Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Her case was waiting open to be packed for Germany. She’d have four full-on days over there, would see four cities then fly home, meet Cathy and Gerry at the airport, and thereafter Cathy would control her time.

  She’d need dressed-up casual in Germany, and dressy for one evening gig. She was tossing garments onto the bed when a small and battered brown case caught her eye. It held the only memories she allowed herself to bring to the UK. Her first diary and half a dozen more, old letters and notebooks, just bits and pieces of the life she’d left behind. She had time today, so lifted it down, blew dust from its lid, then opened its elderly catches.

  The docket book letter was on top, umpteen pages of Charlie White Grocery on one side and Georgie’s print on the other. Cara had stapled them together. A shiny staple once, it was rusty now. She read the first page, then placed it on the open lid and picked up her diary from 1958. It used to have a tiny key, lost a long time ago. She’d forced its lock, also long ago. Nothing written in it that she’d needed to lock away, not many pages of it filled. She’d never been a reliable keeper of journals.

  Itchy-foot had filled thirteen diaries. Once upon a time, she and Georgie had planned to hole up in a motel room, midway between Melbourne and Woody Creek, where Georgie would read an early draft of Angel at My Door while Cara read Itchy-foot’s diaries. It never happened. His diaries would have been turned to ash as everything else in that dilapidated old house had been turned to ash.

  Flame can kill or it can cleanse. The burning of Georgie’s house had cleansed the world of Raelene and freed Tracy for adoption. Her only living relative, Raelene’s mother, located by Chris Marino, had wanted nothing to do with any child born to her daughter. Chris’ office handled the adoption.

  Fire had freed Georgie. When they’d seen her in Melbourne, she’d told Morrie that she lived at Greensborough.

  How many times had Cara attempted to talk her into moving to Melbourne and sharing a unit? ‘Margot,’ Georgie used to say. To Cara, Margot had been a reason to leave, not to stay. Be it love, pity or perhaps the early loss of her brother, Georgie had lived on in that house with Margot.

  I should have written to her after the fire, Cara thought. Or sent a card or flowers. Something. There’d been too much happening in her own life at the time. She’d been back with Morrie too, and had known she’d had to cut her ties to Georgie – not quite cut. Rusty, her first novel, had been accepted for publication and she’d patterned its redheaded heroine on Georgie. The girl in the photograph on its cover had Georgie’s copper hair. Had almost posted her a copy. She’d autographed one, For Georgie, my inspiration, Love from Cara, then changed her mind about posting it. A clean break had seemed the better way to go.

  She’d posted an autographed copy to Chris Marino. In appreciation of your support, she’d written – and had to hold her pen back from adding, I told you so. During their relationship, Chris had strongly discouraged her hopeless pursuit of publication. He’d wanted a wife to manage his home, to bear his children. He’d found one. She’d given him seven babies.

  All so long ago.

  She picked up her 1959 diary, which may have contained something of interest had she not ripped three months of pages out. Could remember shredding them, flushing them down the toilet. Dino Collins, her first boyfriend’s name, had been all over those pages.

  So many diaries she’d started, full of good intentions. Her good intentions had lasted for a few months in 1966, its pages full of Morrie. In ’67, Georgie and Morrie shared several pages and at the back, three pages of the diary were filled with Georgie’s convoluted non-relatives. Robin would have loved to get his hands on ’67.

  Could remember the night she’d filled those rear pages and where she’d been at the time – seated on the kitchen bench of her dogbox unit, beside her phone. No cord-free phones in those days.

  ‘How do Elsie and Harry fit into the family picture?’ she’d asked.

  ‘They don’t, or not blood family. Other than Jenny, Margot, Trudy and a father I’ve never met, I’ve got no blood relatives,’ Georgie said.

  Elsie Hall. Part Aborigine, raised since the age of twelve as the daughter of Granny (Gertrude Maria Foote). Elsie married Harry Hall.

  Laurence George Morgan. Father of Georgie. Address unknown.

  Edward Hall (Teddy). Middle son of Harry and Elsie, owns Woody Creek garage.

  Trudy. Daughter of Jenny and Jim Hooper.

  Raelene King, daughter of Florence Dawson and Raymond King, born during the years Ray and Jenny lived separately.

  Itchy-foot (Archibald Gerald Foote) married to Gertrude Maria.

  Amber, daughter of Archibald and Gertrude, married Norman Morrison, adoptive parents of Jenny.

  Juliana Conti, blood mother of Jenny, died in childbirth. Italian, married, but had an affair with Itchy-foot which resulted in Jenny.

  Those notes would make a novel, she thought. She was bookless at the moment. A Case Full of Memories, she thought. It sounded like a title. While she was thinking about the book idea, the phone beside the bed rang.

  ‘Are you and Dad free tomorrow? I’ve found something Dad might be interested to read.’

  Cara closed the case. She and Robin had a telepathic link and she didn’t want him gaining access to her secrets.

  ‘We’ve got a crowd here and at the lodge today. Dad and Tracy will be tied up with them until lunchtime tomorrow.’

  ‘No worries,’ he said. ‘We’ll make it next weekend.’

  ‘We’ll be in Germany. We leave on Thursday night. We could drive in earlier – if it’s important.’

  ‘It’s interesting, not important,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at the wedding. Have you got the bride under control?’

  ‘More or less,’ Cara said. ‘She’s still refusing to drive down on Friday. Will you and Sally be staying the night?’

  ‘No can do. We’ll drive down early on Saturday.’

  ‘I’ll put Cathy and Gerry in your room, if you’re certain you won’t need it.’

  ‘It’s a definite. I’m on call on Sunday. When do they arrive?’

  ‘The day we get back from Germany. Cathy said they’ll wait at the airport until our plane gets in then drive down with us.’

  ‘It will be good to hear Aussie accents again,’ he said.

  ‘Six weeks of them? Bite your tongue.’

  ‘What about Pete and Kay?’

  Pete was Cara’s favourite cousin. She hadn’t seen him for three years, and they weren’t planning to stay. They’d rented a unit in London. He’d spent several years in London. Kay hadn’t and she’d said she wanted to see what he’d got up to during his years away.

  ‘They’re flying in on the Friday,’ Cara said. ‘They’ll get themselves down here. We’ll have them for three days. We’ve got Laura and Tom down our end of the house too. We’ve run out of B&B rooms. There are Scots booked in all over town.’

  ‘I thought you’d put Laura in the regency room.’

  ‘Ian’s ninety-odd-year-old grandmother is in it. She can’t do stairs.’

  They spoke of the book tour, the cities Cara would see, not that she’d see much of them.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he said and signed off.

  He and Sally rarely spent a night at the Hall. Several times Cara had suggested that their too serious Richard might benefit from time spent with his adventurous cousins. He was a head taller than Tristan, not quite a year older, but as unimpressed by the Hall as his father, who’d been unimpressed the day he’d arrived. He’d spent his first week sniffing for smoke and leaving doors open so they could make a quick getaway.

  He’d seen the news broadcasts of the fire that killed Margot and Raelene. He’d seen photographs of what remained of Georgie’s house and refused to sleep in an upstairs bedroom. Morrie had turned a morning room into a bedroom for him, because of its access to open space. As boy and man he’d slept in that room.

  Tracy should have been the one with the phobias, but born fearless, she’d loved
Morrie’s house at first sight, had called it her princess castle and spent her first week here exploring her castle – and getting lost.

  Cara’s mind wandering in the past, she found herself staring at a lone page of a letter with no beginning and no end but written in Georgie’s block print.

  . . . was nineteen. She used to say he looked like the Angel Gabriel, had the heart of a devil and a voice that could charm the knickers off a nun.

  Cara didn’t need a name to know who could charm the knickers off a nun and she read on, seeking more of Itchy-foot.

  She found Ray King.

  She said once that she’d married Ray to get Jimmy away from the Hoopers. For a while we thought we had a stepfather. We took his name at school. I liked the sound of Georgina King, but a couple of years later she left him. The Hoopers were like a wolf pack, tracking their injured prey. That’s when they got Jimmy.

  There was more but only news of the town – and Charlie White.

  When Charlie was alive he wouldn’t give a starving Duffy a handful of flour, but since his death, he’s become the town philanthropist. He willed his shop . . .

  He’d willed his shop to Georgie, his shop and an old house. Cara wanted more of that letter. There was no more of it. She upended the case in her search for the other pages; she looked in old envelopes. In one she found a letter that mentioned a man. There’d been very few in Georgie’s life.

  He was a cop, and a good bloke. I was eighteen at the time. I didn’t know who I was and he didn’t hang around long enough for me to find out.

  Honest to a fault, Georgie. Ask her a question and she’d look you in the eye and reply – as had Jenny – and Cara could have done with less of her honesty.

  ROME

  The city is old and looks worn out but in every direction I point my camera, I’m trapping history. I should have learnt how to delete the poor shots. I was trying to get a shot of a gorgeous old fountain yesterday but most of what I got was tourists’ heads. They’re everywhere and they’ve got no manners.

  Look for a rubbish bin symbol, Katie replied. Scroll to the photo you want to get rid of and put it in the bin.

  You can scroll when I get home.

  The tour was relentless, as were the crowds, the queues, the heat. Even during the worst of Woody Creek’s summers there’d been shade to be found. Rome had no shade. Rome had blazing sun and too many stairs. Rome was wearing Jenny down. She may have been half-Italian by birth but she’d been Woody Creek raised, and Woody Creek was dead flat.

  Their tour guide, a man in his early forties, spoke English with a European accent, spoke Albanian to Gus, Italian to the bus driver, German to Johanna, and when you caught him between languages, he looked bored. His herd ranged in age from sixty-odd to eighty-three, and as with any group, cliques had formed. On the cruise two Australian couples and the Irish had cohered. Brian and Freda, also Australians, mixed with the Americans. Canada wasn’t a part of the USA. Canadian Daren had gathered a bunch of leftover women – Jenny, because he’d fixed her mobile, and two Dutch women, Eva and Bertha. He and Bertha had been everywhere. They did the talking, Jenny and Eva tagged along behind them.

  Albanian Gus walked and sat and ate alone, or those who made the mistake of sitting with him didn’t repeat the exercise. He appeared to have packed two shirts, both polyester, and if he’d washed either of them since joining the tour, Jenny would eat her hat – a white cotton thing she’d bought in Greece. Gus had a perspiration problem, which may have saved Jenny’s life the day they toured the Vatican. They’d been packed into the Sistine Chapel like Granny had packed her peach halves into preserving jars, but even in the chapel, Gus’ polyester shirt created a space.

  He was a short, round man, a bare inch taller than Jenny. They’d seen little – other than that much heralded ceiling. Gus had stopped to aim his camera upwards, so Jenny had stopped behind him and followed suit. She’d taken half a dozen good shots of the ceiling with not one tourist head in them.

  She’d texted her girls about little Gus. She’d texted about the New Zealand couple she envied. The man was eighty-three, Jim’s age. She’d envied Bertha’s huge case, or on the cruise she’d envied it. She’d had an outfit for every occasion. Jenny had packed one frock. Johanna’s uniform, day or night, was half-mast trousers, cotton shirts, boat-style sandals and a white cap. By Rome, Jenny was becoming accustomed to Johanna’s abrasive manner – and her sleeping habits. She went to bed at nine. As soon as she cleared the bathroom, Jenny set up her office in there, the toilet lid her chair, her laptop on her lap. If you’re desperate to write, you’ll do it anywhere.

  She’d given Nick a sex change on the cruise. From day one, his heavy-lidded eyes had reminded her of Raelene’s. A lot of Raelene had crept into her Parasite file and, initially, she’d made her Nick’s sister. It hadn’t worked, so she’d turned the two into one, and named her Charlene. Charlene had given Jenny’s fingers the freedom to fly – and a more complex character.

  Trudy, the hothouse plant, was in it, as Ruby, Charlene’s abused mother. Jenny had filled a lot of pages on the cruise where she’d been able to set up her laptop on a table, to sit on a chair. Not many pages had been filled in Rome. Worn out by the heat and the daily grind, she’d been ready for bed at nine, which meant that she woke too early.

  Granny used to say that the early hours of the morning were the best of a day. They weren’t in Rome. She couldn’t get a cup of tea unless she phoned down for room-service, which she couldn’t do or she’d wake Johanna. The dining room didn’t open for breakfast until seven, and Daren, also an early riser, was usually waiting for the doors to open and ready to start in again about poor little Gus.

  Jenny dodged him on her last morning in Rome, waited until his back was turned, then made a break for the front door.

  The sky already threatening to burn, she found shade against a wall and texted her girls. Couldn’t text in her room. Their beeping replies woke Johanna, and a disturbed Johanna was a step up from abrasive.

  Off this morning to see where men were slaughtered for the entertainment of Rome’s upstanding citizens. Wonder if our antecedents were the entertained or the entertainment?

  There was always a delay before her girls replied. She didn’t mind that delay. For a time she was with them in Australia.

  Katie’s texts were newsy. Georgie kept hers brief. Trudy didn’t reply this morning. Jenny waited, waited until seven-thirty, not eager for another dose of Daren and Bertha, but her need for a cup of tea got the better of her.

  Bertha had dressed for another day at Queen Lizzie’s garden party. Daren, who reminded Jenny of a bull terrier, was yapping. Eva’s mouth was kept busy by a heaped plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and tomatoes when Jenny carried two cups of tea and two croissants to their table.

  They weren’t her type of people – if she had a type. She pitied Eva, brought along as handmaiden to Bertha. Jenny ate and ran, and still no text from Trudy. She worried about her, worried about the boys while she packed her laptop into her case and then knelt on it to close the zipper. Cases had to be in the corridor by eight-thirty. The luggage would travel with them today, on a bus. They’d move on from Rome after they saw the Coliseum.

  Queued at nine to board the bus. Queued to get off. Queued to get into the Coliseum, where they climbed aged stone steps. She took too many photographs, a few might be worth keeping. When they were done with their climbing, they weren’t done. The sun now burning down, they were expected to climb a hill behind the Coliseum to see something of interest.

  Johanna, born of a mountain goat and a bison, led the herd. Rotund little Gus, born of a hornless sheep, brought up the rear. Jenny started the walk close to the guide but gave up to sit on a rock and consider what her life may have been had Juliana cuckolded her banker husband and given birth in Italy. She probably wouldn’t have had a life. She probably would have expired in infancy.

  ‘Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,’ she sang quietly as Gus
panted by.

  He had half a dozen words of English but sang more. ‘Da Japanee don ta care to. Da Chinee would no dare to,’ he sang, then smiling, tapped his chest. ‘Mad dog one, eh.’

  Jenny tapped her hat and showed two fingers. ‘Mad dog two,’ she said and returned his smile, and not the fake smile she flashed for others. Stood then and tailed him and his BO up to where the herd had stopped.

  They hadn’t reached their promised magnificent view of the ruins because the male half of the New Zealand couple had fallen. He was sitting where he fell, one of the European women examining his wrist.

  It looked broken to Jenny, who didn’t stop to stare. There was water nearby, water that appeared to be gushing out of the rocks. She needed it.

  Had she been able to read her mother’s language, she may have learnt that the spring had been blessed by some thirsting saint. It was chilled, and in a world of blistering heat, chilled spring water bubbling out of rocks deserved sainthood. She drank from it, swallowed Italian bugs, filled her water bottle with chilled Italian bugs, filled her hat then placed it full on her head.

  Albanian Gus’ hat was made of straw. It leaked like a sieve when he attempted to follow her lead, so she helped him out with her bottle of water, poured it over his hat and shoulders, then went back for a refill while Bertha tut-tutted.

  And bloody Daren asked Gus if he’d like a bar of soap. Gus didn’t understand, but a few who did sniggered.

  And bloody Johanna smiled, and bison or not, Jenny wanted to hit her – until she realised that Johanna wasn’t smiling at Daren’s humour. She walked to the water, placed her Johanna-sized camera down, filled her cap with water and placed it full on her head.

  ‘You can use the good camera?’ she asked Daren, offering her old Canon.

  He couldn’t, but the guide could. He photographed three dripping ruins against the backdrop of the ruins of old Rome, and before a pair of paramedics arrived to take the New Zealand chap and his wife away, the guide trapped similar photographs on Jenny and Gus’ cameras.