Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the prettiest boy of all.

  She continued brushing spikes until one small hand caught hers to still it. She kissed that warm little hand and wondered if Tessa died today, would the twins remember more than the paramedics and their trolley?

  They remembered Papa’s go far. Had photographs of them and Papa riding in circles on the front lawn, and a bad shot of Jenny lifting Ricky down.

  ‘Don’t you point that thing at me,’ Jenny had said to her.

  I’ll have some news to text to Venice, Trudy thought, when the trolley was wheeled out. She had stew footprints on the carpet too, but when the front door was closed the spray cleaner removed the stew.

  ‘Run up to your room and get a video. We’ll play it on Tessa’s television.’

  She mopped the kitchen to the music from The Lion King, her boys content to sit through that one again and again. She mopped the cupboard doors, the refrigerator, the tiled floor, and when the kitchen smelt clean, when her mobile had enough charge, she phoned Nick.

  He didn’t pick up. She left a message, and seconds later he called back. He was vetting his calls. Who didn’t he want to hear from?

  ‘What happened to her?’ he asked, and she told the condensed tale of her day.

  ‘Let your sisters know.’

  ‘I’m not phoning the bitches. You’ve got their numbers.’

  They were all bitches, Tonia because she was married to the brother-in-law who owned the taxis, and because she and Angie had trapped him on video, loading crates into the back of his cousin’s vehicle. Once not enough evidence for Tonia, she’d got him again at Bunnings, loading the boot of the Commodore.

  ‘They’re your sisters. It would be better coming from you – and cancel your flights. If you do it today, you’ll get a part of the money back.’

  He hung up.

  She didn’t phone his sisters. She sat on the couch, closed her eyes and was dead to the world when The Lion King ended.

  ‘Is Daddy home?’

  ‘No.’

  She called him again. He didn’t call back. She called Tonia, who was unaware of today’s catastrophe, and not pleased to have been kept in the dark for so long.

  ‘Nick knew. It was his place to call you,’ Trudy said and ended the call. She’d slept for almost two hours and felt worse for it. She needed eight solid hours of dark, silent sleep, in her own bed. And her bed was gone, her home, her father – and her mother gone to Venice.

  Been there, done that, Trudy thought, and she took the boys out to the family room where she served them cereal for lunch. They liked cereal. She didn’t phone the hospital, didn’t reply to Jenny’s text, instead she found a kids’ show on the ABC. The twins weren’t fussy.

  Nick came home at five to change the channel to a pack of bunched-up cyclists, pushing uphill, as interesting to little boys as watching the front lawn grow.

  ‘What’s wrong with your mother?’ Trudy asked.

  ‘What did they tell you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Have you called the hospital?’ he asked.

  ‘I called Tonia. Where have you been all day?’

  He looked at her briefly, before turning the volume higher, and in that moment perhaps she saw what Jenny had seen in his eyes. Snake eyes, she’d called them. In Venice, Trudy had described them as dreamy.

  He had an obvious bald spot on the back of his crown. She’d paid for an expensive hair treatment in London. It hadn’t worked.

  The boys had gone upstairs to play dinosaurs. She went out to the kitchen to take a container from the freezer. Just soup. She placed it in the microwave, selected defrost, then while it hummed, she walked through to the laundry to get a load of washing started.

  His pigskin jacket, bought in London, for the equivalent of five hundred Australian dollars, was on the machine. Someone else hung up Nick’s clothing. Tonight she tossed it on the floor and heard the jangle of car keys. There was more than her car keys in its pocket. He’d bought a new mobile a few months ago. He liked the best, the best mobile, the best brand-name jeans and sneakers. She looked at her parka, hung on a hook behind the door. It was as light as a feather and warm as toast but she left it hanging, and as the microwave beeped, she slid her arms into pigskin, then opened the door to the garage.

  Cold out there, his jacket was cold – and restricting, but she hit the remote-control button and the big door opened. He must have heard it, or heard her car start up. He could move fast when he wanted to.

  ‘I need that car,’ he called. She selected reverse. ‘I need to see Mum tonight.’

  ‘You’ve had all afternoon to see her. Feed your sons.’

  He opened the door on the driver’s side, but her foot was on the accelerator and she bore down. Forced to decide between getting the car keys and being crushed against the garage brickwork, he released the door. It slammed against bricks as she roared too fast out to the court, where she rammed the stick into drive. The door swinging wide, she drove out of the court before stopping to close it. Had to slam it three times before it closed. Too early to go to work, not clothed for work, and she’d left her boys alone to absorb his anger. She didn’t turn back, but out of habit, drove towards the place where she was still Sister Hooper.

  ‘Don’t trust him, Trude,’ Sophie had warned.

  She’d trusted him. She’d trusted him to use a condom and had to marry him because he hadn’t. Shouldn’t have. Should have bought a ticket home. Her mother wouldn’t have cared if her grandchild was born in or out of wedlock. Her father would have. There’d been no grandchild, not that time. She’d lost it at eleven weeks.

  And Nick had been relieved. ‘A kid is the last thing we need,’ he’d said.

  A kid. A thing. It had been a little girl to Trudy. She’d mourned that little girl for months.

  They’d been happy in France. They’d been in Spain when she’d told him that they’d need to move to the UK so she could get work. They’d killed their forever ham. Every slice she’d cut from it in Spain had made it smaller.

  He’d worked for a month in Manchester. She’d worked there for twelve months, then moved on again. They’d seen the northern lights in Norway then flown back to Greece. Plenty of relatives in Greece with spare beds and food in the fridge but little money. She’d become concerned about money.

  Had got work in Greece, caring for the aged, and been desperate to get him out of that country. He’d been in with a bad mob of cousins. She’d applied for and secured work in Scotland. A cold place, Scotland. He didn’t like the cold. They’d argued the night before she’d left. That was the first time he’d hit her. She caught her plane, and for five months she’d been alone and at peace.

  He’d turned up when summer came. She’d been sharing a tiny unit and refused to open the door.

  He’d found work as a barman and kept coming back. Her roommate moved on and Nick had moved himself in. She’d got herself a prescription for the pill.

  When her period had been late, she’d blamed the pill, blamed it for her sore breasts, blamed it until she’d felt that flutter of butterfly wings. A scan exposed the two tiny beings inside her.

  She hadn’t told Nick. She’d given notice at the hospital and booked her flight home. Should have crept away like a thief in the night, but that had never been her way. She’d told him. He’d told his parents. They’d paid his fare home, and on the same plane.

  Trudy met them at the airport. Tessa was overweight, her English was poor, but otherwise she’d seemed . . . normal. Old Nick, an alpha male, Trudy’s relationship with her father-in-law hadn’t begun well. In his native tongue, he’d offered his opinion of her, so in the same tongue, she’d explained that the skinny old Australian bitch had hired a car, that she would be driving it home to her parents in the country, but that Nick was more than welcome to drive home with his parents.

  ‘Lovely meeting you,’ she’d said, then left them standing, Tessa’s arms wrapped around her prodigal son’s neck
.

  He’d shaken her off to follow Trudy and her bank card. His parents followed him. His father was loud while she’d waited to pick up the keys to the hire car. His mother howled because Nick was going with his skinny old Australian bitch.

  He’d expected to drive the hire car and got into the driver’s seat.

  ‘My name is on the insurance. They have my bank card details. Out, please.’

  ‘You let her talk shit to you?’ the alpha male said.

  Nick rode in the passenger seat to Woody Creek and he’d laughed at her town. She’d been pleased to see it until she’d seen the age of her father. She’d left a grey-headed man and returned to a white-headed cripple. Nick saw only the cripple and Jenny’s car, and her car keys on the kitchen bench. The hire car returned to Willama, they’d been home for less than a week when he helped himself to Jenny’s keys and disappeared for two days and a night.

  It was never a good idea to get on the wrong side of Jenny. She’d aged in years but her tongue still had a bite.

  Women didn’t speak to Nick as she’d spoken to him that day. He’d caught the bus home the next morning – to resume his university course, he’d said.

  His father offered him labouring work at a building site. Nick didn’t soil his hands with labour. His brother-in-law offered him a job driving a taxi. His mother gave him money, and he disappeared.

  The twins were a month old the day his parents drove him to Woody Creek to collect his wife and sons.

  First love doesn’t die easily. You can tell yourself it’s dead, but hope lingers, as do the memories of the good times. There had been good times. His parents had driven him to Woody Creek a second time, then he’d driven up alone.

  She’d been late to work that day and had been aware that she may regret sleeping with him. Had missed out on the drama of the Range Rover.

  Nick’s relatives had arrived in Woody Creek – Nick’s nephew, his brother-in-law, Tonia and the nephew’s mate. Jenny spoke to them through a locked security door, certain they’d come to take the twins. All they’d wanted was the Range Rover Nick’s father had willed to his grandson.

  Before her period had been seriously overdue, Trudy had known she was pregnant. Unable to admit it to Jenny she’d decided to get rid of it, to drive down to Georgie – but she couldn’t tell her either. Georgie had prepared the divorce papers.

  Then there was that cancelled appointment with a visiting hip-replacement specialist. Her father had needed that operation. Jenny knew he’d needed it but had allowed him to cancel.

  The loss of that appointment had become a vent for Trudy’s self-directed anger.

  ‘You’re a stubborn, selfish old man,’ she’d said, and when Jenny leapt to his defence, she’d turned on her. ‘He’ll have both of you in a nursing home inside of twelve months.’

  That’s what she’d said, and more, too much more. She hadn’t mentioned her pregnancy. Hadn’t mentioned abortion.

  Fate, or God, or whatever name you gave it, made her decision. Nick had been working. He told her that he needed her in his life, that he wanted to know his sons.

  It was an out, and that was all it was. It was a bed for her and the boys. It was time, space in which to decide whether to have that baby or not – and if she slept with him in Croydon, she could admit to being pregnant.

  ‘We’ll come down for a week,’ she’d said.

  Hadn’t told him to use a condom, nor had she looked for an abortion clinic. Hadn’t gone home at the end of that week. He’d been making good money. The house was incredible. Then she’d met Margaret Morrison.

  Tessa had screeched Greek at the boys, but they hadn’t spent a lot of time in her display house. Trudy had taken them to visit her old friends. She’d phoned Sophie. They’d met for coffee.

  ‘I thought you’d woken up to him,’ Sophie said.

  ‘He wants to know his sons. He’s working,’ Trudy said.

  ‘I’ll give him a month,’ Sophie said.

  He’d run into a tram. Then that late-night call. Her father was dead. She’d told him she was sorry – when it had been too late.

  Rain now whipping her windscreen, she turned on her wipers. One scratched more than wiped, and she sat forward. If she’d dropped the car off at the garage today, that wiper would have been replaced. She’d lost today – as she’d lost most of her days since her father’s death. Not lost, just thrown them away, on him, on Tessa.

  Papadimopolous. How many times had she repeated that name today, over the phone, to the paramedics? No one could spell it. Her boys couldn’t say it – and she didn’t want them to learn how to say it. They could say Hooper. James and Richard Hooper. That’s who they were.

  She made a right-hand turn off the highway, then drove on towards the hospital. She found a park, backed into it, and the wipers stilled. Rain thundering down, she sat imagining what her life may have been had she flown home with Sophie, had she not sold Lorna Hooper’s house.

  Georgie and Paul owned their own house. Two years ago, they’d put their excess funds into a rental unit in Prahran. She had nothing. Had no purse tonight, no driver’s licence, no money, and she was wearing a stained tracksuit beneath his pigskin jacket. She had his mobile and reached into the pocket.

  She read her last text to him and his reply. She read Angie’s three texts. He hadn’t replied to his sister. There was a text from a number, no name. Did you get the money?

  He’d replied to it. I’ll have it by the tenth. Stay cool.

  What money? She’d paid his cocaine supplier eight hundred dollars in Greece – after he’d threatened to take it out of Nick’s hide.

  Who did he owe money to?

  There was a simple way to find out. She called that unnamed number.

  ‘What’s up now, babe?’ a female voice replied.

  DAWN IN VENICE

  Jim was with her. He wasn’t using his walking frame, but walking tall behind the guide as they were led through rooms of multicoloured snakes. It was a factory where they made snakeskin handbags, and in her dream Jim bought one. She tried to stop him. It was too expensive. She couldn’t read its price tag but there were four figures, confused as all that was written was confused in Jenny’s dreams.

  The bag was small. She opened it, wondering how she’d squeeze the contents of her old bag into it, and he tossed her old bag into the canal. Her passport was in it, her ticket home, her mobile, the photograph of her and Jimmy she’d carried for fifty years. Everything she was was in that bag. ‘Turn around,’ she screamed. ‘We have to go back!’ And he laughed at her. The canal was too narrow to turn around.

  She woke with his laughter ringing in her ears and she hit her damaged fingernail while reaching for her bag. Every nerve in that finger screamed, but her bag was where she always left it, on the floor, with her shoes, beside her bed. She held it to her racing heart as she turned towards Johanna’s bed. Apparently her dream had been silent. The hump of Johanna hadn’t moved.

  Her mobile, along with too much more, was in that bag. She slid the top zipper and, without needing to remove the phone, she could see the time. Too early yet to get out of bed, so she lay down again, the handbag under the quilt.

  Jim used to tell her that she’d carried her life in her handbags. He’d been her life until he’d thrown himself into the creek. Was it any wonder he’d thrown her bag away in dream? She drew a breath and held it for the count of ten then did it twice more. She’d lived without him before. From the age of nineteen to thirty-five she’d lived without him – and she would again.

  Look what I’ve seen, she thought. She had a camera in that bag full of the places she’d seen, and tomorrow she’d see Switzerland. She’d find Jimmy too. There were trains to Thames Ditton. She’d get herself down there and this time he’d be at home.

  Her glasses were on the bedside table. She reached for them and put them on to reread yesterday’s messages, their glow shielded by her bag. Like little letters, texts, they could be enjoyed again and again.
/>   She’d sent a few to Katie yesterday.

  I feel like the bunny in the Duracell battery advertisement, the one powered by batteries from the two-dollar shop. Jenny bunny is slowing down while Johanna bunny, powered by Duracell batteries, keeps powering on.

  She had nothing in common with her roommate, other than their recent widowhood, but since the day of the water-filled hats they’d been communicating. She now knew that Johanna had two daughters and three sons. Johanna knew that Jenny had two daughters and a son living near London.

  By the light of her mobile she found the photograph of her and Jimmy, a professional study, taken in Sydney. John McPherson had made three copies of the original. She’d had one laminated so it wouldn’t wear away in her handbag. Jimmy was almost two years old when that photograph was taken. She’d been nineteen.

  Had meant to get a family shot when they’d lived in Armadale, when he’d been a little schoolboy, but professional photographs had cost money and she’d been struggling to feed her kids. By the time she’d been making her own money, she hadn’t had the time.

  She had an out-of-focus shot of Jimmy at fourteen and one of him blowing out ten candles on a birthday cake. Jim’s cousin took those shots – and Jenny hated that cousin because he’d been allowed to watch her son grow.

  ‘They’ve raised a fine boy,’ he’d said that day.

  They, Margaret Hooper and her husband. They may have loved him. They had educated him.

  At the television studio when Georgie introduced Juliana Conti to a grey-headed stranger, he’d sounded like an educated Englishman. Jenny, gasping for a cigarette, hadn’t looked twice at the stranger until he’d offered his hand, Jim’s hand. She’d known him by that hand before she’d seen his little boy Jimmy smile.

  One more week. Her two-dollar-shop batteries would get her to London.

  She closed her bag, placed it beneath her pillow, then eased herself out of bed, and in the near dark, felt her way along the walls to the bathroom door. It was open. She closed it behind her before seeking the light switch. Its cleansing flood of white light washed the last of that dream away. A hot shower and a head wash would recharge her batteries.