Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Then Val and Martin, also Australians, stole chairs from somewhere, and the six sat elbow to elbow, eating English fish and chips at a table hard pushed to seat four, while Val spoke of a neighbour who could have been the woman in The Winter Boomerang.

  ‘There can’t be two of her,’ Jenny said.

  Brian went to the bar for more beer. Freda found a biro that worked, and with a drunken flourish, Jenny autographed one of the printouts, For Freda and Brian, regards, Juliana Conti. Then she autographed the other, For Val and Martin, regards, Juliana Conti. And when her mobile beeped again, Jenny replied, Currently entertaining my fan club and drinking English beer.

  FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

  She dreamt of Jimmy, but he was Nick and he’d kidnapped the twins and hidden them in a crumbling castle, and he had Norman’s tomahawk and was splitting her own head open with it when Johanna woke her.

  ‘You are alive,’ she said.

  ‘Am I?’ Jenny asked. She didn’t attempt to rise from her pillow.

  ‘We are late.’

  ‘I’m not moving.’ If she attempted to, she’d leave her head on the pillow.

  Johanna was fiddling with her camera. ‘It is dead,’ she said. Somewhere between the mountains of Switzerland and the London hotel, the shutter of her elderly Canon had jammed open.

  ‘Take mine – and hang that Do not disturb sign on the door when you go. Camera’s in my bag. On the floor,’ with two hundred photographs on its memory card but this morning Jenny didn’t care about any of them.

  Johanna attempted to pass the bag to her.

  ‘Take it,’ Jenny said, ‘and find my Panadol. Side pocket.’

  Johanna found the Panadol before she found the camera. She popped two pills then fetched a glass of water.

  ‘Three,’ Jenny said, and she got them down.

  Johanna had the camera. ‘You trust me with this?’

  ‘Get one of Buckingham Palace for Katie,’ Jenny said. ‘Gus will show you how it works.’

  That was the last Jenny saw of Friday the thirteenth. At times beeps seeped through the fog of sleep. She didn’t rise to see who’d beeped. She was asleep when Johanna returned.

  ‘You are alive?’

  She was alive, felt drugged, but her head was back on her shoulders and she sat up to look at the shots Johanna had taken – and every one of them was a keeper.

  ‘Only nine,’ Jenny said.

  ‘I was taking more. Your bad smell boyfriend show me how to put the rubbish in the rubbish bin.’

  ‘Show me?’ Jenny said. She found a shot of snow-peaked mountains she’d taken through the window of the bus. It was no keeper. Johanna showed her how to get rid of it. They sat then, side by side on the bed, deleting the worst of Jenny’s shots.

  Hadn’t been able to stand the sight of each other on the cruise, had barely spoken a word until the water-filled hats. Had broken bread together in Venice, picnicked in Switzerland while most of the herd rode chairlifts up a mountain. Johanna had got that small needle into London. Then last night, Jenny had a hazy recollection of Johanna holding her upright on the walk home from the pub, Jenny singing, Show Me the Way to Go Home.

  While she made her way to the bathroom, Johanna phoned down for room service, a large pot of English breakfast tea, a pot of coffee, plenty of full-cream milk, crusty bread, butter, a fruit and cheese platter, and a hamburger with chips.

  A shower and head wash revived Jenny and while she was eating, more messages came through. Her girls had grown accustomed to hearing from her in her mornings and their evenings. The world had reversed that day, or it had for Jenny.

  Been down to Thames Ditton? Georgie asked.

  Tomorrow, Jenny replied. Today was my day of rest.

  Katie texted the news. Good news and bad Nanny. Trudy just told Mum she’d been in hospital with a miscarriage. The good news isn’t actually good but you’ll probably think it is. Nick’s gone missing with Trudy’s car. She asked if she could borrow your car.

  I’ll need it to get home.

  Mum’s using it until Saturday. She is getting her dent fixed.

  The room-service waiter told Jenny where to find the nearest ATM and at seven that night she and Johanna found it. It spat out ten English twenty-pound notes, which Jenny was studying when Johanna noticed a group of youths circling in like a pack of wolves on two old cows cut off from their herd. The old cows turned tail and walked quickly back to the hotel.

  They had three nights in London, the first one lost, one near gone. They had Saturday, a free day, followed by a prepaid banquet with King Henry at some nearby castle. Jenny’s English twenties would end up in the pocket of a taxi driver. She was going to Thames Ditton, whether Jimmy was there or not. Saturday was all she had left. On Sunday morning the Australian contingent would catch their plane home.

  Too well rested, she couldn’t sleep that night. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her mind back in Australia, with Lila, with Pat and Mike and the rose hedge she’d asked her gardener to prune while she was away. She had a secondhand dealer arriving on the seventeenth, and what he didn’t buy, Lenny Hall and his son would take – or deliver to the op-shop and tip.

  ‘You are sleeping?’ Johanna asked.

  Like a voice from an earlier year, her own voice asking Granny if she was asleep. They’d shared a bedroom for years. Just lying here, planning my tomorrow, darlin’, Granny used to reply – or not reply.

  Jenny considered not replying but she was wide awake. ‘Just lying here, planning my tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘You will see your son?’

  ‘He hasn’t been my son for over fifty years.’

  Silence for a minute from the other bed, then. ‘You give birth before you marry, eh?’

  ‘It was wartime,’ Jenny said.

  ‘We hear much of this, the child searching, the mother searching. There are happy endings.’

  ‘And unhappy. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth wasting all of that money on taxis.’

  ‘You are afraid he will . . . reject?’

  ‘More afraid he won’t be there – and then yes, you’re right. Afraid that if he is there he won’t want to see me.’

  ‘You have make contact?’

  ‘I wrote to him years ago. He didn’t reply.’

  ‘Perhaps he did not receive your letter.’

  ‘I used to tell myself that, but I know in my bones that he read it and wants nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Our bones are wrong many times, Jenny. With this tour, I know in my bones I will hate every day. I fight with my children when they say they won’t cancel. You want to bury me with your father, so shoot me, I am tell to them, and my last-born son say to me, “Either way, you will be very long dead, Mutti.”’

  ‘My girls told me they’d be shipping me home in a coffin,’ Jenny said. ‘I was pretty certain they’d been right when I woke this morning.’

  They spoke as friends that night. It had been a long time since Jenny had spoken honestly to a friend.

  JIMMY

  ‘Langdon Hall, Thames Ditton,’ Jenny told the taxi driver. He didn’t ask for details. She had no details to give him. She had the laminated photograph of her and Jimmy in her hand, and it was trembling. She felt nauseous with hope but knew in her head that hoping was hopeless. He’d be in Germany, and if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t want to see her. She wasn’t sure that she’d survive the disappointment, but she had money enough to get herself back to London. Then one more night and she’d be on her way home.

  Most parents believe their children are beautiful, whether they are or not. As a two-year-old, Jimmy had been beautiful.

  He’d been ten months old when she’d ridden two trains for two days to get him up to Sydney so he could meet his soldier daddy. Jim had sent money to pay for the tickets. Of course she’d gone, just for a week, she’d told Granny. She’d bought a return ticket.

  A too-short week that one. They’d gone to the station to see soldier Jim off to war, and when hi
s train was out of sight, Jenny had walked down to book her luggage through to Melbourne.

  ‘All civilian travel cancelled.’

  She could still see that youth’s face, still hear his voice, still hear irate would-be passengers’ complaints.

  ‘All civilian travel cancelled,’ he’d repeated, not giving a damn that Jenny would be stuck in Sydney with a baby, not knowing east from west, not knowing one person other than Myrtle Norris, the plum-in-her-mouth landlady, and a few of the lodgers who’d lived at Myrtle’s posh boarding house.

  Life happens. Granny used to say it was prewritten in the stars. If Myrtle hadn’t offered to babysit Jimmy on Jim’s final night in Sydney, he wouldn’t have introduced her to his army buddies at that servicemen’s club. If he hadn’t told them she could sing, his buddies wouldn’t have marched her up to the old pianist and told him that she’d wanted to sing Danny Boy. She’d sung a dozen songs that night. The army boys had kept calling out their favourites and she’d known every one, and if she hadn’t, the pianist had, and he’d had the words to it. He’d asked her if she’d sung professionally and he’d given her his name and work number. Wilfred Whitehead, who had worked in some governmental office by day and made music by night.

  Life was made up of Ifs.

  For two years Jenny had sung with little Wilfred and his band of elderly gentlemen, at weddings, parties and dances. She’d sung on Friday nights for tips at the servicemen’s club, earning good money doing the one thing she could do.

  She’d grown to love plum-in-her-mouth Myrtle, the gentle mother Jenny had never known, the doting grandmother to Jimmy. She’d looked after him on the nights Jenny sang. Then after Jim was reported missing, she’d cared for him by day while Jenny sat at a sewing machine, doing her bit for the war effort by stitching uniforms for the fighting boys.

  She’d never believed that Jim was dead, or not until her twentieth birthday.

  She sang that night in a blue–green shot taffeta frock she’d spent many hours stitching, fitting then stitching again. She’d loved it and been so proud of her first solo attempt at dressmaking.

  They’d ripped it off her, five American sailors. One of them had fathered Cara, in the sand, on a Sydney beach.

  Should have got rid of her. A girl at the factory had known where to go to get rid of little mistakes. Until her waist had started thickening, Jenny had continued to sing. She’d sat longer at her sewing machine, those Yankees’ leavings crushed behind a tightly laced corset, determined to save every penny so she and Jimmy would be safe during the months when she couldn’t work.

  Myrtle had noticed the bulge. She’d been forty, timid, barren, God-fearing, but had lied and cheated so she might have her own baby to love. She’d allowed an elderly spinster lodger to believe she’d witnessed Cara’s birth.

  She’d witnessed the mess of birth on Myrtle’s kitchen floor. She’d seen her genteel landlady sitting on bloody newspapers, that bald-headed, mewing Yankee baby in her arms. She’d seen Jenny standing at a distance, wearing high heels and makeup.

  I popped in to give Myrt some money for Jimmy’s keep and I found her like this, Miss Robbie.

  That’s how they’d done it. That’s how Cara had been registered as the daughter of Myrtle and Robert Norris, and not until three years ago had Jenny regretted what she’d done that night.

  She’d taken Jimmy home to Woody Creek when Cara was three weeks old, and every mile she’d placed between herself and that baby had been a good mile. She’d felt little guilt, had told herself that she’d given a part of little Jenny Morrison the chance of a fairytale life. Had never forgotten her or Myrtle, though not in her wildest dreams had she imagined she’d see either one of them again.

  Babies become people. People look for answers. On a stormy night in the winter of 1966, Cara Norris, schoolteacher, had stepped down from the Melbourne bus and walked into Charlie White’s grocery store where she’d asked after a Jennifer Hooper Morrison.

  Georgie was behind the counter. Georgie with her all-seeing, all-knowing eyes had recognised the dark gold of Jenny’s hair, her bluer than blue eyes. A strong strain, that of the Foote family. As Itchy-foot’s genes had overridden Juliana’s dark Italian genes in Jenny, Jenny’s had pushed aside those of five Yankee sailors. There was no doubting that Cara was a close relative to Jenny.

  They’d met twice more, before that morning-show interview. Jenny had spent a night with her in the city. Cara had been with them in Woody Creek during the search for her foster daughter.

  She’d had a son, older than Tracy. Georgie and Jenny saw him briefly on television, holding Cara’s hand while looking back at the cameraman. His hair, his eyes had marked him as Jenny’s grandson and she hadn’t known his name.

  He’d be thirty now and Jenny still didn’t know his name. She’d given up her right to know it that night in Sydney when she’d pushed his bald-headed mother into Myrtle Norris’ arms.

  She was never my daughter. I was a surrogate, that’s all, Jenny thought. Surrogates have no claim on the babies they carry. I incubated a baby for barren Myrtle and as soon as I was fit enough to travel, Myrtle paid my fare home.

  ‘How much further?’ Jenny asked the taxi driver.

  ‘Not far. We’re losing the good weather,’ he said, then asked what part of Australia she was from.

  ‘Melbourne,’ she said. Her few possessions were in Melbourne.

  They were driving down a hedged lane, barely wide enough for one vehicle but somehow two managed to pass. There was a park to her left, wide lawns, big trees, and behind those trees an old building. Not until she recognised the stone gateposts did she realise she’d reached her destination. She’d seen those gateposts in the sixties when she’d come here with Jim and the McPhersons. Hadn’t seen the trees, the well-kept lawns, the splashes of colour from garden beds.

  Jimmy could have sold the estate. New owners could have planted that garden. Cara’s bio could have been as out of date as Juliana’s.

  Same house. Same flat, stone-faced, unapproachable facade. Same disapproving windows staring at the taxi. Same big door.

  At the restaurant, she’d told Georgie and Trudy she’d squat on Jimmy’s doorstep until he opened his door. That was then. This was now. She wanted to tell the driver to turn around and take her back to London.

  No space to turn around. That tree-lined drive led to a big, old, metal-studded door. She had to get out. Had to at least ask after a Morrison Grenville.

  ‘Could you wait five minutes, please,’ she said.

  He could if she paid him what she owed, and, her hand shaking, she peeled off three English twenties. Each one was almost equivalent to an Australian fifty and more than plenty.

  ‘Five minutes,’ she repeated, then got out, adjusted her frock, put her handbag over her shoulder and walked to the door she remembered well.

  Same lion’s head knocker. On that distant day with Jim it had made noise enough to wake the dead, but the door hadn’t opened. Today, it brought two dogs running, barking at her, twin, pretty-faced, black and white dogs.

  ‘Sit,’ she commanded. They sat and laughed at her. She was giving one a pat when an elderly male came from around that same corner. He wasn’t Jimmy. He was older and only a little taller than Gus.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Morrison Grenville,’ she said.

  ‘Eh,’ he said, cupping a hand to his ear.

  She walked closer and raised her voice. ‘Would Morrie Grenville be about, please?’

  He didn’t say ‘Germany’. ‘Wedding,’ he said, then repeated the word before Jenny understood his breed of English. ‘They’ll no be back at house for a time.’

  ‘Where is the wedding?’

  ‘Church,’ he said. His expression asking, Where else, you damn fool colonial. He pointed towards rooftops, then meandered back the way he’d come. The dogs followed Jenny to the taxi.

  Jimmy wasn’t in Germany. He hadn’t sold Langdon Hall. He was at a wedding. Fighting her pounding heartbeat for ai
r, she asked the driver to take her into the town and to find her an Anglican church. Myrtle had been Church of England, Vern Hooper a Methodist.

  Cars parked nose to tail out the front of an Anglican church, the driver couldn’t park, but double parked then offered change from her three twenties.

  ‘Just your company’s phone number, please,’ she said. Cars stuck behind him, wanting to get by, he handed her a business card then cleared the way.

  Alone then, though not alone. A dozen women and a few children were waiting near the front steps of the church to see the bride, Jimmy’s daughter? His daughter-in-law? His niece or neighbour? Those women would know. They had a right to be here. Jenny had no right. She was a despoiler, there only to disrupt the lives of her lost children.

  What if they didn’t know what they’d done? A couple can live together for forty years and not know their partner’s secrets. She’d never told Jim about those five Yankee sailors as he’d never mentioned his war or his years in psychiatric clinics. He’d had shock therapy to wipe his memory clean. Jenny had never been able to wipe her memory clean of that night.

  I’m not her mother, Jenny thought. If she recognises me, she won’t admit it. That day at the television studio she must have known who I was. She’d stared when the host introduced them but chose not to expose their relationship on national television. She wouldn’t expose it today.

  Jimmy won’t recognise me. If I stand behind these women, he won’t even see me. I’ll take a photograph of him. Others had cameras. She’d be just one more local woman, here to see the bride.

  It didn’t work out that way. Her unfamiliar face, her frock or her age opened a passage between the grouped women. If not for the wind and her flyaway skirt, she wouldn’t have climbed the steps. If not for an elderly usher, who may have believed her to be a late guest, she wouldn’t have entered the church. He ushered her through and you can’t argue with an elderly Scottish usher, or not in a church doorway and certainly not when a parson is preaching, so on her soft-soled shoes, Jenny crept in, sidled into an empty back pew and sat down.