The Tying of Threads

by Joy Dettman

  ‘What was going on in those mothers’ heads?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Religion is a drug to some,’ Nobby said. ‘They get hooked on it.’

  Until the night of the kidnap there must have been twelve or fifteen families living out at the commune on Monk’s land, worshipping marijuana – or hooked on it. A few had followed their leader to jail since the drug bust.

  Tony Bell and his wife’s names on the deeds to that land, they’d pleaded guilty and been sentenced, he to five years and his wife to fifteen months. Most in Woody Creek knew the Bells were not the front men, that they’d been paid plenty to plead guilty. Tony Bell couldn’t have found two pennies to rub together when he’d moved to Woody Creek in the early sixties. A few in town swore that Dino Collins had been one of the Bells’ backers. He’d never been short of money and had been hanging around Woody Creek long before the Monk property changed hands. He’d built a cabin out there. The truth might come out at his trial.

  On their fourth night in Ringwood, Jenny was sound asleep and dreaming of a younger Margot when she heard Jim yell, ‘Get down, you crazy bastard!’ Then crash!

  He was a sleep talker, a walker too, and in his dreams he had two legs. At home they slept in a wide double bed pushed in hard against the wall, Jim boxed in by Jenny. Nobby’s twin beds had a chest of drawers between them; she knew what had happened before she turned on the light. Found him on the floor between the beds, and when she couldn’t rouse him, she called Nobby.

  He came, Rosemary came, Jim came around. They got him back onto the bed, and he’d damn near knocked his eye out on the corner of those drawers. They fetched cotton wool and sticking plaster. Jenny wanted to take him to the hospital, but Jim would refuse to see a doctor even if he was dying of the plague. They patched him up, moved the chest of drawers, moved Jenny’s bed in hard against his, and by five were back in their beds.

  She couldn’t sleep. She blamed the Jonestown poisonings for Jim’s nightmare, the dead babies, the pictures of the dead – or being with Nobby. Jim might deny all memory of the war by day, but it came back to haunt him by night.

  What little she knew of his war years had come to her via Nobby. He’d been with Jim until a bullet shattered his kneecap and bought him a ticket home. From Nobby, who’d contacted Ian Hooper, Jim’s cousin, she’d learnt that Jim had spent the years between ’47 and ’51 in private sanatoriums, and in one of those places he’d had shock therapy, which Nobby claimed could wipe the memory clean.

  Jim wasn’t in court to hear Jenny give her evidence. Rosemary went in with her, on the train, and it became a day Jenny would have liked shock therapy to wipe from her memory. That night she packed their case, and before dawn they left for home, she behind the wheel. Jim’s right eye was blood red and closed, his artificial leg travelled home in the boot. He’d jarred his knee, or the stump beneath his knee, when he’d fallen.

  For three more days they followed the trial in the newspapers and on television and when the jury was sent off to deliberate, Jenny expected a fast decision. Two days later they were still deliberating.

  ‘Jack Thomson said it would depend on the jury they picked,’ Jenny said. ‘His solicitor picked a mob of bleeding hearts. They’ll let him off.’

  She’d seen the pathetic shape of Dino Collins strapped into a wheelchair, complete with oxygen bottles and a businesslike nursing sister, and the swine had stared at her for the hours they’d kept her in the witness box, his barrister calling her a liar – or damn near.

  She’d kept repeating herself. It was all she could do. She’d said she’d seen enough of Dino Collins in the past ten years to recognise his shape on a pitch dark night, and that the night hadn’t been dark. She told the jury there’d been a slice of moon and that every light, inside and outside the house, had been turned on. She’d told them that she’d parked her car with its nose to the fence, that the fence was four feet from the house. Told them too that she’d heard Raelene scream ‘Dino’, and that as a fifteen year old kid, Raelene had introduced Collins to her as Dino.

  She didn’t get to see Cara, who’d done her time in the witness box the day before Jenny. The newspapers printed a bad photograph of the woman they referred to as Mrs Grenville and printed a transcript of her evidence. She’d spoken of ‘Dino’ Collins, of how, twenty years ago, he’d boasted to her and her school friend about taping the family cat into a cardboard carton when his elderly aunt had been hospitalised. She’d spoken of his years of harassment. He waited until I had something precious to lose, then he took it, she’d said.

  He’d given evidence and he wrote good fiction, or his barrister wrote it for him. Jenny read every word of Collins’ story, and that of the two fishermen who swore he’d been with them the night Tracy was taken.

  ‘He’ll get off,’ Jim said. He was back on his crutches, one leg of his trousers flapping in the breeze – and still refusing to see a doctor.

  ‘He had drugs in his system when he crashed the car, the same drugs they found in Tracy – and you’ve probably damaged your knee. You need to have it x-rayed,’ Jenny nagged.

  ‘It will heal,’ he said.

  ‘You’re as pig-headed as your father!’ she said, frustrated by him, and by that jury who’d seen the pathetic shell of the swine, his scarred jaw, one side of it sunken, half of his teeth missing. He’d been a good-looking boy when she’d met him – a boy to her, but years older than Raelene.

  One more day she waited, then after all of the effort, after all of that money wasted on judge, lawyer and jurists, the headlines in the morning newspaper screamed COLLINS JURY DISMISSED. UNABLE TO REACH VERDICT.

  She pitched the newspaper at the wall. She’d seen him! The car he’d crashed on Mission Bridge had been registered to Raelene King, and he’d been the one who had shot those drugs into little Tracy. Raelene, never an intellectual giant, wouldn’t have had brains enough to know how much heroin would kill a four year old girl. Lies or not, wheelchair or not, he was as guilty as sin.

  ‘The brainless, bleeding heart fools,’ Jenny ranted.

  ‘They saw a man crippled for his love of a pretty girl, a man accidently caught up in a crime he hadn’t known she’d committed, Jen,’ Jim said.

  ‘Stop being so damn logical. And he’s got a record as long as his arm.’

  ‘And he’s strapped into that wheelchair for life. Let it go.’

  ‘You let everything go, and I can’t. He was there, and he damn near killed a little girl and probably screwed up her head for life – if she didn’t come out of it with brain damage.’

  She was ranting when the phone rang, and if it was someone wanting her dressmaking services they’d chosen the wrong day to call.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, her tone saying a lot more.

  ‘So what happens to the mongrel now?’ the caller asked.

  ‘Georgie?’ Jenny screamed down the phone line, the dumb jury and Collins forgotten.

  ‘Deafen me, why don’t you.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Up where the diamonds grow.’ For an instant Jenny visualised a diamond ring on her finger, then Georgie killed the image. ‘I’m working at a roadhouse. Won’t be for much longer. It’s as hot as hell up here.’

  ‘Up where?’

  ‘The top of Western Australia.’

  ‘What are you doing up there?’

  ‘Slinging hamburgers, and stop wasting my coins and tell me what’s going to happen with Collins.’

  ‘Nothing, and that’s why I’m screaming.’

  ‘What’s happening with the shop?’

  ‘I’ve sold it, but it won’t be legal until your signature is on the papers. When are you coming home?’

  ‘Send me what you want me to sign, care of the Perth GPO. I should be down there in a week or two.’

  ‘I’ve been worried sick about you. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Seeing the country.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Across the Top End, halfway down the middle. You name
it.’

  ‘You could have sent us a card.’

  ‘You’ve been nagging me for twenty years to get out of town and do something. You’re never happy, mate.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sparking on all six cylinders.’ Jenny heard a match strike, almost heard the exhalation of smoke, and she reached for her own packet. ‘My ute’s temporarily out of action,’ Georgie said. ‘I put a rock through the sump out near Wittenoom.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Up here. It ran out of oil and fried the motor. The roads up this end are worse than Woody Creek’s.’

  ‘Are you coming home?’

  ‘Not today – and this thing swallows coins faster than Shaky can—’

  And no more. Jenny stood listening to a dead line, willing Georgie back. The line remained dead. She placed the phone down and, for an hour, waited for her to call back. She didn’t.

  On Monday morning, Jenny posted a manila envelope containing a five-page letter, Georgie’s replacement driving licence, notification that her three-year term deposit had matured, also a batch of papers from the solicitor, a pencilled X marking the places requiring Georgie’s and a witness’s signature.

  Two days before Christmas, the signed papers were returned, with a Christmas card covered front, back and inside with Georgie’s large script.

  A FORGIVING SOUL

  In January of ’79, N. and B. Wallis brought in the wreckers to get rid of Charlie’s veranda. It raised a minor dust storm and a lot of talk, though not on Charlie’s corner. Few could believe that the new owners had got rid of that corner veranda. Through the years a lot of information had been passed on there. The Duffys’ dogs, grown accustomed to watering the many veranda posts as they wandered by, missed it. They walked with heads and tails down, mourning the loss of those leaning posts.

  Then the painters came to town. They were followed by shopfitters. Then Charlie’s twin green doors gave way to one sliding glass door, and in place of his rusting cow bell’s familiar clang, an eardrum-blasting electronic buzzer now informed the town that a customer had walked into Charlie’s.

  Old men keeping an eye on the destruction of a landmark, as old men are apt to do, had that door rumble open for them as they walked by, and even the stone deaf amongst them jumped when the electronic buzzer went off.

  With the newly painted west wall now taking the full brunt of February’s afternoon sun, the Wallises and their new refrigerated cabinets sweated. Two weeks after the automatic door went in, a blast of cool air started coming out each time the door beeped. Cool air dies fast on sunbaked pavements.

  Their green doors stolen along with their veranda posts, the Duffys’ dogs lifted their legs to introduce themselves to the glass door, and the unfriendly bastard beeped and disappeared. One of the more elderly, his bladder weak, hopped on three legs to the doorframe, and the sneaky glass bastard attacked him from the rear. What was a dog expected to do other than fight back? Duffy dogs, who fought in packs, attacked that door, the door beeped in dismay and the barkers, aware they had it on the run, urged the fighters on, while Duffy kids, dodging around and over dogs, got in and out with what they could. It was a self-service supermarket, wasn’t it? A full-page spread in the Willama Gazette had advertised its grand opening specials.

  Given time and enough phone calls, the Willama dog catcher arrived to deal with the dogs. The local constable dealt with the kids – or didn’t deal with them. His predecessors may have manhandled them, controlled them with threats of dire punishment. Back in the old days, police had been expected to keep the peace. Let them draw their batons these days and screams of police brutality rang in the ears of television viewers for days. Kids thumbed their noses at police now. They called them Pig.

  Until March that glass door rumbled open for every man, woman, kid, dog and magpie in Woody Creek, then the chap who had installed the thing came back to have another go at it. Thereafter, the door didn’t open as readily. He didn’t tone down its beep, but ears accustomed to screaming mill saws five days a week became accustomed to one more noise.

  New paint, new door, new freezer cabinets and glass counter wouldn’t wipe Charlie White’s name from the collective memory of the town, nor could a cash register that spat out curled slips of paper with every purchase.

  ‘Nick up to Charlie’s for me, love, and get me a packet of Rinso,’ the women said.

  Maisy drove to Willama twice each week but never shopped there. She attended the Weight Watchers meeting on Tuesdays, had lunch with Rachael, watched Days of Our Lives, then drove back to Woody Creek for afternoon tea with Jenny. On Fridays, she had lunch with Rebecca and watched Days of Our Lives there. On the other days, she walked down to Blunt’s crossing, then down North Street to the butcher’s, the newsagent’s, then continued on to White’s Street, over Charlie’s crossing and back to South Street where she picked up a few items from the supermarket, then walked home in time for Days of Our Lives.

  Or that had been her habit until the B half of the Wallis duo called her an interfering old biddy and told her to mind her own business, and Maisy told her that she’d never darken her door again, and that unless she changed her attitude, no one else would either.

  ‘All I tried to explain to her was how none of the businesses tried to cut the throats of the other businesses,’ Maisy explained – to everyone.

  The altercation didn’t alter her habits, or only one of them. She took great pleasure now in walking by that beeping door, her nose in the air.

  There’d never been a skerrick of harm in Maisy Macdonald. She talked too much, but rarely had a bad word to say about anyone. For sixty of her eighty years she’d congregated with the women beneath Charlie’s veranda, catching up with the news, or passing it on.

  They congregated now beneath the smaller veranda of the post office where a self-sown tree, growing for years between that veranda and the house Norman and Amber Morrison had once called home, offered an extra pool of shade where the women compared notes and tut-tutted about B. Wallis’s poor attitude. The police station cum residence was on the corner directly opposite that tree, and on the other corner, the town hall, the park, then Maisy’s house.

  She loved her house. She’d watched it grow from the ground up – sixty-eight years ago. At the time she’d been sharing a bed with a miserable old bugger of an aunty, and if anyone had ever wondered why a sixteen year old kid had married near forty year old, bald-headed George Macdonald, they need look no further than Maisy’s miserable old bugger of an aunty who had taught her how to dodge a broomstick and not much more. Maisy hadn’t been searching for love when she’d married, only kindness. George had been kind.

  He’d been sex starved too. He’d given her ten kids in little more than ten years. He’d also given her the second best house in town in which to raise those kids and, in it, everything that opened and shut. Given space to grow, she’d grown up with her kids, and grown to love their father.

  There were better houses being built in town, modern houses, but not in the centre of town. Two lovely homes had gone up recently in Slaughter Yard Lane, a new street built to give access to the Bowling Club. Melbourne retirees liked a game of bowls. Maisy had given their bowling balls a try the day the club opened. They weren’t her cup of tea. There was a cluster of new brick homes where Stock Route Road ran into Blunt’s Street, and fifty per cent of their owners were Melbourne retirees. Maisy and a few of her cronies welcomed each new arrival to town. A few returned the visit. A lot more didn’t. A few shopped locally. A lot more didn’t.

  Maisy wasn’t the only woman who kept an eye on the time while she chatted, nor was she the only one who never missed Days of Our Lives. She was home with time to spare, time to make a cup of tea and take her pre-prepared salad from the refrigerator. She’d learnt that trick at Weight Watchers, to pre-prepare. If you knew it was waiting for you in the fridge, it stopped you from grabbing something easy.

  She’d been watching that show since episode one, and
it was like visiting with friends now. The credits were still playing when the phone rang. She’d trained her girls never to phone for the half-hour her show was on, and whichever one it was now had timed her call to the second. Without rising, Maisy reached for the telephone.

  The long-distance STD beeps suggested it was Maureen, her only city daughter, though Maureen usually called after seven when phone calls were cheaper.

  ‘What is it, love?’

  ‘Is that you, Maisy?’ a stranger’s voice enquired.

  A not so strange stranger’s voice. For an instant, Maisy remained silent, her mind sifting stored information for the name that went with that voice. Some eighty year old minds grow dim, even wander off to the fairies. Not Maisy’s. She’d had her finger on the pulse of this town since she’d stopped sucking it.

  ‘That’s not you, is it, Sissy?’ she asked.

  ‘How did you pick me?’

  ‘They tell me I’ve got a good ear for voices,’ Maisy said. All seven of her daughters sounded much the same, but she could pick each one of them on the phone. She could pick the voices of most of her cronies, and how could she ever forget Sissy Morrison’s? For twenty-odd years she’d heard a lot of it. ‘What a lovely surprise,’ she said.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to be in touch with my mother, would you?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘Amber?’ Maisy asked, confused by the question. ‘Why on earth would I be in touch with her?’

  ‘I couldn’t think of anyone else who might be,’ Sissy admitted.

  ‘I haven’t heard a word about your mother since she went missing from that place in Brunswick. Someone contacted me about her then, but that was years ago. She’s probably dead, love.’

  ‘She’s not. I’ll swear that I saw her at church last Sunday with Lorna Hooper,’ Sissy said.

  And Maisy laughed. ‘That would be a day I’d like to see. From what I remember, Lorna used to cross over the road if she saw your mother coming, and that was before your father died.’