Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  She’d seen a bit of Trudy in Woody Creek, but she’d usually been coming or going to work. She’d never called her Aunty Trudy, and how could anyone actually be expected to say Aunty Trudy. Those words didn’t fit together – which, as it had turned out, was just as well. Trudy wasn’t an aunty but a cousin.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Katie, I’ll lie down for a minute on Mum’s bed,’ cousin Trude said. ‘I worked last night.’

  Katie didn’t mind at all. Finding something to talk to her about had never been easy.

  The twins minded. They wanted to see Nanny’s bedroom.

  ‘Sit,’ Katie said, and when the door was closed, she resorted to bribery. There was a packet of chocolate buds in the fridge, cooking chocolate, but they weren’t fussy.

  ‘Why did Nanny go for . . . for holiday?’

  ‘She’s in Greece. You know about Greece.’

  ‘Daddy’s will go too,’ one of them said.

  ‘Good,’ Katie said.

  ‘Papa did go too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did him go?’

  It wasn’t up to her to explain death to three-year-olds, so she fed them more chocolate buds and thought of that funeral and how it had changed everyone and everything.

  While Pa had been alive, nothing had ever changed. It was like he’d been the keeper of un-change. Then he died, and an earthquake had changed the landscape. He’d been the keeper of a key to a sealed room Katie had always known was there, but for fourteen years hadn’t been allowed to enter. Its door was open now and the answer to every question she’d ever asked was behind it.

  Such as Jimmy. She used to believe he’d been ‘lost’ because in the old days unmarried girls hadn’t been allowed to keep their babies. It had nothing to do with that. Last night, her mother had told her all about how his aunty had stolen him, and how she hadn’t even been charged with kidnap.

  ‘Who cut your hair?’

  ‘A lady.’

  ‘Did Mummy or Daddy pay the lady some money?’

  ‘Daddy did.’

  ‘Which one are you?’

  ‘Jamey.’

  She fetched a marking pen then and marked their hands with J and R – and gave them their first reading lesson, with that marking pen on the shopping list. They took her mind off blood clots and her mobile. She checked it from time to time, just in case she hadn’t heard its beep. She heard it when her father texted.

  Still waiting for assessor. All okay there?

  GR8, Katie replied.

  Jenny used to say that training little boys was much the same as training pups. You rewarded obedience and yelled when they disobeyed, which was all very well when their mother was out of hearing range. Trudy didn’t yell. She reasoned, and three-year-olds weren’t reasonable. They wanted to go outside and they couldn’t.

  ‘We haven’t got a fence, so you have to stay inside. Do you want a video?’

  They wanted a video.

  She had a box of them in her wardrobe and chose The Secret Garden. They might have preferred a cartoon but she used to love The Secret Garden, and as she had to watch it with them, they could put up with one that she could tolerate.

  It was midday before Paul’s car drove in. He let Georgie out then went to the football. On Saturdays he usually went to the football with one or both of his brothers. Georgie had never been to a match. Katie had, but preferred not to. She turned the video off. The twins offered no protest.

  They were eating a sandwich and drinking tomato soup from mugs when Trudy came out. She ate the twins’ crusts, stole a few sips of their soup, then spoke about why she was here.

  ‘I left him in bed,’ she said. ‘We were going to drive up to Woody Creek so I could talk to Teddy.’

  ‘His back still troubling him?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘No. His cousin phoned while I was at work last night. He needed Nick to work today,’ Trudy said, and she started howling.

  Katie hit the play button and sat down again to watch the video. Eventually, the boys came to sit with her.

  ‘I need to speak to him, Georgie.’ Trudy howled, and Katie listened with one ear. She learned that she was talking about Teddy Hall, not Nick, though talking to Teddy was a serious waste of time. Katie had never heard him do much more than grunt. His wife talked, Harry talked – Lila was with Harry.

  ‘We could drive up there and stay at one of the hotel’s cabins,’ Katie said to her mother.

  ‘I’m working tonight,’ Trudy said. ‘We were going to leave early and get back before dark.’

  She looked so old and colourless. Her hair, which could look nice, was pulled back hard from her face today and twisted into a topknot, and she was wearing a baggy grey tracksuit, one that gathered in at the ankles, which looked seriously atrocious. She had interesting eyes, deep set and dark, but more sunken than deep set today – and red rimmed.

  ‘How about Wednesday?’ Georgie said.

  ‘I’m going,’ Katie said.

  ‘You’ve got school.’

  ‘I want to see Lila.’

  Katie discovered, when the boys asked her to take them to the bathroom, that the marking pen’s J and R refused to wash off, which was why the pen was called a marking pen. It would wear off, but if it didn’t before next Wednesday, then that was to the good. Trudy agreed to Wednesday, as long as they were back in time for her to go to work.

  It was four o’clock before the Commodore left for Croydon. Cooking chocolate to be wiped up then, biscuit crumbs to be swept up, old video to be wound back and put away before Georgie started looking for something for dinner.

  ‘Was Jimmy as wild as them, Mum?’

  ‘He was their age when Jenny brought him home from Sydney. I remember him being too scared of me and Margot to leave Jenny’s side.’

  ‘Will she find him?’

  ‘If he’s alive, I don’t think he wants to be found,’ Georgie said. ‘She wrote to him years ago. He didn’t reply.’

  ‘Did you write to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was seven the last time I saw him.’

  ‘How come his aunty wasn’t arrested for stealing him?’

  ‘He was sick. He needed to be in hospital and she drove a car. We thought she’d taken him to Willama. Jenny was taken to hospital the next day, with pneumonia. She was down there for weeks. I thought they were together, that she’d bring Jimmy home when she came. She didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t you visit them – while they were down there?’

  ‘It was a different world back then. The train didn’t go there and only the rich owned cars. We weren’t rich. Maisy Macdonald drove Jenny home. She wasn’t herself. Not for years. I nagged her about Jimmy and finally Granny told me that he’d gone to live with his father. That’s what we believed until Jen met up again with Jim ten years later and he told her he’d signed Jimmy over to his family.’

  ‘Why would he do something like that?’

  ‘A lot of soldiers never got over the war. He spent years in hospitals.’

  ‘I tried to interview him once for a school thing, about Anzac Day. All he said was that boys not much older than me had been used as cannon fodder by fat old men sitting safe in their city offices.’

  ‘That’s more than I’ve heard him say about it,’ Georgie said, and she looked at her mobile, like Katie, willing Jenny to text. She’d boarded her plane forty hours ago.

  ‘Trudy was going to divorce Nick at Christmas time. Why did she go back to him, Mum?’

  ‘She wanted the boys to know their father.’

  ‘If he’d really wanted to know them he wouldn’t have had their hair cut off. I didn’t know which one was which today.’

  ‘They’re having a power struggle at the moment,’ Georgie said. ‘When Trudy had her money, she had the power. I used to think that she had it all, but she looked a wreck today.’

  She turned on the television and they caught the headlines. No planes had crashed. Another suicide bomber
had blown himself up for Allah, though not in Greece.

  ‘Believing that your religion will reward you with a first-class ticket to paradise and a dozen or so virgins if you kill people sounds more like devil worship than god stuff – and not very rewarding for girls that stay virgins,’ Katie said. Georgie raised her eyebrows, and the one with the gap went higher than the other. ‘I’ve sat through enough sex education classes to know what they think they’re going to do with their virgins.’

  Paul’s football team lost, which wasn’t news. If they’d won, he would have texted Katie the second the siren went off. Both mobiles were on the table. Neither one had beeped or buzzed.

  ‘The tour guide who was supposed to meet her plane mightn’t have turned up – or his tour company went bankrupt, like that one that stranded all of those people in Bali,’ Katie said.

  There were a million things that could have gone wrong. Katie’s friend’s grandmother’s legs had looked like an elephant’s legs after she flew home from America, and everyone knew about blood clots that could go to the brain or lungs, or somewhere.

  When Georgie’s mobile vibrated, they pounced on it.

  No name. A strange number, but the text was from Jenny.

  Jen here. I’m using Daren, a Canadian chap’s mobile. Mine was dead flat when I got here. I had to buy an adaptor to plug it in and it still won’t pick up a signal. Daren is looking at its innards for me. May have to buy a new phone after all. No need to reply.

  Two mobiles beeped at nine o’clock. Phone back in business. Am in a twin cabin with a big German woman, Johanna somebody. She’s not happy. Neither am I. I expected my own cabin. Beautiful boat.

  ‘Don’t mention Trudy,’ Georgie warned as Katie’s fingers got busy.

  ‘Can I tell her we’re visiting Lila on Wednesday?’

  ‘No. She’ll know why.’

  ‘What can I tell her then?’

  She found plenty to say. They texted back and forth for an hour, just silly talk, bits and pieces about boats and the Mazda and the time in Greece and in Australia, just talk.

  TEDDY HALL

  On Wednesday they were in Woody Creek by ten-thirty, and when Jenny’s Toyota pulled up at Teddy Hall’s front gate, Lila went out of her doggie mind expecting Jenny to step out from behind the driving wheel. She could take or leave Georgie, as Georgie could take or leave Lila. She sniffed Trudy’s jeans, looked for her pups, then greeted Katie in her usual way. Since puppyhood, she’d been allowed to jump up on Katie for a cuddle.

  Teddy Hall didn’t yip with delight when he saw Trudy. He was working with tools beneath a car he had high on a hoist. And when Trudy walked the narrow track between tyres and tools to his side, he offered a wry smile and his hand, black with grease and carbon.

  ‘Vonnie was expecting you for lunch. I’ll be done here in an hour or so.’ And that was that. He returned to what he’d been doing.

  They spoke to Harry, to Vonnie for half an hour, then Teddy came in, shedding his overalls on the way. They waited while he washed his hands, then Katie walked back to the car. She’d brought a bunch of flowers to put on her grandfather’s grave.

  ‘I’m taking Lila for a walk, Mum.’

  ‘Hang on. I’ll come with you,’ Georgie said. She’d done her bit. Trudy could do the rest alone.

  They took the route Jenny had taken, over Blunt’s crossing, through the park, across the oval. They found that wrought-iron fence with its spiked top, then Georgie walked on alone while Katie placed her flowers, and Lila sniffed that fence and commented on it as dogs are apt to do.

  She saved no pee for Margot’s grave. Georgie was waiting for them beside a tall angel with spread wings. The words had been carved into the stone where her feet should have been. MARGOT MACDONALD MORRISON 11.4.39–20.12.77. LOVED DAUGHTER OF JENNIFER AND BERNARD: GRANDDAUGHTER OF MAISY. R.I.P.

  ‘Why is his name even allowed to be on that, Mum?’

  ‘He paid for it. Jen calls it his guilt stone,’ Georgie said, and she walked on down a gravelled pathway to Granny’s moss-covered stone owl, perched on a mossy stone post.

  ‘Who paid for that?’

  ‘Jenny. She ordered it the day her first husband died.’ Georgie never said Ray King’s name, or not if she could avoid saying it. ‘We had two funerals that week.’

  ‘Why an owl?’

  ‘She was a wise lady – and she liked the barn owls that nested in our old shed. They fed their babies on mice. We’d better get back and save Teddy, I suppose.’ Georgie had grown up with him. She knew that Trudy wouldn’t get from him what she’d come looking for.

  They stopped at a small grey stone with no name and no space for a name. There was space enough for J.C. LEFT THIS LIFE 31.12.23. Cut poorly into that stone, it had all but worn away. One day soon, even with imagination, no one would be able to read it. A handkerchief with those same initials embroidered in its corner still lived down the bottom of Jenny’s jewellery box, J.C.’s brooch was kept in Georgie’s top drawer, with Itchy-foot’s diaries. That stone didn’t need a name for Juliana to be remembered.

  ‘Nanny said once that she hadn’t known her mother’s name until she was twenty-two. Was it in Itchy-foot’s diaries?

  ‘The diaries weren’t posted to Jenny until after he died. He told Granny her name and gave her that photograph, with the brooch on her hat.’

  ‘Can I please read the bits he wrote about Juliana?’

  ‘When you’re thirty.’

  ‘You said before that I could read them when I’m eighteen.’

  ‘Not those bits.’

  ‘I’ll bet they’re no worse than a lot of stuff I’ve read. How old were you when you read them?’

  ‘Old enough.’

  They walked on then. Lila wanted to go home to Jenny. Her car was in Woody Creek. She couldn’t have been far away, and when they reached Teddy’s corner, she made a break for Hooper Street. Katie called her, had to call her twice before she obeyed, unwillingly.

  They ate ham salad for lunch, in Vonnie’s kitchen. The conversation centred on Jenny’s trip, on her empty house, and on the Duffy pack.

  ‘They know the house is empty,’ Teddy said. ‘The copper caught two of the younger kids poking around behind her shed.’

  ‘Kids won’t get into the house,’ Trudy said. ‘Dad had security screens installed on every window to keep Raelene out.’

  They left for home at one-thirty, Trudy in the back seat. She’d done her talking and was ready now to sleep, and was by the time they reached their roadhouse. They didn’t stop for a coffee and chips, didn’t want to wake her.

  She woke up when they turned into the driveway. She used the toilet, didn’t want a coffee, thanked them for driving her up there, then got into her Commodore and was gone, home to the twins she’d left with one of her sisters-in-law.

  ‘She expected more,’ Georgie said. Those with expectations of Teddy Hall were doomed to disappointment – unless he was working on their car. He was nearing retirement age but still the best mechanic in a sixty-kilometre radius.

  ‘Was he in love with Margot, Mum?’

  ‘He would have married her – and God help Trudy if he had.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have said that to Trudy, would he?’

  ‘Who knows what he might have said?’

  *

  Jenny’s texts kept coming, usually at night. They’d believed she’d be travelling with Australians. She was one of nine Australians. There were two New Zealanders, half a dozen Americans, Daren, the Canadian, a couple from Ireland, two Dutch women, Johanna, the German roommate, Gus, Daren’s Albanian roommate, and enough more to make her group of seniors up to forty-four – though that number shrank to forty-two before the cruise ended. One European woman was taken from the boat to a Greek hospital. Her husband went with her.

  They didn’t hear from Trudy. Harry phoned. Lila, having seen Jenny’s car, having been fed an egg by Katie, decided to move back home. She jumped Teddy’s fence.

  ‘I had to bring
her home on a lead,’ Harry said. ‘And she’s off her food tonight.’

  ‘Don’t let her die, Harry,’ Georgie said.

  ‘I’m wondering if it might be better to leave her there. She can sniff out a Duffy at a hundred paces.’

  ‘Do what you think best,’ Georgie said, and when the phone was down, she warned Katie not to pass on that bit of news to Jenny.

  ‘Did you know Norman and Amber, Mum?’

  ‘I saw Norman two or three times. I heard a lot about Amber but never saw her.’

  ‘What about Nanny’s sister?’

  ‘I heard a lot about her too,’ Georgie said. She was proofreading a contract, centimetres thick, which might stop one party being sued by another party. As a ten-year-old Katie had crossed solicitor off her list of career choices.

  ‘What was Norman like?’

  ‘A sad old man who rode a bike. He rode down one night with a gold-wrapped present for Jenny’s birthday – that blue pendant and earring set she’s still got. She called him Daddy and Jimmy thought it was hilarious that Jenny had a daddy.’

  ‘She must have loved him or she wouldn’t have kept it, or his pocket knife. How old was Jimmy then?’

  ‘Three or four,’ Georgie said, then grabbed for her vibrating mobile.

  Breakfasting with Dutch women and Daren. He’s discussing Gus, the Albanian. Apparently he snores. Johanna hasn’t complained about my snoring, but this morning she complained about the noise my laptop’s keys make.

  You can’t write a lot in a text. Katie wasn’t allowed to write the truth about Lila who was pining. She couldn’t tell her that Paul had missed out on his football match so he could drive up with them and take Lila to a vet. They didn’t have to. Lila ate half a dozen eggs for Katie, then topped up on chips and potato cakes. Katie told Jenny about the eggs and potato cakes, but not why they’d driven up there. She told her that they’d taken Lila around to sniff through the house, and while they were there, robbed the freezer. Lila loved raw meat.

  MEMORIES

  At nine-fifty on the final day of May, Cara climbed the stairs to her bedroom. The children were with their carer. Morrie and Tracy had forty-five conference guests to keep them busy. Next week was spoken for, but today was her own.