Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Every hotel on the tour had provided their guests with shampoo, and whether the entire contents of those small bottles was used or not, they were replaced daily. She wished they’d been as liberal with teabags. At any time, day or night, she’d been able to get her cup of tea on the cruise.

  Nick and his parents had coloured her view of Greece, but their problem was genetic. The Greeks in Greece had been a smiling, friendly race. She’d expected to feel that she’d come home when they’d landed in Italy. She hadn’t, but she’d walked her mother’s land – or climbed it.

  Too many shampoo suds queuing to go down the plughole, Jenny watched them and wondered again how Venice got rid of its waste. As a ten-year-old in John Curry’s classroom she’d first heard about this city built in water. From time to time she’d seen glimpses of Venice in movies and photographs but had never expected to walk its pavements.

  When that Taste of Europe tour came up on the travel agent’s computer, she’d seen the words ‘Cruise the Greek islands’ and seen the price. ‘That will do,’ she’d said. Then the itinerary arrived, and the places she’d see had blown her mind.

  She’d seen bodies turned to stone in Pompeii, learnt that Venice had been built on islands in the middle of an impenetrable swamp, built by rich merchants who’d hidden there with their loot when the hordes of marauding barbarians came. That city, built as a secure marketplace for merchants, had evolved into a marketplace for hordes of tourists. Yesterday, when they’d boarded a ferry, she’d felt like an old cow amid a seething herd of wildebeest, determined to cross crocodile-infested water.

  The shower turned off, she reached for a towel, also provided clean each day, whether used or not. She used them, wrapped her hair in one, wrapped herself in another then rinsed out her nightgown and removed the excess water from it with a towel. Draped over the shower rail, the gown would be dry by tonight.

  Her hair had grown a little, but that was to the good. Her grey roots may have grown through, but she had enough of the champagne blonde for the roots not to show.

  Granny used to colour her hair. She used to swap a few dozen eggs with old Charlie White for bottles of nut-brown dye. Grey hair is aging, she used to say. If we look old, we feel old. Jenny had paid more than a few dozen eggs for her dye job, but the minute she’d seen it, she’d been pleased with the colour.

  Back in the bedroom, the drapes still drawn, a gap of morning light was entering, so she crept to the window to open that gap a little more. Johanna didn’t move, and on bare feet, Jenny crept to her bed for her bag.

  Her itinerary, no longer crisp, promised her a pleasant walk this morning to the Doges Palace, a free afternoon and then an evening walk to the opera. She’d never been to an opera, had watched a few on the ABC, but here she was in Venice attending a Venetian opera.

  Yesterday hadn’t been an easy day. They’d caught the ferry to an island to watch glass blowers at work in a factory that looked as if it hadn’t changed in a thousand years – and she’d done what she’d promised not to do, bought a souvenir.

  Her watch told her she had an hour yet to wait for a cup of tea. Room service was only a phone call away but on her first morning in Rome when she’d made that call, she’d woken Johanna. Any odd noise woke Johanna. One eye on her, Jenny wound a window wide. She’d lubricated its hinge with some form of face cream, also provided by the hotel. Whether it was good for skin or not she didn’t know, but the window wound wide silently, and she popped her head and shoulders out and looked down on a city that appeared to have been newly roused from a five-hundred-year sleep.

  The birds had discovered it. There were hundreds of them, large, white, wheeling, calling, but not a tourist in sight. She looked at Johanna again, afraid the birds would wake her. Still no movement from that hump.

  Her itinerary placed back into her bag, she removed her camera, wanting to trap this city, as it should have been. She loved birds. As a kid she’d stood on the bridge with Norman while he’d named every bird they’d seen. She couldn’t name these birds, larger relatives of the gull, perhaps.

  A garbage barge broke into that peaceful scene. She watched it dock, aware that she was about to learn what happened to the rubbish of this waterlogged city. She photographed a barge man as he tied his craft to a pole blackened by age. She caught a group of birds swooping close to his head. That was a good shot, as was her shot of a Venetian labourer, pushing a small cart loaded with bags of refuse.

  What breed of mankind had conceived of such a city? she thought. The tour guide was informative. He had his spiels down pat. He hadn’t mentioned how those merchants had managed to barge in enough stone and cement to build this city of bridges and grand cathedrals, or how they’d managed to find foundations in a swamp.

  As the garbage barge moved away, Jenny lined up a shot of an outdoor restaurant. It had been packed the night she’d arrived in Venice but deserted this morning, its chairs resting, upended. It was a lonely shot, a perfect cover for an end of the world scenario. Maybe she’d have time to write it.

  The hotel room was overwhelmingly Venetian, ornate wallpaper, gold and white lacquered furniture and a window with a view of the Grand Canal. She and Johanna had been lucky with room allocation, perhaps because they never complained. Tour guides had power. Daren complained. Poor little inoffensive–not so inoffensive Gus suffered the worst rooms because of his roommate’s complaints. Bertha complained. Eva suffered.

  Jenny tiptoed to her laptop, set up on a white lacquered desk beside a power point. Its light had turned green, which meant it was fully charged. She had time to write, had a desk to write at in Venice but wrote in the bathroom.

  She’d taken her laptop down to a table in the dining room, but had been invaded by the Dutch, or Daren, or all three. Bathrooms were safe, if not as comfortable.

  She glanced at her watch, then silently unplugged the computer and crept with it to the bathroom where she opened her Tour file, which needed updating.

  9 June

  Hit an ATM last night, in an alleyway so narrow, those who live in it could almost reach out a hand and shake their opposite neighbour’s hand. Used my card, the guide at my elbow. Venetian ATMs are not like our own. Last night’s was black and stuck in a blank wall, no bank in sight, or nothing I recognised as a bank. I expected it to eat my card, but it spat out money. Tickets to operas are not cheap and an added extra. Daren complained. What’s new?

  Manpower means powered by man in Venice. No trucks, horses, donkeys or goats. Men push small carts, necessarily small to get through those alleys. We walked down so many alleys last night I almost asked our guide if he was getting kick-backs from various governmental bodies. Every senior he doesn’t send home is one less pension to pay, one less bed required in a nursing home.

  We left the New Zealand couple in Rome (husband with broken wrist). They were flown home yesterday. The Irish couple had to go home to bury a parent the day we arrived in Venice.

  I don’t know how Eva tolerates her patron – patron because Bertha paid for her tour – and I doubt that there is one amongst us Bertha hasn’t told, in the strictest confidence. She told me on the second night of the cruise. It’s been interesting, watching the dynamics alter. The business-class American couple, on their second honeymoon, still share a room but now sit at separate tables. Daren, so eager to befriend everyone that first night, has become too friendly with alcohol. He stinks of it.

  Johanna can down a glass of beer like a man. She’s almost as tall as Lorna Hooper, but big with it, not fat, or not excessively. ‘That abrasive woman,’ Bertha calls her.

  She was abrasive on the first night of the cruise. One wrong word and I wouldn’t have needed to jump overboard. She would have tossed me over. I spent my days on the boat dodging her and feeling sorry for Daren. Now I dodge him and feel sorry for Gus, who, apart from his sweaty shirts is a lovely little bloke.

  Lila got into my head yesterday. We saw an old busker making bad accordion music, a red dog at his feet. Gus and I gave
his owner a handful of coins for his dog, not his music. Gus left his dog with a neighbour and his wife in care. She’s in a wheelchair. We communicate now with signs.

  I found out last night why that final place on this tour came up on the Willama travel agent’s computer. Johanna told me that her children had booked the tour months ago, for their father’s eightieth birthday. He died five days before Jim. The kids cancelled his ticket but refused to cancel Johanna’s, which would have been around the time I booked. I’m over here because her husband died – not that I told her so. She asked me when I booked. ‘Six months ago,’ I lied.

  Jenny took a breather, to straighten her back. Toilet seats would never take the place of her cushioned office chair, and the laptop felt warm. She stood, placed it on the seat and thought of Vern Hooper’s bathrooms. She had a choice of two at home, and both would take what was in this room three times over –

  With one God-almighty stroke of a biro, I signed those bathrooms away, she thought. Would I have done the same thing today? Maybe not. I can’t live in Melbourne. Buy a modern one-bedroom unit in Willama, maybe.

  She squatted to close the file, to close the program, then close the computer. The dining-room doors would be opening soon. She returned the laptop to the desk to cool down before it had to be packed.

  There was a bubble-wrapped parcel on the desk, a glass unicorn, a perfect object that would probably lose its horn or tail when she packed it. She could take a photograph of it looking perfect, so she unwrapped it and brought it to the window, where she stood it on its four dainty hooves.

  It was barely eight inches long, including its horn and tail. She’d been foolish to spend so much on it – though Jim would have paid its marked price – as he’d paid the marked price for her nightmare snakeskin handbag, which was why that nightmare had been so real. When she’d admired a ridiculously expensive pair of shoes one day in a city store, he’d wanted her to buy them. She’d learned not to window shop when he’d been at her side, or what windows to shop in. She’d dragged him into that travel agency more than once to admire travel brochures. He hadn’t taken that bait.

  He would have loved Venice. He would have loved the old glass factory. Its entrance fee had been included in the tour price, though she would have paid it three times over, would have sat gladly all day watching those artists turn red-hot molten blobs into magical creatures. The show had ended too soon and her group was herded out to make way for the next herd.

  They’d been guided down an ancient passageway to a heavy door Jenny had expected to lead back into an alley. It opened into a showroom, filled floor to ceiling with glass of every size, shape and colour. It took her breath away – as it was meant to.

  Half a dozen crocodile salesmen and women waiting there to feed on tourists, she’d kept her distance from them and the glass until the unicorn caught her interest. She’d been studying it, wondering how its maker had added the golden flecks to his flowing tail and curled horn when a crocodile approached, picked up the unicorn and offered it to her.

  ‘I’m too far from home,’ she’d said. Too far, and if she happened to get home, it would only be to hand over her keys – and the price of that tiny thing was ridiculous. She’d turned away to find the exit, her mind back with boy Jim.

  He’d introduced her to unicorns. He’d come to the station one day to show her a book Margaret had bought for him. She could still see his long fingers turning those perfect pages, still hear him explaining why the white horse had a horn in the centre of his head. ‘He’s a unicorn,’ he’d said. ‘A magical horse who can grant wishes.’

  Fifteen years later, she’d been in Sydney, Jim missing in action, and she’d found an identical copy of that book at a street stall. It had been like a message from him, telling her he was alive. She’d bought it, for him and for herself, not for Jimmy, who would have preferred a book about cars. Still had that book, packed safe in a carton in Georgie’s garage. If she’d believed she could get that unicorn home intact, she might have paid the asking price.

  The salesman followed her with it, and he dropped his price. She spoke to him near the exit, explained she was from Australia, was midway through a tour and had no space in her luggage for souvenirs. She’d thanked him then walked out to the pavement.

  He knew his job. He’d dropped his price again.

  We all have our price. She’d paid it and walked away from that factory with her bubble-wrapped unicorn in her green nylon shopping bag.

  She photographed it three times that morning, from different angles, then rewrapped it and placed it with her laptop, which would have enough charge left in it to share breakfast with her, and again she unzipped her green pouch shopping bag.

  No Daren, no Dutch waiting at the dining-room door. For half an hour she drank tea, ate croissants and typed in peace, in comfort until a message beeped through from Trudy.

  Tessa on life support. She was supposed to fly tomorrow.

  *

  You can see one too many grand old palaces. You can also have too much company, and on her final day in Venice, Jenny begged off the tour to spend some time with her Parasite file. Its word length crept up to thirty thousand before Johanna returned. ‘Canada will fly home in the morning. They have changed his flight,’ she said.

  ‘Daren?’ Jenny asked. Johanna spoke English well enough and, like Jenny, had been introduced that first night to their fellow travellers. She’d never troubled herself with names. She’d named Bertha ‘The Dutch’.

  She’d been shopping. She placed a bulging supermarket bag on her bed. ‘He is making argument now because he must pay extra money.’

  ‘I’ll pay it,’ Jenny said, stretching her aching bones while watching what emerged from that supermarket bag – apples, tomatoes, a circle of cheese, a loaf of crusty bread. And butter, and a knife to cut the loaf and to spread the butter.

  ‘You found a supermarket!’ she said.

  ‘Venetians also must eat,’ Johanna said. ‘There was no peace today. There will be no peace down there.’ Dinner was prepaid tonight, in the dining room. ‘You will eat with me.’ It was more statement than question, but for a slice of that loaf, a wedge of that cheese, Jenny would have sold her soul to the devil. She closed her file, closed her laptop and they ate at the desk, their plates ripped from the supermarket bag, their serviettes, a spare toilet roll. They hacked rough slices from the loaf, took turns with the knife to spread butter, to slice tomatoes, to peel then cut the apple in half, and when they were done, Jenny used the knife to trim her mutilated ring fingernail while Johanna watched, frowning.

  ‘I rammed a splinter of wood under it the day after my husband died. I thought I saw him walk by the window.’

  ‘Every day I see my William in his garden. I am here because he is there,’ she said and shrugged broad shoulders.

  ‘I sold my house three weeks after Jim died.’

  ‘You book also for him?’ Johanna asked.

  One lie always led to another, so she told the truth. ‘He refused to travel,’ Jenny said. ‘I nagged him for years.’

  They shared the last of the cheese with wine and beer from the mini-bar, small bottles, expensive, which raised the question of ‘Canada’s’ mini-bar bill.

  Johanna’s case, small enough to travel as cabin luggage, contained no frock. She changed her half-mast trousers, removed her cap. Her grey crew-cut didn’t require a comb. She didn’t change her bulky sandals. Jenny changed into her one frock, changed her shoes. She’d squeezed in a pair of lightweight soft-soled things that did double service as slippers. They looked better with that frock than her solid walking shoes.

  A pleasant evening stroll to the opera, the itinerary said. Johanna strode up front, Gus huffed and puffed at the rear, Jenny stuck close to the guide. There were stairs to climb but a handrail to cling to. Then more steps to climb down and no handrail, but once seated, she was transfixed.

  The tenor sounded like Itchy-foot. She hadn’t raised Juliana’s ghost in Italy. She’d ra
ised Itchy-foot’s. He’d sung that tenor’s song at the Hawthorn Town Hall and if she closed her eyes she was back there and twenty-three again.

  She’d sung with him later that night and when the audience had demanded an encore, he’d drawn her back on stage and they’d sung Ave Maria. They hadn’t rehearsed it but had taken their bows to thunderous applause.

  Always take your bows, Jennifer.

  As a girl he’d called her Jennifer. She might have been ten years old the first time she’d seen him, when to her he’d been another old tramp who’d wandered into Woody Creek and stayed for a while. She was twenty-two when Granny told her that her philandering husband was Jenny’s biological father.

  She hadn’t touched him until that night when he’d taken her hand to lead her back onto the stage. Granny had never trusted him – nor had Jenny, but if she’d run from Armadale to him instead of running home to Granny, she wouldn’t have lost Jimmy.

  That philandering sod I married, Granny used to say if forced to mention Archie Foote. That philandering sod had a voice that could charm the natives out of the jungle.

  He would have been in his late seventies or early eighties when Jenny had known him. He’d got her work, singing at a sleazy jazz club, but he’d looked after her there and that club had paid her well. He’d sung at that club and as soon as he’d opened his throat his age had become irrelevant. She’d felt no daughterly love for him but had loved his voice.

  Granny was nineteen, he twenty-three when they’d married. They’d remained married until his death, but spent all but seven years apart.

  That philandering sod was directed early into doctoring – expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. He came alive on stage but never gave a damn about doctoring, Granny once said.

  He’d never mentioned Granny but had spoken often of life. ‘We each get one chance at it, Jennifer. We are each an accident, born of lust, each allocated a certain number of years before we die like weeds in the great garden of life. Don’t waste your allocated years as I wasted mine.’