Snow White costume.

  He yawned again. He’d driven this way on his wedding night; had driven through Bendigo then west until he’d sighted a signpost: Willama 30 K. It had turned him back. He hadn’t known why he’d known Willama until he’d looked at a road map. Willama was the town where all of the doctors had lived. He’d learnt since that Willama was the place of his birth. It was written on his original birth certificate.

  Landscape whizzing by, his mind sifting the past, finding threads of memory and attempting to trace them, he drove through Bendigo on automatic pilot, unaware of where he was until he failed to give way to a car on his right and the redheaded driver blasted her horn and continued to blast it for two blocks. It could have been Georgie, grown old, grown plump. Same hair.

  He remembered her hair. Remembered Margot’s white hair, Jenny’s tickly gold hair. He felt for the window winder and wound it low, hoping a shot of cold air might encourage his weary mind and eyes to concentrate on the road.

  He liked driving. Liked Australia’s near empty roads. He thought of the miles he’d done in his MG. He’d meant to speak to Roland about shipping the car, though he didn’t need any more bills right now – and maybe he’d outgrown the MG. Wondered if Cara’s new man drove it.

  Sell it, he thought. It had to be worth something.

  When he’d parked it that morning in Cara’s bay, it had been for a purpose: his reason to keep in touch with her; his reason to come back. That had been his plan: to get Bernard settled in with Letty, then to return. Bernard hadn’t settled. Letty had grown old.

  That male voice had jolted something hard at his core; and the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he’d heard it before. He’d spoken to Chris Marino at Cathy’s wedding. Knew he’d been in Cara’s life and in her bed back in ’69, and again before she’d flown to England. As far as he knew, as far as Cathy knew, there had been no other man in her life.

  His mind far away, he almost missed the Willama signpost. He braked and pulled off to the side, allowing a loaded transport to go by. The sedan behind it turned right, towards Willama. The road clear, Morrie made a U-turn and followed the sedan, towards the town of his birth.

  The last time he’d been in Australia, Lorna had delighted in relaying the tale of the trollop who had given him life. His father, a fool of a youth, had become entangled with the sister of his intended, then ran off to war to escape her. She’d relayed in detail how the little trollop had pursued his father to Sydney, where she had no doubt earned her money on her back.

  He’d lived at Amberley with Jenny, had always remembered a pretty window, a wide staircase. The first time Cara had mentioned the name of her Sydney home, he’d known it. The first time she’d mentioned her placement at Armadale Primary School, he’d felt that same jar of memory, but back then he’d been in the denial business, killing any memory threatening to expose little Jimmy Morrison.

  Leticia’s death had exposed him.

  He drove by farms, by country roads, by aged signposts: Cotter’s Road; Molliston Road. Drove by a motel flashing a vacancy sign. He’d get a room there, but not yet. He’d flown often enough to know his body clock adjusted more quickly if he stayed away from beds until after sundown.

  Drove by industrial land, then past block after block of new houses with the occasional big old house looking down on its brash little neighbours. Another motel. Two motels: Vacancy; Vacancy. A sign directed him to the town centre. He followed it to wide streets, cars parked on either side, and a hotel on each corner – not so grand as Bendigo’s hotels, but substantial. He’d get a bed in one, drink a long dinner at the bar.

  Late-afternoon traffic pushed him north towards a river. He followed the curving road to where it met a T-intersection. Had the choice of turning right towards a bridge, or left. Not yet ready to leave the town, he turned left and drove on through an older, more sparsely populated section, and was faced with another T-intersection. Left or right?

  And he saw it. A sign shimmering in the late afternoon’s weak sun. Woody Creek 52 K. And in his mind, little Jimmy chanted, Woody Creek stinks, Woody Creek stinks.

  Two cars behind him, no time to decide. He turned left, towards Woody Creek.

  ‘Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son,’ he whispered – an old schoolyard riddle he and his mates had argued long about.

  He had a son. He had a father. He had sisters, and a mother who had sold him for two thousand pounds. Maybe it was time to go back and confront her.

  Maybe he’d run out of petrol before he got there. The fuel gauge was brushing empty.

  Leave it to fate.

  The road fed its traffic out to farmland, to large naked paddocks waiting to produce the next crop, to miles of fences bordering the road. Few houses, old houses, surrounded by trees, and the new, with barely a tree. Followed the road to a bridge, a long bridge of modern steel and cement. On the far side, he saw a group of dark-skinned, barefoot kids playing football.

  Mind whispering its secrets again. He’d once known a dark-skinned woman. She’d lived in Granny’s paddock and had kids who’d kicked a football with bare feet. ‘Alice, Annie.’ A short name. ‘Iris, Amy.’ None was right. It annoyed him that he couldn’t raise the right name from the depths of little Jimmy’s recall.

  The fuel gauge was showing empty when the town started slinking out of a flat landscape, one farmhouse, then another, then a group of new houses. His eyes scanned beyond the houses for a petrol pump, and he sighted a service station on his left.

  A young chap filled his tank, washed his windscreen. ‘Nice-looking car,’ he said.

  ‘A hire car,’ Morrie said.

  ‘How does she handle?’

  ‘It’s comfortable. Doesn’t appear to be too heavy on fuel.’

  ‘You’re not from around here, eh?’

  ‘I flew in from London this morning.’

  ‘You sound like it. Got family up this way, have you?’

  ‘Land,’ Morrie said.

  He paid his money, strange money, then drove on, following the road’s curve into the town. Not a lot of the town. Blunt’s Drapery on his left – and he knew it, knew that old veranda, knew Jenny had bought him new socks from boxes in Blunt’s Drapery. Suddenly he knew where she’d bought sausages, and where that railway line led; knew that his red trike had travelled home one day on the train – from Ray’s house – and the station was too far from Granny’s house for him to ride his trike home.

  Red trike. Silver bell.

  Vroom, vroom, vroom, down Ray’s veranda and around the corner, bell ringing . . .

  S-s-stop r-r-ringing that th-th-thing.

  And he wanted to howl for little Jimmy’s lost trike.

  He hadn’t howled when his mother died, just drank a lot. He’d felt relief when the curled-up shell of Bernard had stopped breathing. He’d almost howled for Letty. She’d lived for Bernard, they’d said at her funeral. Not five, not ten, but two dozen or more had said it. She lived for her brother.

  That’s what I’m lacking, Morrie thought, someone to live for, someone to hang on to the land for, to hang on to Letty’s house for. He had no one.

  I’m suffering a severe case of the injured dog syndrome, he thought: the life-battered, mixed-breed mongrel crawling home to its kennel mates, needing one of them to lick its wounds.

  He’d felt wounded since that day at Amberley when he’d seen his son – or before that. He’d felt wounded since that day at the airport when Cara had handed him the photograph of his curly-headed boy.

  Two boys and a dog meandered across Woody Creek’s main street. They separated and he drove between them. Their dog, offended by the near new car, chased it to the corner, where Morrie made a right-hand turn.

  No grand old hotel on Woody Creek’s corner. A long low country pub; one old bloke holding up a veranda post – or the post
holding him up.

  A taller, red-roofed house on his right. Morrie’d seen a photograph of his grandfather’s house in the centenary book, a black and white photograph. Probably it.

  He slowed to look at the bare branches of a mighty tree to the south of the house. He’d once known such a mighty tree at Grandpa’s. As an infant he’d played beneath the canopy of its pale green leaves. If it was the same house, the same tree, Jim Hooper and Jenny lived there with their daughter – his sister.

  Lorna had seen the niece, born in wedlock and thus with more legal claim to her grandfather’s estate than he. Always the bastard, little Jimmy Morrison.

  What now? Knock on their door, accuse them – or claim them. Claim Georgie of the molten copper hair.

  ‘Brothers and sisters have I none,’ he whispered, then, selecting a gear, he drove on.

  His grandfather’s land was ten or so kilometres west of the town, over a bridge, Roland Atkinson had said. Roland knew this town. He’d been driving up to the farm annually since ’47. In his mid to late seventies now, with no wife, no kids, to age him, Roland had the mind of a man of half his years. The bridge was where he’d said it would be, a few hundred yards past a sawmill, then around a bend. Morrie saw it.

  And saw a fork in the road, and a signpost. Forest Road Caravan Park 5 K.

  Granny’s house had been down that road. Little Jimmy’s bones remembered walking that road a hundred times with Jenny.

  Always Jenny, never Mummy. Margaret had been Mum.

  The last of the weak sun starting to disappear behind the trees as he made the turn onto not much of a road. Its crown wore a surface of bitumen, breaking away at the edges. He clung to the crown, hoping no speedster came around the bend. All bends and potholes, a few of them deep. He drove slowly, the car in second gear, glancing left, glancing right, wide awake now.

  Crumbling huts to his left. No goat paddock. He saw a house on his right, a tall, narrow house; saw the hulks of two rusting vehicles there, and a second, larger house behind the first. No goats, and that second house was too big to be Granny’s. He could remember something of the dark of it, the small of it, Jenny’s sausages wrapped in bread . . .

  Drove on by. Drove by another sawmill to his left. His grandfather had owned a sawmill. It said so in the centenary book. Norm Nicholas’s mill had become Vern Hooper’s in 1918. He’d read every word in that book – because Cara had posted it to him, because it had been proof that she’d cared enough to post it.

  No mention of a caravan park in it. He saw the park on his left – far too new to find a space in The First Hundred Years. A brick house and facilities block, lawns well trimmed, rows of modern cabins, caravans parked amid trees. An oasis of civilisation surrounded by grey forest, he thought as he turned onto the gravelled track leading into the park. A sign: Onsite cabins and vans. Office behind house. And a white Kombi van wanting to get out.

  He backed up, allowing the van driver out. The van turned towards town, so Morrie followed it, eating its dust until he was approaching that narrow house again. From the eastern angle he could see the tall stilts it stood on, and her name came. Elsie’s house.

  Elsie and Harry and their tribe of barefoot kids. He’d played hide-and-seek with Georgie and those barefoot kids, had hidden beneath that house.

  He pulled off to the side of the road to stare a while; to stare at the house in the far paddock. Definitely not Granny’s, but definitely on her land.

  A woman popped her head out of the house on stilts to glance at the car.

  Coming, ready or not.

  He wasn’t ready. Drove on fast, drove on to where the road curved. There, out of sight of the house and the woman, he parked on the gravelled verge and turned off the motor. Got out to suck in deep breaths of frosty, eucalypt-scented air, to walk down a clay track worn between old trees.

  It led him to a wooden gate – left open for him – if he dared.

  And he saw Granny’s little house, or the western side of the larger building, framed between the trunks of two trees. He recognised the green growth that had covered it, and the old tank where Jenny had drawn her buckets of water. And the white hens that had laid a million eggs. And the rooster, lifting his head to sing out his song to the end of day.

  What’s he saying, Jenny?

  Time-to-get-to-roost. Eggs-to-lay-in-the-morning. Stay up too darn late and tomorrow you’ll be yawning.

  Always Jenny; Jenny of the tickling gold hair.

  Sucking too much cold air, he turned and walked fast back to his hire car, where he started the motor and drove carelessly back to where the road forked, then on towards the bridge. A singing bridge, its boards rattling as he crossed over.

  Before he was across, the sun setting in the middle of the road blinded him. One hand shading his eyes, he persevered, knowing that road would curve. In this place, all roads curved. Not this one. It was heading for the sun and determined to take him with it.

  His eyes needing little excuse to close, he pulled off to the side to sit until the sun dipped low enough for him to continue. Leaned his elbows on the steering wheel, one hand supporting his neck, while the sky turned red – red enough to convince primitive man that a fiery hell awaited those who walked too far from the beaten track. He’d walked that road. He’d slept with his sister and she’d borne him a son.

  Sat long enough for that raw fury to fade into an ocean of salmon-pink waves, their peaks tipped with the liquid gold of Jenny’s hair; until that same patch of hellish sky took on beauty enough to convince primitive man that there may well be a paradise out there for those who lived a righteous life.

  An artist with a cruel sense of the ridiculous, the God residing over Woody Creek.

  While Morrie sat contemplating the hell of life, the artist dipped his paintbrush again and turned paradise into the purple and yellow bruise of Jenny’s black eye. And he knew why his red trike had ridden home to Woody Creek on that train.

  I l-l-love you, Jenny.

  Little Jimmy, worming his way deeper into Morrie Langdon’s psyche. And why not? Morrie Langdon was planning to sell his inheritance so he might hold Langdon Hall together for the son who should never have been born.

  If he had to sell his grandfather’s land, then he didn’t want to see it. Turned the car around and drove back across that bridge, following the route he’d taken into town out of it.

  Vroom, vroom, vroom.

  CHRISTMAS CHICKEN

  Pete went home in late June and they missed him. Robert missed him. He’d been better since they’d moved. Cara watched him the week Pete left, expecting him to backslide.

  He didn’t. He liked the space of the house they’d furnished with familiar table, chairs from Amberley. He liked his easy chair with its built-in footrest – and far better to see him seated on that chair than in bed. And he was showing an interest in Tracy. The first time he’d lifted her to his lap, they’d sat for minutes, two very serious faces studying each other. Then Tracy had blown a raspberry and Robert had smiled, a first in a long, long time.

  The complete works of Dickens, a parting gift from the school, had found a home on Amberley’s bookshelves and looked fine there. The cardboard cartons of books, sealed since Cara had moved from her dogbox, had been unpacked.

  From one of them, she unearthed her copy of The Lady’s Garden and read it again, wondering if it might help to explain to Robin how Tracy had grown in another woman’s tummy. She’d told him half a dozen times, but information given before a child is ready for it is as water off a duck’s back. He knew who Tracy belonged to. She was his sister.

  There was a possibility, however remote, that if Raelene managed to live a decent life when they let her out, she could be given custody of her daughter. It was highly unlikely but possible, and Robin had to be made aware of that possibility.

  Tracy knew who she belonged to, and by July, she’d claimed Robert. She used his immobile legs as supports when she pulled herself up to stand on chubby legs.

  �
��She’s more adventurous than Robin was at the same age,’ Robert said.

  Cara had seen little of Robin before his second birthday. She had time to watch every step of Tracy’s progress. She wasn’t watching the day Tracy tested one of Miss Robertson’s chairs; her dining room suite had found a home in their kitchen. Her chair, not as stable as Robert’s legs, fell on top of Tracy, but a foster mummy’s kisses were good enough to take away the pain of a bump.

  By August, Raelene was back on the streets and her daughter was taking her first steps. Phone calls during business hours became feared things. Few had the Doncaster number, but Linda Watson’s office had it.

  September came, and spring. Robert was so much better he was making his shadow puppets on a new wall – a perfect wall for their playground when the afternoon sun poured in. Like Cara before him, Robin learned to make the clucking hen that had laid a giant egg. Both he and Robert laughed at Tracy’s antics as she chased shadows, squealing when she failed to catch them. Whatever Cara’s reasons for fostering, it had been the best decision of her life. Like a tiny bud grafted onto a dying tree, that little girl had introduced new sap, which, by September, had reached the oldest branch. Robert was back; older, smaller, but definitely back.

  On 2 October, Tracy had her first birthday. One day later, Cara celebrated her thirtieth – and celebrated the fact that Raelene had disappeared from her accommodation.

  Cara found out why when Cathy rang that night.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got happy news though. Dave said they’ve let Collins out.’

  Raelene’s bikie knows the bloke who bought Monk’s place. They’ve got a cabin out there, Georgie had once written.

  Cara knew where Raelene would be and if she was with Collins, no judge in his right mind would give her custody of her daughter, not while she was the common-law wife of a convicted rapist.