Ripples on a Pond

by Joy Dettman

  November came and went. Not a word about Raelene. Then December, and they bought a Christmas tree and Christmas lights, baubles, a golden angel and too much tinsel.

  *

  The weather, though a little inclement when they’d left for church this morning, had cleared by noon. There was a slight breeze from the east, a cloud or two about, but no rain. They were halfway home when Duckworth slowed her feet before a residential property where a team of ungainly reindeer, cut from plywood, drew a garishly painted sleigh across a residential lawn towards a bedazzled pine tree.

  Lorna scoffed, then, taking a firmer grip on her companion’s arm, she continued forward.

  Certainly Jesus had been born, and perhaps in the month of December – born of woman, and no doubt in much the same way as the lamb is born of the ewe, a scene witnessed by Lorna during her girlhood. Birth is bloody mess. Lorna had barely survived her own and her mother hadn’t. She abhorred the commercialisation of Christmas.

  And again, her companion’s eyes were drawn to a similarly bedecked tree and an inflated fat man teetering on a roof strung with wires and uncountable globes.

  ‘It must look wonderful at night,’ her companion said.

  ‘Piffle,’ Lorna said. ‘Where in the Bible is there mention of festooned pine trees, or of an overweight cretin in red chanting “Ho, ho, ho”?’

  Poor sight forced her to retain her grip on her companion. In her youth, Lorna had clung to no one. She could not recollect the touch of another until her toddling sister Margaret had reached up to hold her hand, a habit she had continued into adulthood.

  The sister’s interests had been diverse to the extreme. At an early age Lorna became addicted to newsprint, her only reading material during the twelve years spent on that flyblown farm of her childhood. Margaret’s interest had leaned towards kitchens and knitting needles. Inseparable though, until their forties, until separated by a pernicious pile of pommy pig poop.

  Duckworth had filled the vacancy, though quite early in their association it had become obvious to Lorna that she’d lacked in education. Given a word of more than three syllables, the woman’s pronunciation had been pathetic. A glance, a correction offered with raised brows makes for efficient teaching – if the subject possesses adequate intelligence to learn. In recent years, Lorna’s sight having deteriorated to a stage where she could no longer read the small print of newspapers, she’d become reliant on Duckworth’s sight; her reading was adequate.

  Margaret had not been a walker. Under sufferance she had accompanied Lorna, if the day had been fine. Duckworth walked in fine weather or foul. At times she reminded Lorna of the house dog Jim’s mother had once owned. It would fetch its own lead when Joanne had said ‘walk’. As eager as that wretched dog, Duckworth fetched hats, overcoats, raincoats, as the season dictated. She sat willingly at Lorna’s side in theatres where, unlike Margaret, she appeared to relish a little blood and gore.

  A more than efficient housekeeper, in her natural element in the kitchen, non-argumentative; all in all, Duckworth had proven to be a satisfactory replacement for Margaret.

  They were a bare two blocks from home when a male child, propelling an out-of-control billycart, cannoned down a driveway and braked against Lorna’s shins. She flew, and took her companion with her.

  *

  A tall tree falls further, falls harder than its scrubby mate. Amber, fast to regain her feet, was shaken, her hand and knee scraped, but she was otherwise intact. Lorna, also scraped, remained on her backside on the concrete pavement a few metres from Alma and Valda Duckworth’s driveway, into which their vehicle was currently turning.

  The pair ran to assist. Lorna held them at bay with a raised hand while others gathered. A passing churchgoer offered to drive the women to a hospital.

  ‘Ambulance,’ Lorna commanded. She had self-diagnosed a snapped shinbone.

  Valda Duckworth made the phone call, and while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Amber had no protection from the mother and daughter, who for some time had been intent on finding a common link between their family and Miss Elizabeth Duckworth’s.

  That morning, the duo spoke of Uncle Charles, a parson, and his son, Reginald, who, when only a lad, had become involved in an unfortunate love affair which ruined his life.

  ‘The names are not familiar,’ Amber lied.

  They were very familiar. In another lifetime, Charles the parson had carried that squalling stray to Amber’s bed, and in her distraught state she’d believed it to be her dead son, and returned to life. In another lifetime, she’d known cousin Reginald, in the biblical sense. Amber suffered torture for the twenty minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive.

  They loaded Lorna on board and were closing the door when the voice from within demanded, ‘Duckworth.’ Three women moved forward, but it was into Amber’s hand that Lorna gave her bunch of keys.

  Home alone then, those keys gripped in her hand. Home to unlock an empty house, to think, to plan. Tonight was her own, and if Lorna’s diagnosis was correct, then a few days more.

  Amber removed her ragged stocking. She cleaned and dressed her wounds while admitting to herself that Duckworth had been a poor choice of name. Far better she had chosen Smith, Jones, Brown. She’d been given no time to consider future consequences. Elizabeth Duckworth had been born in a hurry, born of necessity. And she must disappear before she was exposed.

  Her death would not be as easy to manage as her birth. She’d come into the world with nothing other than a hospital issue gown, a plastered leg and bandaged head. She now owned a wardrobe full of clothing, a pair of Royal Doulton vases, found at an opportunity shop in Richmond and carried home to grace the mantelpiece in Lorna’s parlour. Pretty things, large enough to demand, see me, but delicate. Her Waterford Crystal bowl, also picked up at an opportunity shop, was heavy. She possessed several pairs of shoes, also heavy, a selection of hats. Hats were not easy to pack. Nor would be her overcoat.

  And she didn’t want to be Mrs Smith or Brown, existing in a boarding house room, watching the funds she’d managed to accrue dwindle away. In Lorna’s house she’d accrue more. And it had become her house. She dusted, polished it, ran it the way a fine house should be run.

  An early-morning phone call to the hospital verified Lorna’s diagnosis, and at ten that morning, Amber took two trams to the hospital, a small case packed with Lorna’s night clothing, dressing-gown and slippers, then, freed for the day, she went about her own business.

  Midday found her at a wall of private mailboxes at the Melbourne GPO. She emptied one, locked it, then crossed over the street and walked up to her bank, where she deposited three pension cheques into Amber Morrison’s account.

  Elderly joints, jarred by a fall, ache, they stiffen. Amber had promised herself a day of rest, but on the Tuesday morning when a second early phone call informed her that Miss Hooper would be released on Christmas morning, Amber’s plans altered.

  She removed the Christmas wreath from the front door, removed a string of pretty lights from the front window, then walked out to the kitchen to toss together a plum pudding. Lorna enjoyed the festive meal. No leg of lamb to roast, no piece of pork, and today, the final shopping day before Christmas. The pudding boiling in a large steamer, Amber dressed carefully then walked down to the tram stop.

  A crowd in the supermarket, long queues at the checkouts, and she lucky to snatch up one of the last frozen chickens. Back on the pavement she stood a while deciding if her shaken bones were up to taking advantage of her last day of freedom. The weight of the chicken in her string bag told her she should take it home, but a city tram was pulling in.

  Melbourne clad in its festive gown was a swarm of humanity – as it had been the first Christmas of Amber’s freedom, that Christmas of her aimless wandering through a city of no locks and no bars. Children had pointed at her then. Crowds had parted for her. One of Melbourne’s rejects, the crowd milling out the front of Myer’s windows had parted to allow that long-haired, black-
clad wretch to see what had drawn the crowd.

  She’d witnessed magic.

  Every year since, she’d found excuse to escaped Lorna and to stand a while before Myer’s windows, and each Christmas there had been a different display of clockwork animals scuttling, nursery rhyme characters waving, elves hammering toys. No matter our age, in each of us, segments of the child lingers – of the good and the bad child, the loved and the unloved.

  Children no longer pointed their small fingers at her. Their parents gave her no second glance, and the crowd no longer separated to allow her through. She had insufficient height to see above the heads, so pressed forward until she found space behind an empty stroller.

  Saw the baby in her mother’s arms. Watched her tiny hands trying to get at the pretty scenes behind the glass. Saw a small boy at the mother’s elbow, his eyes avid. Amber eased around the stroller until she was elbow to elbow with that boy who had the stray’s hair, Archie Foote’s hair. And jammed in by the crowd, she could smell Archie Foote’s hair.

  It stole her breathing. It sucked the blood from her brain and sprayed it in a red mist before her eyes. Her mouth open, she swayed as a weight rolled to the right of her skull.

  Grasped the handle of the stroller, and an elderly man, already grasping it, looked at her then tapped the boy on the shoulder.

  ‘Move away, Robin, and give someone else a turn.’

  Small children have never seen enough magic. The boy lingered.

  ‘How do they make them move like they’re real, Mummy?’

  ‘With batteries I imagine, Robbie. Take Papa’s hand.’

  Amber had carried three sons, Clarence, Simon and Reginald. They may have had Archie Foote’s hair. She’d carried two daughters, Leonora April and Cecelia Louise. Buried them all, other than Cecelia, Sissy.

  ‘They’re like real,’ the boy said as the mother settled her babe into the stroller.

  The window now before her, but Amber stared at the family group until her eyes met those of the male.

  He looked away. Men hadn’t looked away in Amber’s youth. They’d all wanted her. Just a white-headed old grandmother now, clad in a muted floral frock of blues and pinks and lilac, a harmless old soul made dizzy by the pressing crowd, the too-large frozen chicken grown heavy in its string bag. She swapped it from her left hand to her right, and as the family moved on she followed in the wake of the stroller.

  Christmas melodies playing. She’d known them all back then. Glanced to her right towards a Salvation Army band, and was swept away again to that lonely wretch who had wandered these streets by day and by night. The streets had altered. The Salvos had never altered. Same woman, holding that same tin, rattling it for the crowd’s donation.

  Same crowd walking on by.

  Not the boy with Archie Foote’s hair. He ran to drop a coin into the tin, and Amber stilled her feet to reach into her handbag for her own coin. Plenty of coins. She liked to feel the weight of all of those coins she’d never owned. Found Lorna’s keys first – or the identical set she’d had cut from the originals yesterday. She liked keys.

  She’d dropped her coin into the tin. The woman was wishing her a happy Christmas when a red-clad whirlwind swept in from behind, almost knocking Amber again from her feet. The Salvation Army woman’s hand saved her.

  Then too fast for her mind to follow, the street scene altered. And the sounds.

  Loud. The whirlwind turning the air in that city street to blue. Elderly man attempting to wrestle the whirlwind. Mother fighting for possession of the stroller. Boy with Archie Foote’s hair, running on the spot as the stroller tilted, fell, the infant strapped into it.

  Salvation Army band’s instruments down. Woman with the donation tin moving forward as the whirlwind attempted to drag that babe free by its arm.

  Then a blank page rose to shield Amber’s mind. White. Flat. Wordless.

  She was unaware of what she’d done until she’d done it, until she’d swung her string bag in an arc, the arc ending with a connection.

  Like before. Somewhere.

  String bag and chicken jarred from her hand by the impact, the chicken flew one final time as the whirlwind settled gracefully down to become a pool of red dust on the pavement.

  Short flight for that featherless chicken. It made a skidding landing at the feet of the Salvation Army woman.

  Photographs developing too fast now on that blank white page. Helpers surrounding the mother. Stroller lifted back to its wheels. Screaming baby released from its buckles and held to the mother’s breast.

  And the mother’s eyes seeking, finding Amber’s, thanking her with her eyes while the infant screamed.

  Strength flowing again in Amber’s legs, she turned from the scene and walked fast away, hoping the foul-mouthed slut wasn’t dead – not because she deserved life, but because Elizabeth Duckworth did. She’d put the past behind her. She’d found a good and useful life and her benefactor was coming home in the morning and would need her Duckworth.

  Walked on, unable to kill the tight smile now stretching her lips as her mind replayed the scene. A classic, that sag to the pavement. Theatrical.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  Amber glanced over her shoulder. The elderly man was offering the string bag and Lorna’s Christmas chicken dinner, the little boy at his side.

  ‘You made her stop,’ the boy said.

  Amber took her bag, then as a grandmother should, she patted his curly hair.

  ‘Didn’t I just,’ she said.

  LEGAL ADVICE

  Hours later, home where they were safe, Tracy was still screaming and Robin still wanting answers.

  ‘Who was that bad lady?’

  ‘A sick-in-the-head stranger, Robbie.’

  ‘She said bad words.’

  Raelene had said a lot of bad words.

  ‘Why did she hurt Tracy, Mummy?’

  ‘Because she thinks she can take what she wants from life and no one will stop her, Robbie.’

  ‘That lady did.’

  She’d stopped Raelene in her tracks. Flattened the feral bitch.

  Cara had thanked the little grandmother, as had Robert. They’d walked with her to the tram stop, had waited with her until she boarded her tram – the Kew tram. She’d told Cara her name.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ she’d said.

  Duckworth; no wedding ring. A Miss Duckworth who lived somewhere along the Kew tramline. Easy enough to find, Cara thought.

  Tracy refused her dinner, refused her bottle. Robert got Robin into bed. By nine, he was sleeping, waiting for Father Christmas to fly in from the North Pole. Tracy, too young to know about the man in red, refused to sleep, and when Cara lifted her from her cot, she screamed. She never screamed.

  At three o’clock, while Santa and his reindeer flew the skies, Cara drove along deserted streets to the Box Hill hospital. Tracy’s arm was broken, the bruises from her natural mother’s grip turning blue.

  At dawn Cara spoke to a police constable.

  ‘We were attacked out the front of Myer’s. A Salvation Army band was playing carols there. They saw the attack – and the elderly woman who stopped it. Someone from Myer’s called the ambulance. We left the scene before it arrived, but the attacker would have been taken to a hospital.’

  She didn’t mention the elderly woman’s name, or the tram she’d caught. If Raelene was dead, that old lady could be arrested for her murder. She deserved a medal for bravery, not arrest.

  *

  At breakfast time, Robin and Robert learned about the cyclone that had blown Darwin away. Cyclone Tracy, they’d named it. Robin wanted to know why they’d used Tracy’s name, and why were Mummy and Tracy taking so long?

  Should have named that cyclone Raelene: she’d blown their Doncaster Christmas away. Sago soaking in milk in the fridge for Myrtle’s sago plum pudding; Myrtle’s recipe book open on the bench. Chicken thawed on the sink, its plastic bag oozing blood.

  One o’clock and still no sign of Cara. Cheese sandwich
es for lunch at Doncaster. Robert and Robin could manage to make a cheese sandwich.

  In Kew, Lorna tucked into roast chicken, unaware that she may be eating a murder weapon.

  Cara sat beside a hospital bed far too large for her baby, as was the plaster cast on Tracy’s tiny arm.

  *

  For several years Chris Marino had pursued Cara. On a Friday night in late January of 1975, Cara pursued him to his front door, and was invited into the house that could have been her own. She walked a large Italian marble-tiled hallway, passed a marble pedestal on which a barely clad marble lady guarded a large pot plant, and was introduced to a girl who looked Italian but didn’t sound it. A pretty girl, big with his baby.

  There for Chris’s legal advice, she admired his house and his swimming pool before mentioning her foster daughter’s proposed visit with the natural mother.

  ‘I want you to tell me that they can’t force me to take her in there, Chris.’

  He couldn’t tell her that, so she told him about the plaster on Tracy’s tiny arm, about the day at Myer’s and Miss Duckworth and the Salvation Army band.

  In late January, Chris stood at her side while she told her story to a magistrate, described in detail the natural mother’s attack, offered X-rays and documents obtained from the Box Hill hospital, from the police.

  If Cara learned one thing that day, it was that you can’t buck the system. Robert wrote a cheque to pay for her attempt to buck it. Chris had never been cheap. He had managed to delay that first supervised visit, but only until March, until Tracy’s plaster had been removed. Then, like the foster parent she was, Cara drove to a city office, where Tracy, screaming, was taken from her mummy’s arms. And when returned, sobbing, she clung for half an hour.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.’

  In April, Cara drove twice to that city office. On the second occasion, the natural mother failed to keep her date with her daughter. Raelene wanted custody, not supervised visits. Cara looked for her as she buckled Tracy into her seat. Knew they were out there, watching her. Felt him out there. Felt him on a motorbike that drove by; in a car with darkened windows; in the taxi, the truck, that blocked her escape from the city. Afraid to drive directly home with him tailing her, she deviated to the Forest Hill shopping centre. Walked around it, seeking him, searching for Raelene, while Tracy napped in her stroller. It was late when she left to drive home – and saw Collins in every car on Springvale Road.