Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Should have given it to her, she thought, as she stared at the Croydon address. They lived in a court, at Number 14. She hadn’t known that – hadn’t been interested enough to ask. Apparently Jim had.

  It would be legal tender if she added her signature to it, and with that thought in mind, she started easing the creased envelope open, which was easy enough to do with those self-seal things – if you took it slow.

  He hadn’t written Trudy a goodbye letter. There were two lines of his handwriting on a full sheet of paper.

  My dearest Trudy. You were always a wise girl. Please use the enclosed wisely. As always, Love from Dad XX

  ‘Why not add, I’m off now to drown myself. Have a good life,’ Jenny asked that note. She was composing more when she saw Fifty Thousand Dollars written on the cheque – then the figures. $50,000.

  Those figures got her to her feet. ‘You bloody fool of a man!’

  He’d written cheques to Trudy before, for birthdays, for Christmas. He’d written one for five thousand as a wedding present, but this was madness. Fifty thousand dollars would have gone close to emptying their joint account.

  It would have bought Nick a 4WD. A nine-year-old navy-blue Commodore didn’t match his designer jeans and pigskin jacket –

  He wasn’t getting his 4WD. She didn’t add her signature to the cheque, she shredded it. She shredded Jim’s note, then shredded the shreds. The motel had provided a bin. She shredded the envelope, apart from the corner with the stamp. With a bit of glue, it would post one of her thank-you cards.

  Found a comb in her handbag, the tail end of a lipstick and sunscreen face lotion. It stung if you got it in your eyes. She allowed them to sting while using the lipstick, while wetting and combing her too-short hair. It would grow. It grew too fast. The bag over her shoulder then, she unlocked the door and walked across the car park to the office to pay for her night’s lodging with the joint Visa card.

  ‘Fifty thousand dollars!’

  She needed milk. Had to open an emergency carton of long-life milk yesterday and been pleased to find it in her pantry. Milk used to be a daily commodity. What she’d opened yesterday might have been in her pantry for six months. Didn’t know what the factories added to it to keep it tasting fresh. Like the rest of the human herd, she’d checked its use-by date, opened it, smelt it, then poured it into her tea.

  Granny’s goats used to supply milk fresh morning and night. With only the old Coolgardie safe to keep it cool, it had been on the turn by the next day, fit for pudding but not much else.

  She unlocked her car, got in and started it up. It always started. At the pedestrian crossing she had to give way to a bike rider, a girl with a little boy in a carry-seat, a pretty dark-headed girl who appeared little older than Katie. Her infant might have been the twins’ age.

  Silly little girl, Jenny thought. Too many of us settle for motherhood before we’ve had a chance to grow up and find out who we are. Then before we know it, we’ve been abandoned on the scrapheap, too old to start again.

  She made a left-hand turn out to the street, then drove on down to the business centre of town where she found a park in front of the Commonwealth Bank. A dollar bought her half an hour of time and the bank wasn’t open.

  The ATM in the bank wall was. She’d never withdrawn from their Visa account, but if Jim had been prepared to buy Nick a 4WD, then why not spend that money? She inserted the card, had to think to remember his PIN, then tried 2113. It worked. Users were warned not to use their dates of birth. Jim had used a portion of hers, in reverse. She asked that machine for a thousand. Didn’t need a thousand. It was her finger’s response to Nick’s 4WD, but the machine didn’t argue about it, just went into counting mode, then spat out a pile of fifties.

  I’ve lived to see an amazing world, she thought – or caught glimpses of an amazing world while moving through it like an uncomplaining goat who’d found a safe paddock to graze in. The old goat looked over her shoulder for a robber as she stuffed the notes into her bag. Jim would have stood there counting. When he’d been forced to use Woody Creek’s ATM, he’d stood counting. He would have studied the receipt. She glanced at it and was proven right about Nick’s fifty thousand. Had she posted that cheque on Thursday, there wouldn’t have been enough cash left in that account to pay the motel bill.

  ‘We can’t choose who we fall in love with, Mum,’ Trudy had said. ‘I know his faults, but none of us are without fault.’

  They’d tried to raise her faultless. Jim had written huge cheques each term to educate her. They’d done everything right with Trudy, but somewhere along the way they’d got it wrong.

  Trudy had never mentioned Nick’s name until he’d flown overseas with her and Sophie on what was supposed to be a twelve-month working holiday. Sophie came home. Trudy and Nick didn’t.

  They’d married in Greece, spent their honeymoon volunteering in Africa with a medical group. For some reason, Jenny had believed that Trudy’s new husband had been in the medical profession. He might have been, might have become a dentist had he completed his university course. He’d dropped out midway through his second year.

  She crossed over the road at the lights, then walked on, her mind back at that motel. If not for Lila, she could live in motel rooms, no stove to keep burning, only one bill to worry about. She could see all the new movies.

  A table of sweaters reduced to half price caught her eye. They were thirty-five per cent wool, long enough, of the fine knit she preferred to wear but not a lot of choice in colour, or not in her size. They had a sickly green, a pinkish red, a greyish beige. She didn’t like beige, but she bought the beige. It matched her hair, and if she decided to stay another night, she’d need a change of clothing.

  Gave way to a car and caravan at the post-office intersection. Two grey heads in the car, off together on an adventure. Years ago, she’d nagged Jim to buy a caravan and drive off into the sunset with her. He could have. Once Trudy had been safe at school, they could have travelled. She’d nagged him into flying to England in the mid-sixties. When he’d agreed, it had nothing to do with her nagging. John and Amy McPherson talked him into taking the trip.

  ‘Never again,’ he’d said before they got there. He’d been too tall for cramped plane seats and in the sixties the trip had taken longer.

  They’d seen Paris. They’d rented a unit in London. They’d caught a train to Thames Ditton. Lorna Hooper had given Jim their sister Margaret’s address, Jimmy’s address. Langdon Hall, Thames Ditton.

  A taxi driver delivered them to a flat-faced old manor house, and the size of it put Vern Hooper’s house to shame. It had a front door built for giants, a lion’s head knocker. Jim had knocked. Jenny had hammered that lion’s head down, then Amy made them laugh with her suggestion that Lurch, from the Addams Family would open the door with his usual, ‘You rang’. The door hadn’t opened, and twenty minutes later, their waiting taxi had dropped them back at the station.

  A travel agency window drew her mind back to the moment, or an advertised return flight to London for only fourteen hundred and ninety dollars. Jim had probably paid as much or more in the sixties. They were advertising cruises too, one for under a thousand dollars.

  Book it, she urged.

  But why look at cheap? This morning she had fifty thousand to spend – minus the motel, minus the thousand in her bag. She walked on to the Gazette office, where she placed her thank-you advertisement, brief, no hearts, no flowers.

  ‘In Saturday’s Gazette,’ she said. The condolence cards should have stopped arriving by Saturday.

  Vickery’s estate agency was on the corner, its windows full of houses and properties for sale. There were three photographs of houses for sale in Woody Creek – and the photographs looked better than the houses.

  BUSY HANDS

  Space, storage capacity and forty years of standing still had allowed every room in the old Hooper house to suffer the fate of the obese. Jenny walked the rooms that Tuesday afternoon, making lists on the
backsides of Juliana Conti printouts. She listed the antiques on one, Lorna’s antique dining suite, her hallstand, her massive chest of cedar drawers, her bedroom chair. No one had explained the facts of Trudy’s birth to Lorna. She’d died believing her to be her niece and the legitimate granddaughter of the great and powerful Vern, and so believing, had named Trudy her sole beneficiary.

  Jim offered to store the better pieces of furniture until Trudy needed them, or so he’d said. He’d wanted them. They’d belonged to his mother before they’d belonged to Vern or Lorna. Jenny hadn’t known Jim’s mother. She’d known Lorna, and every item Jim had moved in smelt of Lorna. The dining room stunk of her, as did the entrance hall.

  The library smelt of machine oil, of dusty books and paper. For years Jenny had conducted a dressmaking business from that room. She’d had a buzzer installed beside the glass door so she didn’t need to walk her customers through the house. She listed her big old industrial sewing machine on a second sheet of paper, listed her original dining suite. Its chairs were somewhere. Its table, fully extended, was buried beneath computers and a small printer.

  The day Paul and Georgie had set up that first desktop computer, they’d needed multiple power points. The library was the only room with enough. She’d had them installed for her sewing machines, iron and small heater. Still had that original computer she’d once named God. Still had her larger, more powerful desktop model. Hadn’t used it since buying her laptop, smaller but with a huge memory, which she’d needed for the internet.

  Her laptop’s lid was open. She’d used it last Thursday morning. She closed it, then turned in a circle to survey the plethora of junk she’d allowed to accumulate in here.

  One of the bookshelves had become storage space for shoe boxes full of odds and ends, ice-cream containers full of cottons, cartons of leftover wool. There were piles of magazines, a pile of knitting books – you name it and it was on those shelves.

  She’d bought a roll of twenty garbage bags at Woolworths. She ripped off the plastic and pulled one bag free, opened it and began ridding those shelves of junk, and when that bag became too heavy, she tied its load in and ripped off another. She had three full garbage bags and one wall of near empty shelves before she turned to Jim’s plastic showering chair. She listed it, and his walking frame and his raised toilet seat. The shop where she’d bought those items secondhand would buy them back. They specialised in secondhand aids for the elderly. Her phone was ringing. She allowed Jim to take the call, as he’d been doing since they’d bought the answering machine, as one by one, she dragged the bags down to lean against Lorna’s hallstand.

  The phone and its answering machine sat on Lorna’s hallstand, where its predecessor had lived, close to where Vern Hooper’s old box phone had lived. Its red light was flashing messages. They’d wait. She wasn’t in the mood to listen to more condolence calls right now. Too angry, but anger was good. It kept the tears at bay.

  Jim took another call when she felt angry enough to empty his wardrobe, where clothing had been allowed to hang long after it passed its use-by date. She sorted as she worked, pitched his new suit at the bed and stuffed an older suit into a garbage bag. A maroon cardigan, hot off her knitting needles last spring, flew towards the bed. Harry would wear it. He was of similar height to Jim and hadn’t owned a sweater that fit since Elsie put down her knitting needles. Old shirts in the bag, good shirts on the bed, two more sweaters tossed to the bed. She emptied the wardrobe then climbed onto a chair to haul his case down. Packed it one last time, not for Jim, but for Harry, who’d never been too proud to wear secondhand clothing.

  By nightfall, the entrance hall loaded with bulging garbage bags, she played her messages. Jessica had phoned twice last night, and Georgie. The estate agent had left the last message. He’d said he’d be in Woody Creek on other business tomorrow morning and would come by with his camera.

  She’d put Vern Hooper’s house and its ghosts on the market. She didn’t want it, never had wanted it, and doubted that anyone else would. A relatively modern brick home opposite the school had been wearing its For Sale sign for six months.

  To erase all messages, press erase again, the machine told her, a Yankee voice. She pressed erase again and that red light stopped blinking.

  Stood looking at the hallstand she’d seen as a goggle-eyed four-year-old the day she’d first entered Vern Hooper’s house, clinging tight to Granny’s hand. A dark house then, dark wallpaper, long dark drapes, dark polished wooden floors and dark panelling. They’d lightened it, she and Jim. They’d covered the floorboards with a blue–grey carpet, paid a man to remove every scrap of wallpaper, and had the walls above the panelling painted white. Over a period of years, she’d made new drapes for every window. It had almost become Jenny’s house until Jim had moved in Lorna’s furniture. That hallstand looked like her, tall, dominating, immovable – and antique.

  There were two antique dealers in Willama. Their numbers would be in the telephone book. She reached for it and stood flipping pages until she found the page she needed. She phoned both dealers. Neither one picked up, but she left messages, only her number and that she had a few antiques they might like to look at. She didn’t leave her name.

  A pair of antique kerosene lamps decorated the dining-room mantelpiece. They’d belonged to Jim’s mother, pretty things with ruby-glass bowls embossed with gold. Their bulbous glass shades were dust collectors – and every time she’d dusted them she’d been afraid she’d drop one, smash one. Had always liked those lamps. She’d chosen the material for the dining-room drapes to match their bowls, a claret velvet. She’d fiddled for a week to get the pelmet hanging as the one she’d copied had hung. It was a dust collector but looked good.

  Bring him and his camera in here, she thought. It will impress him.

  The agent had shown little interest when she’d mentioned that her property was in Woody Creek. He’d shown more when she’d handed him a photograph of Trudy and the twins sitting on the front veranda.

  ‘I know that house,’ he’d said. ‘It’s a fine example of Victorian architecture.’

  Old Victoria had been dead when it was built – built by Jim’s mother and her first husband. They’d set it in the centre of two large Woody Creek blocks, planted the garden, then the husband died in an accident at his mill. Vern Hooper married the widow and got to enjoy the fruits of his predecessor’s labour – and damn near killed the widow by getting her pregnant with a Hooper. Jim was delivered six weeks early at a city hospital. His mother survived the primitive operation – or she had until he’d been six.

  He’d been eight, Jenny four the first time they’d met, both of them motherless. A long and skinny, wide-eyed, big-eared goblin boy, unlike any other boy she’d known. He’d owned picture books, had bought her ice-creams. They’d believed themselves to be cousins of a kind, because Granny and Vern Hooper had been half-cousins.

  The first blackout Jenny could remember had been in Vern Hooper’s house, back when electricity was new to Woody Creek. She’d been sitting on the floor with Jim, surrounded by his books, when the cabinet wireless stopped singing and the light globe went out.

  So much for your electricity, Vern Hooper. Where do you keep your lamps? Granny had said.

  He’d lit those ruby-glass lamps, and to a four-year-old, they’d looked like fairy land.

  She’d loved Hooper’s corner in spring when the rose hedge had been in bloom. She’d loved that corner in autumn when the trees had changed their work-a-day green gowns for ballgowns of red and gold. Hadn’t loved that corner in winter. The naked grey trees had looked like ghosts and the rose hedge had been all thorns. Didn’t want to be alone here in winter.

  Lila was patrolling her fenceline when Jenny went out to bring enough wood inside to last the night. She checked the mailbox. More cards, a phone bill and a dividend. Jim had shares in a dozen different companies – she had shares in a dozen different companies.

  ‘Dinner,’ she called to Lila. She was an ou
tdoor dog, but Jenny needed her inside tonight. ‘Lila. Come in and get an egg.’

  A slave to her stomach, Lila came for the promise of an egg, and once inside, Jenny locked her in then opened a can of dog food that smelt good enough to eat. She spooned it into a bowl, garnished it with an egg, and while Lila wolfed her meal, Jenny opened condolence cards.

  She’d received one from Sissy. She’d been born to Amber and Norman, was Jim’s age, and Jenny was almost pleased to receive that card – until she read the handwritten words beneath the verse.

  May that dear man now find the peace he never found in life.

  ‘He found more peace with me than he would have with you,’ Jenny said as she walked to the stove, lifted the largest hotplate and dropped the card in to burn. She hadn’t heard from Sissy for God knew how many years, and she couldn’t even send a condolence card without adding a barb.

  Jim had become engaged to Sissy when war broke out – only because his father wanted him to marry someone with hips broad enough to birth Hoopers, and to keep Jim safe from the war. Sissy’s hips had qualified her. He’d joined the army to get out of marrying her.

  One envelope contained a phone bill. She’d need to pay the phone company a hundred and twenty dollars, but some mining company would pay two hundred and seventy dollars into the Visa account.

  Jim had a special place for his dividends and for his bills. She walked down the hallway to the library to place the dividend into Jim’s Dividend file, the bill into his Bill file, then to stand a while staring at that tower of cartons, the publisher’s name plastered all over them. She’d need to cover them before allowing that estate agent in here – or maybe not allow him to enter her junk room.

  If the house sold, her old computers would have to go to the tip. Should have gone there years ago, but God had been where that tower of cartons began – though not really. Juliana Conti, the writer’s true birth, had been at Amy McPherson’s roll-top desk.