Ripples on a Pond

by Joy Dettman

  She opened a cupboard, searched its shelves for a can of tomato juice, glanced at the lime cordial, Tracy’s favourite. She’d liked having a green tongue. Opened the fridge again, seeking orange juice. Found a small bottle of a liquid sedative, prescribed to settle Tracy when her arm was in plaster. Well out of date, but still half full of an orange-flavoured syrup. Poured a dash into a glass, topped it up with vodka, added a little water, then washed two aspros down with it. It wouldn’t kill her pain but may wrap a cushion around it.

  Robert was still discussing the natural mother, and that ‘natural’ was one too many.

  ‘The natural mother spreads her legs to get money enough to shoot shit up her arms,’ Cara said, ‘and the mindless, bloody bleeding-heart lawmakers still gave her visitation rights. Natural or unnatural, I’m Tracy’s mother.’

  ‘We’ll find her,’ the female constable said.

  ‘Will they let me bury her when you do? Or will that feral slut be given the right to toss her into a garbage bin?’

  ‘Trust us, and try to stay calm.’

  Trust? A long time ago she’d lost trust in a system hogtied by fools. Stay calm? Tracy was lying dead somewhere and they were doing nothing to find her.

  No use blaming them. They were all she had. Blame herself. She should have heard him cutting that glass, should have heard Bowser dying, Tracy waking.

  And would have, had Tracy woken. If either of those kids murmured in the night, she was on her feet. Knew why she hadn’t heard Tracy. They’d killed her in her bed, and dumped her beautiful little body in one of the neighbours’ rubbish bins. If Raelene couldn’t have her to abuse, then no one would have her.

  Two policemen in her little girl’s pink bedroom. No blood in there. No blood on her bed. Bunny Long-ears, already well-loved by Robin, his ears now worn ragged by Tracy, lay discarded on the floor. Her pretty quilt gone.

  They’d taken the quilt!

  To wrap her dead body in?

  There would have been blood – on her pillow, on her sheet – if they’d killed her. There would have been blood, and they would have left her lying in it, as they’d left Bowser.

  ‘They’ve taken the quilt,’ she said.

  Hope growing, she described the quilt in detail. She described the pyjamas Tracy had been wearing while they wasted time fingerprinting the area near the bed.

  ‘Dino Collins cut that glass,’ she said. ‘He’s done it before. He’s been threatening me for years.’

  You’ll keep, moll.

  She had kept. He’d waited until she had something of value to lose, then he’d taken it.

  ‘Dino Collins and Raelene King took her. No one else had a reason to take her.’

  Taken her where?

  Now that she was no longer dead, she was somewhere.

  She always comes back.

  ‘Raelene King was raised in Woody Creek. Collins owns a cabin at a commune up there. My sister said they always go back there . . .’

  My sister, Georgie. No thought now of denying that blood link. Pared down to the bone by catastrophe, she gave no thought to tomorrow, only to now, only to finding Tracy before they killed her.

  The police needed a recent photograph. Robert found the Kodak packet, a dozen photographs in it, developed only days ago. Two happy kids and a dog; one perfect photograph of Robin pretending to drive his missing daddy’s red car; Tracy in the passenger seat beside him, a beautiful little girl with a shy smile and pigtails tied high with big pink bows.

  Cara howled again for those pigtails and the pink bows, and for the laughing dog too and his dead eyes. She returned to the refrigerator to pour more vodka, another dash of sedative, water.

  ‘Collins threatened me in court, in ’65, when he was sentenced to five years for the rape of a minor. He was sentenced again in ’71 for robbery and drug offences. I gave evidence at both trials. Tracy isn’t his. She was born while he was in jail. Raelene King threatened me while she was in jail. She rang me at work and told me never to feel safe in my bed.’

  Talked too much. Blamed the vodka, the orange-flavoured sedative. When she returned to the kitchen for more of the same, the policewoman suggested coffee. She made it while Cara talked.

  ‘We went to court when she broke Tracy’s arm. We pleaded to be allowed to move her out of the state. I’ve spent the best part of three years in courts. We’ve spent a fortune on solicitors.’

  ‘These days they try to keep families together,’ a male said. The female offered a mug containing an anaemic brew. Cara didn’t taste it.

  ‘We’re her family!’

  ‘You and your husband are separated?’

  ‘Divorced. He lives in England.’

  ‘Could he perhaps have–’

  Cara tossed her hands in the air and walked out to the kitchen, where she tipped the too-weak coffee down the sink and made a strong brew. Stood at the sink, sipping coffee and watching a policeman wash Bowser’s blood away, feeling her helpless, hopeless frustration washing the last of her strength from her bones while she waited for someone to get out there and do something. Her baby was somewhere with two vicious animals, and she was here, drinking coffee.

  They were doing something.

  Near midday, she learned that the police were in Woody Creek; that Dino Collins was known to have been in Woody Creek with Raelene King two months ago. They knew a lot about that pair.

  Cara knew that one of the constables was a smoker. She could see a butt balanced on a pot plant. No butts in her backyard since she’d moved to Ferntree Gully. Wanted a cigarette now. None in the house. She’d given them up cold turkey; smoked her last one in the Doncaster backyard, then pitched the packet into the incinerator and driven away.

  Phone ringing in the lounge room, ringing, ringing, until the policewoman silenced it.

  ‘A John Norris,’ she said.

  Robert took the call.

  John and Beth were flying down today; the cousins would start arriving in the next few days for a family Christmas. If Mohammed couldn’t go to the mountain, the mountain would come to Mohammed. They hadn’t had a family Christmas since Myrtle’s death. Cara had made bookings at motels, at caravan parks. She’d booked Christmas dinner for twenty-six at a mountain hotel.

  Raelene had cancelled Christmas again and no one had let John and Beth know.

  Christmas cards hung over a string across the mantelpiece, like a smiling mouth. Today, they were laughing at Cara. A real live Christmas tree stood in the corner, a very big Christmas tree. Tracy had helped decorate it, her special pink bauble at Tracy height. Robin’s blue bauble was much higher. He’d grown tall this year.

  Yesterday, everything had been so right. A doll from Santa waited in the rear of the wardrobe for Tracy, a soft doll, dressed in pink, to replace chewed-up Bunny Long-ears – or maybe not. Cara had tried to replace him before with another bunny, with a soft teddy too. Tracy refused to go to bed without Bunny Long-ears. An electronic keyboard waited beneath Cara’s bed for Robin. He was a whiz on his school recorder, could play any tune he heard.

  Knew where he’d be right now: at Mrs Macy’s front window, looking across the road, waiting for the police to drive in with his little sister. Knew she should go to him. Knew she’d howl if she did. Instead, she slid the cards from their string, then removed the thumbtacks holding the string. Pitched the cards into the kitchen tidy with the string; placed the thumbtacks into a colourful lopsided bowl, made by Robin for Mother’s Day.

  She returned to the lounge room then to strip the Christmas tree. She and Robin had chosen it. They’d carried it home in the station wagon; even with the back seats down, it was still too long. Had to leave the rear window down, leave two feet of tree blowing in the wind. A laughing drive that one, making jokes about a policeman giving them a ticket for driving with tree-bigger-than-car.

  Robert came to help. They worked together, silently wrapping glass baubles, placing them into their carton, wrapping the golden angel, winding pretty lights into their box, pi
cking off the tinsel piece by piece. When the tree was bare, they eased it from its stand and together carried it outside.

  No Bowser to greet them. No more laughing-mouthed dog to yap, Good morning, my lady. Is it walk time? She howled for him again, because he’d been taken away to become evidence.

  One o’clock. No sign of Collins or King in Woody Creek. Where else would that foxy bitch and her mongrel mate go to ground when the hounds were baying at their heels?

  She always comes back . . .

  They hadn’t been sighted in Traralgon, another of Collins’s hangouts.

  Could have gone anywhere. Could be on the road to Sydney, another one of their hangouts. Cara knew Tracy was screaming wherever she was.

  Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.

  Two o’clock before John and Beth arrived in a taxi. It was a long trip across town from Tullamarine. They wanted to kiss, to offer comfort. There was no comfort, not today.

  Cara got away when the phone rang.

  ‘A Roland Atkinson,’ the policewoman said.

  Morrie’s accountant. Cara had spoken to him a month ago and couldn’t do it today. John spoke to him. He explained the situation.

  Cara walked out to the backyard, seeking the policeman with the cigarettes. No policeman there.

  John spoke to her as she walked through to the front door. ‘Morrie’s flying in this morning. They’ve arranged to ship the MG.’

  Cara’s world had ended, but for Morrie it still turned. Blamed him. Blamed his bloody car. It stuck out like a sore toe. Should never have driven Robin to school in it. Should never have struggled to put its hood down. That feral bitch had seen them, or her mongrel mate had seen them. Somehow they’d found them.

  No smoking policeman in the front yard. Watched the postman circle the court on his motor scooter, still delivering his Christmas cards. Just a normal day outside Number Seven. A family of magpies in the front yard, warbling to be fed. Yesterday Tracy had stood amongst them, tossing steak worms. They’d had no fear of a tiny girl.

  The policewoman frightened them away when she emptied the letterbox. Four envelopes. A male looked them over – not the smoking male. Seeking a ransom note?

  If they found one, Cara would pay it, no matter how much the demand. On her instruction, Raelene had been offered money to release Tracy. One of Chris Marino’s associates had got the papers signed. Two thousand pounds had bought little Jimmy Morrison back in 1947. Robert had obtained a bank cheque for ten thousand dollars and they’d considered it money well spent. The pressure had been off since July. Just a matter of time, they’d said, and had spoken of Perth, of Tasmania, New Zealand too. Safe fools, celebrating Christmas in a fool’s paradise. As if signed papers would mean one bloody thing to that foxy slut. She’d partied on Robert’s ten thousand, shot the lot up her arms, and now needed more.

  Envelopes on the dining table. Cara stared at them. Three shaped to hold Christmas cards, one business-sized. Stared long at that one, at its typewritten address, then turned and walked away from it and out again to the backyard, still searching for that smoking policeman.

  Found two searching an overgrown garden for the knife used on Bowser, neither one with a smoke in his mouth.

  Robert found her out there. He offered a typewritten page. She turned away, uninterested.

  ‘Read it, poppet.’

  One glance was enough to see the letterhead of the Sydney publisher, to see Rusty, to see meet with you . . . Slapped the page from his hand and stepped back from it, back, back, back.

  ‘Not now,’ she howled. ‘Don’t let it be now, Daddy. The price is too high.’

  He tried to hold her, but she ran to the kitchen, picked up her handbag and the keys to the new station wagon.

  ‘Don’t drive, love,’ Beth said. ‘You’re in no fit state.’

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ John said.

  She was out the door.

  They followed the car out to the street, Beth, John and Robert. They watched her drive away.

  *

  Three o’clock, sitting in the car out the front of the corner milk bar, a cigarette burning. The nicotine rush made her head spin. Had to go back home.

  That house had been home yesterday. They’d stolen home. Didn’t want to be there. Didn’t want to be anywhere.

  A car pulled in beside her and she recognised the driver from Robin’s school. Perhaps the woman knew about Tracy. She stared.

  Cara backed out, drove and howled and smoked. Didn’t go home, just drove to nowhere, turning at will down unknown streets, through estates, up other roads, until she lost all sense of direction. One street fed her out to Burwood Highway. Caught up in heavy traffic, she went with the flow to Springvale Road. Knew that road well. It led to Doncaster. Made the right turn at the lights, then drove on towards Nunawading, where the railway crossing’s flashing lights halted her progress.

  Lit another cigarette there while the train Tracy had feared went by. Trains had taken her to that place where they took her from Mummy’s arms to see the stranger who had wanted her to say Mummy. Tracy had known who was Mummy.

  Boxed in by metal, Cara drove on. Should have turned right onto Whitehorse Road, gone back. Couldn’t get across to the right lane, so continued towards Doncaster.

  Had to find a place to turn back.

  Back to what?

  Back to the knowledge that somehow, somewhere, she’d made a bargain with the devil. Tracy for publication. She couldn’t have both.

  Or him. Couldn’t have him.

  He was coming tomorrow to get his bloody car.

  It was all pre-scripted somewhere. It was all written down in the big book of life.

  PLAYING CARDS

  Noses become more particular as we grow older, Jenny thought as she stepped from her car. The descendants of Granny’s chooks roamed more freely than their forebears, squirting their droppings freely. Tonight, the smell of chook dung was strong.

  Had she smelt it during the years she’d named this place home? Maybe not. Constant subjection to odours disarms the senses. If a BO sufferer could smell himself, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. She smiled then, and for the first time in years thought of Sissy and the double bed she’d once shared with her and her BO.

  Difficult now to recall Sissy’s face. With no effort at all she could raise an image of Norman’s chubby old face; and Amber’s and her anger, though could barely recall the child who had feared that anger. Difficult, too, to recall the too-young mother Jenny who had worked like a navvy on this piece of land.

  Granny was imprinted on her soul. Always here to run back to when the world outside had become too hard; always. And she was still here. Every time Jenny set foot on this land, she saw Gertrude from the corner of an eye, still going about her day in another dimension of time.

  Since Jim, since the night she’d found him at Flinders Street Station, Jenny’s life had taken a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Anywhere with Jim was safety, in the air or lost in England; just hold his hand and she was home. His hand not available tonight, and with Raelene and her bikie in town, there had been only one place she’d wanted to be.

  She glanced at her watch. It was going on for six thirty. Georgie should have been home, but no red ute parked in the yard meant no Georgie. And without the buffer of her, Jenny preferred to keep her distance from Margot – a snarl of a woman, and every year more of her to snarl.

  If there was a day in Jenny’s life she could take back and live differently, it would be the day of Margot’s conception. She’d known other bad days, but that was the day that had caused the others. And she could have changed it so easily. If she hadn’t climbed out the bedroom window, the twins wouldn’t have found her sitting on the oval fence; or if she’d climbed out and walked straight down to Granny’s. You can’t take back one day of the past, only relive it; and tonight was not the night to start reliving it.

  She turned on her heel, towards Elsie’s house. Realised Margot would be over there, eating dinner, and Jenny
wasn’t going there to watch her eat. Turned again, towards Flanagan’s land. The lights from Joe Flanagan’s house were no longer visible. Too many trees between his house and Granny’s, saplings grown tall along the boundary fence.

  Georgie fought a constant war against saplings, as had Granny, as had Jenny, but the forest had all the time in the world. It would win the war. Clumps of them growing tall behind the crumbling chook pen; a few reaching high to become trees. Nourished too well by dung, Jenny thought.

  The chicken-wire gate was still standing; the fence along the western side of the house rusty, but still holding on to its posts, still strong enough to keep the chooks in their own backyard. Jenny opened the gate and walked the few steps to the house.

  Front door hanging open. The tin plaque she’d made for one of Granny’s birthdays was still nailed above the door: Ejected 2.8.1869. Remembered the day she’d stolen Granny’s tin – or maybe aluminium – plate and spent hours engraving the words and numbers into it with a hammer and nail. Georgie had added the painted board, its paint flaking now but still readable: The Abortion.

  And it was. Jenny loathed what Bernie Macdonald and his working bee had done to Granny’s kitchen. It was a black hole, its little window gone, its stove and timber floor gone. She didn’t go inside, but looked at her watch again. Georgie closed the shop at five thirty – unless she had a late customer. The police could have held her up. There had been half a dozen of them in town this morning, but by late afternoon there must have been a dozen. Since morning they’d known that Raelene and her bikie were believed to have information on the kidnapping of a four-year-old girl. No one knew the details.

  The police had come for Jim five minutes after she’d put his dinner on the table – the local constable and a city man. John McPherson had told them that if anyone could find the entrance to Monk’s old root cellar, Jim could. Jenny doubted it. Other than a partial chimney, which someone had turned into a barbeque, the old mansion was gone. But Jim had gone out there with them, or with John, after he’d eaten his dinner and locked the house up like Fort Knox – and seen Jenny on her way.