by Joy Dettman
BLOOD MONEY
Back in ’22 when Vern Hooper had bought his first car, Willama had been forty miles of unsealed road away. By 1952, a bare twenty-nine miles separated the two towns. Neither one had picked up its foundations and moved. The Mission Bridge, promised since the affluent twenties, had its official opening in January of ’52, and would have been opened sooner if the sealing of the stock-route road had been completed on time. That back road had always offered a man on horseback a faster means of getting between towns. It took the diagonal; and, as any one of Harry Hall’s kids would tell you, taking the diagonal through Joe Flanagan’s paddocks cut a quarter off the distance to school.
Give a cow an acre field of clover and she’ll still reach over the fence to find something better. Give a man or woman thirty-minute access to doctors, dentists and hospital, plus unlimited petrol to drive there, and a week or two later they’ll be demanding access to higher education for their kids.
The council bought a school bus. The garage man, who had five kids of his own, kept it in reasonable repair. When kids returned to school in ’52, seventeen Woody Creek students made the daily round trip to high, technical and Catholic schools.
The bus seated thirty. To recoup a little of their expenditure, the council decreed that adults could fill the spare seats. They charged them five bob for the return trip and a bob each for kids over the age of three. It started a stampede of shoppers. Willama had Coles and Woolworths stores, offered a choice of three or four grocers, butcher’s shops on every corner, shops selling nothing but fresh fruit and vegetables. Within a week, shoppers were required to book seats.
Mrs Crone was the first to complain, then the butcher. Charlie White’s takings were down. He was on the town council. He raised the subject at a meeting, where it was decided that too much money was being spent outside of town. By April, only adults with doctor’s or dentist’s appointments, and those with folk in the hospital, were allowed to ride the bus, and the price went up to seven and six per adult and two shillings each for kids over three.
Georgie rode that bus each morning. Teddy and Maudy Hall rode with her; Teddy only catching it because Harry forced him to. Mechanics didn’t need an education. He wanted to fix cars, drive cars. Like Joey, Teddy had his growth spurt early. Unlike Joey, he hadn’t stopped growing at five foot six. He was fourteen, and stretching fast towards Harry’s height. He hadn’t inherited his father’s colouring. He had Elsie’s dark eyes and hair and a suggestion of her darker complexion. He’d be a good-looking boy once he grew into his face. Maudy, a year Teddy’s senior, wasn’t a lot taller than Elsie. She had her dark hair and Harry’s blue eyes. Georgie, now twelve, had long outgrown Jenny and was reaching for Gertrude’s height. She was well developed for her years, looked fifteen, and caught the eye of many. Margot, still chubby, an immature thirteen, had not yet made it to high school. Sixth-grade students had to sit an entrance exam and she hadn’t passed.
In May, Jenny waited at the bus stop with the kids, Donny flat on his back in a fancy stroller. She had a doctor’s appointment at nine thirty.
Three times in her life she’d been to Willama, twice to the hospital. Little can be seen from a hospital ward. At fourteen, she’d stood on stage at the Willama theatre at night. She’d seen the theatre and that’s all. This morning, as the bus made its slow way through unfamiliar streets, Jenny’s face was turned to the window. There were hotels on every corner, an entire block of brand new houses, a flour mill, big modern garages with yards full of cars, then an entire block of shops. Was it any wonder Maisy did her shopping down here?
The bus turned right and pulled into the kerb out front of the Catholic college. She’d heard about that college all her life. Norman had considered sending Sissy there, as a boarder. He’d never offered Jenny the option. She wouldn’t have argued.
The driver helped lift the stroller down while kids jostled to get off.
‘Be here at three thirty,’ the driver said. ‘I can’t hang around.’
She’d be back. All she had to do was take Donny to the doctor then go to the bank.
Maisy had given her directions on how to get to Doctor Frazer’s rooms. She’d offered to drive her down. It would have been easier, but would have meant having lunch with one of Maisy’s daughters and Jenny wasn’t ready for that much interrogation.
Steps up to the doctor’s rooms. There’s only one way to get a loaded stroller up steps, backwards, the door held open with an elbow, then a lot of heaving. She got him in, and he didn’t like the company, and she didn’t blame him. The waiting room was packed solid with coughing kids, harassed mothers, old women and one solitary old man — the only spare chair used to prop his walking stick. She offered him the stick, and sat, plugged Donny’s wail with his dummy.
The woman on her right turned to her, rattling something in a tiny jar. ‘Me gallstones,’ she said. ‘To think I had them rolling around inside me. I had it done in Melbourne. Doctor Wilson sent me down to a lovely chap.’
Two doctors on duty: Wilson and Frazer. Jenny was seeing Doctor Frazer. He’d dragged Jimmy out of her with forceps, and, according to Gertrude, had saved her life and Elsie’s in ’47.
Chairs emptied, and filled, kids coughed, mothers wiped runny noses, Donny sang his dirge around his dummy, and Jenny watched her watch’s hands creep around to ten. So much for an appointment at nine thirty.
Ten minutes past eleven before her name was called. It had never felt like her name, felt less like it in this place, but as no other Mrs King rose, she manoeuvred the stroller through a door and down a passage behind a balding man Norman had once referred to as a callow youth. Doctor Frazer was no longer youthful.
He sat on his own chair, signalled towards the patient’s chair. She wasn’t the patient so she stood.
‘I’d like the name of a children’s specialist in Melbourne, please.’
‘What seems to be the problem?’
‘He’s retarded.’
‘Sit,’ he said.
She didn’t want to sit. Just in and out, with the name of someone who might convince Ray his son wasn’t suddenly going to stand up, walk and talk.
‘A big boy,’ he said. ‘What age is he?’
‘Eighteen months.’
He came from behind his desk to study Donny, to lift his arms, legs, comment again on his size.
‘His father is big.’
He listened to his heart, his lungs, then he sat again, asked if the boy could hold a biscuit, roll over.
‘He drinks, he sleeps, he . . . sings.’ Granny had named his throaty dirge singing.
‘Are you well in yourself, Mrs King?’
‘I’m here to get the name of someone who might convince his father that his son isn’t well.’
‘Bring him down to see me.’
‘I’ve tried that.’
‘Who was the delivering doctor?’
‘He was born in Melbourne.’
‘Was his condition explained to you and your husband at the hospital?’
She wasn’t here to tell him her life story, but gave a condensed version. ‘I was separated from my husband for five years. Donny is his son.’
Donny spat the dummy. She popped it back in, the doctor watching her, waiting for more. He had a room full of people out there, no doubt with appointments. He was already running an hour and a half late.
‘All I know about his birth is that he was born backwards. My grandmother was a midwife. She thinks the cord could have been around his neck and starved his brain of oxygen. My husband says he’s getting better and he’s not.’
‘You’re back with your husband?’
She sighed. ‘More or less.’
‘If he won’t come down here to see me, how do you expect to get him down to speak to a Melbourne specialist?’
‘He’s from Melbourne. If I go with him, he’ll go.’
‘Pop on the scales for me,’ he said.
‘I’m eight stone.’
‘We’ll allo
w the scales to be the judge of that.’
She stood on his scales, and she was a bare seven stone three. Not satisfied with her weight, he wanted her blood, wanted to know what she ate, if she was planning to have more children.
‘No.’
‘Are you using a contraceptive?’
‘No. I’m not back with him in that way.’
He told her he’d look into chaps who specialised in retardation and post her a referral. He wrote her a script for iron tablets and told her to return a month from today, told her to eat more meat, to eat liver at least once a week, and for that he was rewarded with a smile. He didn’t understand her smile, but remembered it.
‘Do you do any singing these days, Mrs King?’
The question surprised her. She shook her head.
‘My wife and I heard you at a concert, sometime before the war.’
She nodded and turned the stroller towards the door. He rose to open it and she got away. Almost.
‘I read recently that there are plans afoot to release your mother,’ he said.
‘I choose not to think about her. Thank you for your help.’
Still four hours to fill and Donny wet, and when he wet, he wet. She changed him in the doctor’s laneway, plugged his whinge, lit a cigarette and walked down to the corner where she turned west towards the town centre.
Her bank account was at the National, which, according to Maisy, was a greyish-white stone building on the corner just up from Coles. She had over four hundred pounds in that account: Norman’s three hundred and forty-seven pound investment, plus interest on it, and her own fifty-two pounds squirrelled away during her months singing at the jazz club. She planned to withdraw a hundred of it. Ray, Harry and his boys were building two rooms out the back of Granny’s house: a bedroom for Ray and a laundry-cum-bathroom for Jenny. Ray was paying for the building materials, Granny had paid for a second water tank, a big one. Jenny would pay for a bathtub, new wash troughs and pipes to connect them up to the new tank.
She found the Commonwealth Bank, also on a corner, the State Bank a few doors away, and finally the National, where Maisy had said she’d find it, on the corner not far from Coles. Jimmy had loved going to Coles . . .
She wasn’t down here today to think about Jimmy or Coles. She was here for Donny and for her bathroom.
More steps leading up to the bank, wider steps and three of them. She dragged the stroller up, through two sets of heavy brown doors and into a brown and gloomy area. Donny whined. She plugged it, and looked around for withdrawal forms. They hadn’t altered in the years since she’d last used the account. She filled one in, signed it Jennifer Morrison Hooper King, the name in her bankbook. No one waiting at the teller’s cage, she passed the book through the slot beneath the wire screen — and wondered how Laurie had robbed banks. No way through that screen — unless he’d carried wire cutters.
‘There should be a bit of interest to go in it,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been in for two years.’
He took her book down to the rear of the bank and she waited alone there, looking around, peering in through the wire. Distrustful institutions, banks. Were they in ’39? Was Laurie still out there somewhere, still stealing? He’d been twenty-six when she was fifteen. Did he still look like Clark Gable? Was he back in jail?
Minutes passed. Hoped Maisy hadn’t made a mistake when she’d paid in the cheque for Norman’s money. It was written in her book so it must have been in the bank’s ledgers. Wondered how much interest the bank had paid her for two years. At least four pounds a year. She’d have eight or ten pounds extra.
The teller was back. He needed identification. Did she have a driver’s licence?
Been there, done that. She’d come prepared. She had her child endowment book, Jimmy’s birth certificate and her own. She had Charlie’s letter of identification, written in ’47. Charles J. White, Justice of the Peace.
‘The account was opened in Sydney, back during the war. I had it transferred from Sydney to Melbourne in October of ’44,’ she said, passing documents through the slot. ‘I lost my old bankbook in ’47 and was given a new book.’
He gathered her identification and disappeared again down to the back room.
Two wire cages side by side. Only one teller working, and two customers now waiting behind her. Why couldn’t life get easy? Everything was too hard. Banks, doctors, Donny.
And he was back.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘No problem, Mrs King. Our records show that a large amount of money was paid into the Melbourne branch some time back. We’re making a phone call to Melbourne now. If you’d like to step aside for a moment?’
She stepped aside, and the woman behind her looked at her as if she was a bank robber. Look, no water pistol.
A bawling baby. ‘Shush,’ she soothed. ‘We won’t be much longer.’
It had to be some problem with Norman’s money, and without it she’d only have the fifty-two. Money had always spelt security. Did she want to spend that little security on a bathtub and pipes?
Her back to the wall, she watched the teller hand over two pounds to the woman, watched him take a calico bag full of money from a male.
Then a door opened behind her. ‘Mrs Morrison Hooper King?’
‘Yes.’
‘The account hasn’t been used for some time.’
‘I explained all that to the teller. A cheque for three hundred and seventy-four pounds was paid into it in April of 1950.’
The cry of a newborn in a small area is noisy; Donny had eighteen-month-old lungs and, according to Doctor Frazer, they were healthy. His bellow may have convinced the bank manager to give up Jenny’s money. A minute later, book, banknotes and identification stuffed into her handbag, the bank manager opened his doors for her, helped lift the stroller down his steps, eager to be rid of the noise.
She plugged it, lit a cigarette and removed ten ten-pound notes from her book before glancing at the figures to see how much interest they’d paid for the use of her money. And she was a bank robber.
‘They’re mad,’ she said.
Their total was crazy: 2,675/16/9.
She turned to go back, to tell them they’d made a mistake. Couldn’t take Donny in there. He was bellowing like Flanagan’s bull. Plugged his bellow and held the dummy in. He bellowed around it while she stared at those figures.
Itchy-foot had left her his money!
Solicitors can’t get a person’s bank account number, or can they?
Granny had given it to them. She’d known about that bankbook since the cheque for Norman’s money had come in the mail.
She would have told me.
Then she saw the date. That two thousand pounds had been paid in on 12 December 1947. Itchy-foot had been alive in December of ’47.
Cringed into the wall, knowing where that money had come from. It was the cringe she’d been carrying with her for five years. It was the hollow in her heart, the tremble in her head, and nowhere to hide from it down here. Exposed on a busy street; what she’d done exposed in that bankbook. She’d sold Jimmy for two thousand pounds. She’d sold him like Granny sold cockerels at Christmas time.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ the woman with the jar of gallstones asked.
She wasn’t all right. She wanted the wall to crumble, crush her, bury her. She’d sold him, traded her beautiful boy for . . .
‘Your baby is crying, dear.’
He wasn’t her baby and it wasn’t a cry. And Granny hadn’t given Vern Hooper her bank account number, not before April 1950. Ray. He’d been one of the devils, fighting over her soul, at the hospital. She’d signed . . . their papers.
He’s mine.
He was yours and now he’s mine.
The money was paid in in Melbourne. Ray hadn’t burnt her old bankbook. He’d given it to Vern.
‘You need to sit down before you fall down, dear.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Sorry for living. Sorry for . . .
&nbs
p; ‘There’s a café over the road. I’ll walk over there with you, dear.’
Had to shut Donny up. Had to think. She reached into the hessian shopping bag hung on the stroller’s handle, grasped a bottle. Condensed milk and water — what she’d fed Jimmy on the train to Sydney.
Stop with Jimmy!
Dragged the bottle out too fast. Dropped it. Napkin-wrapped, it bounced. The woman picked it up. Jenny got the teat into that bellowing mouth. Donny gagged, swallowed, then sucked. He didn’t grab for the bottle. Lay on his back and sucked.
Silence then.
‘The café is just down past Coles.’
Everything was just past Coles. Everyone knew Coles.
Or Jim? Of course it was Jim. He’d paid her for services rendered. That day in Sydney when he’d opened the account, he’d told her to add Hooper to the Morrison name, that he’d get the army paymaster to pay money into the account. He’d written that number down to give to the paymaster. Of course it was Jim. He had his own money.
Thank God she hadn’t gone to the funeral, hadn’t made a fool of herself. Thank God.
‘My cousin has a retarded girl,’ the woman with the gallstones said.
Jenny lifted her eyes to the woman’s face, surprised she knew Donny wasn’t normal. He looked normal when he was sucking, when he was sleeping. Granny and Elsie had known the first night they’d handled him. Doctor Frazer saw it in an instant. Ray could see it too. He saw what he wanted to see and he didn’t want to see that.
He’s mine.
‘What age is he, dear?’
‘Eighteen months.’
‘My cousin’s girl is one of those mongoloids. What happened with your boy?’
‘He’s my husband’s, not mine.’
That altered the woman’s attitude, her tone. ‘You’ve taken a lot on. They can be very hard to manage once they start running around. My cousin’s girl is eleven and, my word, does she keep her on the run.’
Jenny’s mind was elsewhere. Far better that it be Jim who had paid that money in, she thought. If not for Ray, those rooms would never have been started. If not for Ray, the new tank would never have been ordered. Far better it be Jim. His ring was loose on her finger, and no wonder. Seven stone three. Take it off, she thought. Pitch it, and get him out of your head. Can’t. Ray thinks it’s his ring.
