Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Only forty heads to count when they boarded the bus for Pompeii. The air conditioner blasting cool air, Daren providing the entertainment. He’d found a seat opposite the guide and was demanding to be moved into the New Zealand couple’s empty room. The guide’s microphone was turned on. Every ear and hearing aid on the bus heard him.

  He was still at it that evening but didn’t get the New Zealanders’ room, and at breakfast time he smelt of alcohol.

  Jenny and her camera were both suffering from an overload of the incredible before the bus moved the remaining forty on. Johanna carried spare rolls of film for her camera, and when one roll was full, she popped it out and inserted a new one. Jenny’s fool of a camera had a memory card, a tiny thing she’d watched Katie insert. By Pompeii, she was becoming concerned about her memory card running out of memory.

  She was concerned about her beige slacks too. They kept sliding down. She needed elastic to run through their waistband but had seen no shop that might sell it – and needles and thread.

  They boarded another plane that evening. Bertha flew business class, as did a second honeymooning couple of Americans. The tour price had included economy flights and, on the flight to Venice, Jenny wished she hadn’t upgraded. She had undiluted Bertha all the way.

  They misplaced little Gus at the airport. Daren looked happy for the twenty minutes it took the guide to locate his missing sheep.

  Another bus. Another queue, and the Venice Jenny had read about didn’t have buses, or roads or massed greenery. She photographed the road and the greenery through the bus window. The bus took them to water, where they were herded off the land bus and onto a water bus. She hitched up her slacks, found a seat beside Gus and breathed through her mouth, not her nose – as she’d learnt to do during Sissy’s early teen years – before Amber introduced her to underarm deodorants.

  Gus’ camera was the same brand as Jenny’s, as new but a slightly larger model. They were comparing their cameras, she attempting to ask him about memory cards, when they heard sirens. She stood to see a road. Saw only water and buildings with water lapping at their doorsteps. As their water bus moved to the side of the canal, Jenny and Gus found a space at the railing in time to click at two speedboats going by, their sirens wailing. They were crewed by helmeted firemen.

  She got one perfect shot of the Venetian police boat following the firemen. Somehow she managed to frame it against a bridge. It was a keeper, and an accident. Most of her better photographs had been accidents. The lights were on in Venice. She’d caught their reflections in the water.

  She trapped more of Venice before their craft got to where it was going. She clicked at a gondolier in a striped t-shirt. He was singing a love song to his passenger while standing, poling his upturned-nosed craft down the canal. She trapped multicoloured buildings, flowers blooming in pots on narrow pavements, a boat parked at a watery front door. As the water bus docked, she exchanged her camera for her mobile, and uncaring of what the time might be in Melbourne, she texted all three girls.

  I’m in Venice and it’s magic land.

  No replies. Her girls would be sleeping.

  The guide and another man helped her to dry land, or to a pavement. There was no land. There was water, buildings, pavements, an outdoor restaurant where the diners sat bare millimetres from water. Jenny photographed the diners and the black-clad waiters until the tour guide shepherded her with his flock into another hotel foyer, where they queued for another key-card.

  No key-card tonight. The guide handed her a key, an actual key that turned in an actual lock, its large room number and a red tassel attached to it. No chance of misplacing it in her crowded handbag, and in the foyer of that pink hotel, Jenny fell head over heels in love with Venice.

  CATASTROPHE

  Trudy wasn’t in love. She’d told Nick this morning that he’d need to cancel his holiday plans, that his mother was incapable of flying. She told him to take Tessa to her doctor, that her mind was going. She told him to speak to his sisters about selling the house, that Tessa needed to be in care.

  He’d walked away from her.

  ‘Your sons are afraid of her. I’m afraid of her,’ she’d said, then played her trump card. ‘I’m pregnant, Nick.’

  ‘Who is the lucky father?’ he asked, and continued out to the garage. She hadn’t slept with him since her father’s funeral.

  ‘You can’t take the car today. I’ve booked it in for a service. It needs an oil change and new wipers.’

  He didn’t care about oil or windscreen-wipers. He didn’t care about her or the boys. He might have cared about his mother. He liked her house. He liked her money. She’d paid their fares to Greece. When her mind was clear, Tessa spoke of Greece and her sisters. Trudy had heard her speaking to one of them on the phone two nights ago and she’d sounded normal. She wasn’t. Tonia and Angie knew it and they saw less of her than Trudy saw. She’d forget that she’d eaten breakfast, forget that she’d taken her pills, forget that Trudy was her Nicky’s wife.

  Jenny could have been right about his plan to leave her with her sisters in Greece, out of sight, out of mind. He had power of attorney.

  He could no longer get at her money. Tonia had seen to that. Her father had made her executor of his will. Her father had left instructions that the bulk of his money be placed in a trust account, accessible only to the girls. It paid the bills, paid Tessa a monthly allowance. He must have known that Tessa had been losing her mind when he’d died. He must have known his son too.

  Nick took the car and left the garage door open.

  Cold out there. Melbourne’s winter had struck with a vengeance. Trudy closed the big door then returned to the kitchen where she listened for Tessa. Some mornings she slept late.

  The boys never slept late. They were upstairs, and needing sleep, she offered them a video.

  They didn’t want a video. Their ears as attuned to Tessa as her own, they knew she wasn’t in her kitchen, which meant they could play outside. She got their parkas, got her own, and took them out to the patio so they could kick their ball, climb, do what little boys do.

  They were still out there when they heard Tessa, rattling around in the kitchen.

  ‘Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said and went in to dole out pills and cereal, high blood-pressure pills with Tessa’s breakfast and a Valium, and she was almost out of Valium. It kept her calm – or calmer.

  ‘Sit down, Tessa.’

  Tessa didn’t sit. She wanted her Nicky.

  ‘He had to go out. Take your pills.’ Mobile beeping in her parka pocket, Tessa standing at the fridge. ‘You don’t need anything in there. Sit down, take your pills and eat your breakfast, Tessa.’

  She wanted her laxative. If she didn’t explode every morning before breakfast, the world might end. Trudy poured a dose of the laxative into a measuring glass and placed it beside the cereal before reading the message.

  It was from Angie, Nick’s youngest sister.

  I can’t raise Nick. Is he with you there?

  He went out, Trudy replied.

  Has he cancelled Greece?

  No.

  Do you know where he is?

  No.

  You need to make him cancel.

  Was that worth answering?

  Angie and Tonia had killed Nick’s dream of a big insurance payout for his back. They’d trapped him on video, twice. He hadn’t spoken to either of them since.

  A text had come from Jenny in the night. I’m in Venice and it’s magic land.

  Trudy didn’t reply to it either. Venice had been her downfall. She’d argued with Sophie there. They’d been friends since their early days at high school, but in Venice Sophie changed her ticket and flew home.

  ‘Three’s a crowd,’ Nick had said.

  He’d told Trudy he’d loved her in Venice. She’d slept with him for the first time in that city.

  ‘Don’t be taken in by his pretty face,’ Sophie had said. He was her cousin. He had multiple cousin
s.

  Sophie had introduced them, at Kew. They’d been painting Lorna Hooper’s kitchen when Nick and Sophie’s brother had arrived with a hired trailer. They’d stopped painting to load tons of newspapers and assorted junk. The boys had gone, and Trudy hadn’t expected to see Nick again.

  He’d been a beautiful-looking boy, but just a boy, still at university. He’d come back alone and knew how to use a paintbrush, so they’d put him to work. He’d been painting the lounge-room ceiling when the agent came to value Lorna’s house.

  Should never have sold it. Her father had told her to rent it out until she’d needed it. It was Nick who’d encouraged her to sell.

  She’d paid Sophie’s fare to Greece. She had a grandmother still living there and relatives willing to give them beds.

  Sophie’s relatives were Nick’s. He’d decided to go with them.

  ‘What about your uni?’ Sophie said.

  ‘I’ll take a year off,’ he’d said.

  His mother paid for his flight. She hadn’t given him spending money, but Trudy had so much from the sale of that house that for the first year her account had seemed like a ‘forever ham’. Cut a slice from it and it grew back. They’d had a brilliant twelve months – until Venice.

  She read Jenny’s message again and couldn’t think of a reply – and her battery was near flat.

  Her charger was on the kitchen bench. She plugged it in, looked through the window where her boys were kicking goals. Tessa’s cereal had become soggy. Her pills were still waiting. She was still demanding Nicky.

  ‘He’s at work.’ He helped out a cousin and was paid enough to spend on his back. She and the boys didn’t see a cent of what he earned. She turned on the jug, reached for coffee mugs. Tessa didn’t want bloody Australian coffee. She preferred Greek coffee, grounds boiled on the stove.

  ‘Go for your life,’ Trudy said in English, and she went outside to her boys. She was tired. She was always tired. She’d reached the stage of exhaustion where the body takes over and snatches sleep where it can, and within seconds of sitting on a cold padded chair, her chin dropped.

  On some level she may have heard the smash of china, the thump, but the boys’ ball was hitting against the fence, so she slept on.

  ‘Her felled over, Mummy,’ Jamey said. He was standing on the outdoor table, looking in through the window.

  She stood to lift him down. ‘That table is made out of glass. Glass breaks, and when it does, it cuts very deep,’ she said, then, opening the sliding door, she stepped from wintery chill into summer heat.

  No Tessa in the kitchen, or Trudy didn’t see her immediately.

  She was on the floor in front of the sink, on her stomach, her legs asprawl, her dressing gown showing more than was fit to be seen by little boys. They’d followed her inside. Tessa’s upper thighs and backside had more meat on them than a side of beef.

  ‘Outside,’ she said. Then, ‘Can you get up, Tessa?’

  No screeched reply. Not a grunt, and Tessa wasn’t all that was on the floor. There was spilled stew and shards of china everywhere. ‘Get outside,’ Trudy said. ‘And don’t climb on that table.’

  They’d backed away, but the boogieman was silent. They didn’t back far.

  ‘Tessa!’ The dressing gown pulled down to cover her bare backside, Trudy reached for a side-of-beef arm. ‘Tessa!’

  There was no response. Nothing. She got down to her knees then to feel for a pulse on the wrist, almost hoping she didn’t find one. A fast death would be better for her and her family than the slow deterioration she’d been witnessing since March, when she’d diagnosed early stage Alzheimer’s. Tonia and Angie agreed with her diagnosis, Nick and the other two girls refused to see it.

  There was a weak pulse at Tessa’s throat and Trudy stood, stew on one knee of her tracksuit. Not a priority, not at the moment. She reached over her mother-in-law to get her mobile.

  ‘I told you to stay back,’ she said to Jamey. ‘There’s stew everywhere.’ It had been in the fridge the last time she’d seen it, in a casserole dish, ready to place in the oven for tonight’s dinner. It was on the floor, on the white cupboard doors, on the refrigerator’s twin doors.

  She dialled triple zero and wiped her knee with the kitchen sponge while waiting for a voice at the other end.

  ‘Ambulance,’ she said. ‘Possible heart attack or stroke.’ Waited then, and the smell of spilt stew raised the urge to vomit – as did the smell of boiling coffee grounds. She turned off the hotplate, knowing she should have been over the morning sickness by now – and the knowing made it worse. There was something wrong with this baby.

  Finally, a voice prepared to listen. Trudy knew the patient’s history, her date of birth, was able to give the medical names of the patient’s many medications. She didn’t mention early stage Alzheimer’s, did mention the patient’s excessive weight.

  ‘The ambulance is on –’ the voice began then died.

  Trudy looked at the phone. It was plugged in. It was also dead. Her eyes followed the cord back to the power point. Too much on her mind. Nick, car, boys, baby, windscreen-wipers, work – and that lingering nausea; she hadn’t turned on the power. Stepped in stew to reach it, wondered if she should dial triple zero again. It would take a while to trickle enough charge into it, and the ambulance was on its way, so she squatted to feel again for that weak pulse.

  ‘Did her go to sleep like Papa?’ Ricky asked.

  ‘She slipped in the stew and so will you,’ Trudy said. ‘Go outside and play with your ball.’

  Slipped and hit her head? No blood. Had a stroke and dropped the stew? Her heart had given up the battle? One way or another, she was down and out – and Trudy didn’t care. She didn’t. She should have. It was her job to care, but this morning she cared more about that stew.

  There was a full roll of paper towels on the bench. She reached for it, ripped off half a dozen sheets and used them to wipe her knee then the soles of her shoes. She checked the soles of the boys’ shoes then began wiping her way back to Tessa. When that bunch of paper towels would wipe no more, she ripped off a second bunch.

  Scooped up carrot rings and shards of broken china, pitched what she’d scooped into the sink. She’d used most of that roll of paper towels before the doorbell sang its song, and did what she could to cover Tessa’s thighs before opening the door.

  Two men, one built to handle this morning’s job. She led them through to the kitchen, then took the boys into Tessa’s sitting room. They would have preferred to watch the live drama than a midday show with commercials.

  ‘Find something,’ she said and handed Ricky the remote.

  Tessa’s landline was near the stairs. She’d have to phone Nick, or Tonia. She’d be at work. All four girls worked, as had their father. Nick hadn’t inherited the work gene.

  ‘Stop supplying a crutch and let him fall over,’ Tonia had said two days ago.

  ‘He’s got no intention of taking that miserable old bitch to Greece. It was a con to get her to pay for his holiday,’ Angie had said, a fourth daughter, a disappointment. She claimed that her parents had hated her since infancy – for being born without the required male equipment.

  Trudy used to see herself as the mother of three little girls. This one could be a girl. A scan would tell her. A scan would tell her if it was developing as it should. At times she was petrified that it wasn’t.

  Nature set women up. It got their hormones raging when they were most likely to conceive. She knew to the hour this one’s conception, to the half hour.

  She hadn’t seen Nick in months the day he’d turned up in Woody Creek in his father’s Range Rover. She’d told Jenny to lock the doors, then walked over to the hotel to speak to him.

  They hadn’t lived together as husband and wife in three years. The twins hadn’t known him. Divorce had seemed the only way to go.

  ‘My father died,’ he’d said when he opened the cabin door.

  ‘We saw his death notice,’ Trudy had said, then
raised the subject of divorce. ‘It will be simple. Any money I’ve got, I’ve saved since we separated.’

  ‘We have two sons,’ he’d said.

  ‘You’ve had minimal contact with them, Nick. You’ve paid nothing towards their support – and knowing your work record it’s unlikely that you’ll ever support them. I’d want sole custody, which won’t mean that you can’t see them if you want to.’

  It had gone to script until she was about to leave for work, when he’d put his arms around her and howled on her shoulder. He was the only man she’d ever known to cry. Of course, she’d held him. Of course, she’d comforted him. She’d walked him to the bed, sat him down and sat with him, soothing, talking, explaining how little boys needed stability; how the life they’d lived before the boys hadn’t been reality.

  ‘Some of it was fun, but life has become very real since the boys were born.’

  He’d been the first man she’d slept with, the only man. That day in the cabin he hadn’t forced himself on her, not entirely. She’d tried to fight him off, initially. A woman of forty was at her sexual peak, so she’d read somewhere. She’d been celibate for three years.

  *

  The paramedics, having moved Tessa onto a trolley, had exposed more spilt stew and one of them stepped in it. She reached again for the paper towels, wiped up a footprint, another carrot ring, while answering their questions.

  They’d masked Tessa, wired her up to a machine. Her breakfast and pills still on the table, Trudy swept four pills into her hand. The boys had given up on midday television to stand in the doorway watching the paramedics at work.

  ‘Papadimopolous,’ Trudy said, then spelt Papadimopolous. Spelt it again while looking at the multicoloured pills. Tessa wouldn’t be taking them. She tossed them into the sink, then walked over to her boys to stand between them, brushing their twin spiky heads with her hands.

  They’d had thick, dark hair, with Nick’s slight curl. He was losing his. His father’s head had resembled a billiard ball – with wrinkles. Nick knew what was in store for himself so took his sons out to Eastland and got rid of their hair.