by Joy Dettman
She glanced again at Georgie’s letter. I stole your Granny file . . .
She’d seen it ages ago. She’d spoken of that file half a dozen times. Must have made herself a copy at Christmas time when they’d brought up the second computer and were showing her how to copy the big discs onto the smaller discs.
The publisher’s offer was for three novels! What else had that bugger of a kid sent them? The Granny file might have been printable. It was Jenny’s recreation of the young Gertrude, built from Maisy’s taped monologues, from Itchy-foot’s diaries, from Granny’s own stories about the old days, and from the ever young Granny she’d known. She had a Jenny file too, and if Georgie had sent bits of that up to Sydney, she’d murder her. She changed the names in Sent in Chains. If she’d changed the names—
Maisy was working her way back. Jenny stood, passed a kiss to the owl with her fingers and was walking away when the wind or the owl or Granny whispered, I always wanted to change my name to Gloria.
‘I knew where I’d find you,’ Maisy called, and with Gloria ringing in her ears, Jenny walked up to where Maisy waited.
‘Does the name Gloria mean anything to you, Maisy?’ Jenny asked.
‘Gloria Swanson, the old movie star. We saw her on television the other night, or I saw it and Bernie slept through it.’ Maisy talked as she walked, and Jenny’s mind wandered back to the week of Sent in Chains’ release. She’d lost that week. She’d lost the next month, had lost that year attempting to drag Jim out of the pit he’d fallen into.
‘Did you see the name on a tombstone?’ Maisy asked.
‘What name?’ Jenny’s mind had travelled far from Granny’s ‘Gloria’ to possible titles. There was only one, Before Her Time.
‘Gloria,’ Maisy said.
‘No,’ Jenny said, then changed the subject. ‘They need garbage bins out here. There’s nowhere to toss anything.’
‘There’s one outside the gate,’ Maisy said. She was still hanging on to Amber’s box. ‘It’s sad when you think about it. Me and your mother were such good friends as kids and for a long time after. If things hadn’t gone like they did for her, we would have grown old together.’
‘If pigs had wings we’d call them birds,’ Jenny said.
‘She’s at rest now,’ Maisy said.
‘I hope Norman is lacing on his running shoes.’
Maisy laughed. Her laugh hadn’t aged. ‘I can almost hear your dad. You keep your distance, Mrs Morrison, or Saint Peter will hear about it.’
They laughed together then and walked on arm in arm, the wind lifting Maisy’s skirt and cutting through Jenny’s lightweight slacks and cardigan. This morning had been pleasant with barely a breeze.
‘Bernie told me to take a coat,’ Maisy said. ‘He’s a good judge of what the weather’s going to do. His father used to be too. He’d go out to the veranda, look at the sky for a few minutes, and come in and say: “There’s rain on the way. Don’t forget your brolly.” Bernie does the same thing now.’
He’d been a swine of a kid, a drunken bastard of a youth. If not for him, Jenny might have done something grand with her life. Whether he was good to his mother or not, she’d never forgive him for altering the pathway of her life. Nor would a few in town; he’d been a councillor for years, but had never been offered the mayoral robes.
‘Did you see Margot’s stone?’ Maisy asked.
‘It’s big.’
‘It cost him a fortune. I think it was his way of . . . you know, of confessing what he and Macka did that night,’ Maisy said.
‘His monumental apology?’
‘Pretty much,’ Maisy said. ‘He was deadset on having both of your names put on it. I told him a dozen times not to do it, but he did it anyway.’
He’d been apologising for years, in deed if not in word. Offering her and her kids a double-header ice-cream that day at Crone’s café, back after the war, might have been his idea of an apology. She’d ground the ice-cream and cone into his earhole – or into Macka’s. It was Bernie who’d helped her with Donny the day of Ray’s funeral, maybe another form of apology, as might have been the abomination he’d helped to construct around Granny’s hut. She’d never lived in it. Would have lived on the street with the homeless rather than in something he’d had a hand in building.
But she loved his mother – as did he – and since she’d lost her licence they’d become her private taxi drivers. If Jenny said they’d be leaving for Willama at ten and be back by three, he’d deliver his mother at ten on the dot and be waiting to take her home at three, and until Maisy’s final visit, he’d walk her to Jenny’s door on Tuesday afternoons.
‘Sorry,’ he’d said today when the pups had run inside. Every time anyone opened a door, half of them got in. Had to get that ad in the paper this afternoon and get rid of them, though maybe not all of them. Vern was on his last legs and Lorna, who John had believed to be the older of the two, wouldn’t live forever, and the thought of that yard without a red dog wandering in it was untenable. Keep Tiny perhaps, and one of the males – or Olejoe and Lila, named for Olejoe’s white goatee beard and because Lila had been tumbling him since she’d found her legs.
‘They were both good kids when I could separate them,’ Maisy said, still on about her twins. ‘It was the two together, the one egging on the other one, that got them into all of their trouble. And it was George’s doing too. After having eight girls, he thought those boys were the reincarnations of Jesus Christ himself and could do no wrong.’
No comment from Jenny. They were passing Norman and his mother’s tombstone, and the wind was making the three angels howl. From infancy, she’d loved them. As a three and four year old she’d walked out here each Sunday morning with Norman and Sissy to give Grandmother Cecelia a bunch of flowers and to visit with her angels. There’d been no question in Jenny’s mind as to where Norman should spend his eternity. In life he’d needed protection; in death, who better to protect him than his mother? She patted an angel’s head, which moss and grime had done nothing to wizen up.
‘They could use a scrubbing brush and a damn good clean,’ Jenny said.
‘Did I tell you that that young bikie granddaughter of Irene Palmer’s cleans my house once a week?’
‘Lila cleans mine,’ Jenny said.
‘You don’t pay her, do you?’
‘She gets ten dollars pocket money a week.’
They were walking by Juliana Conti’s small grey stone. It looked much as it ever had. A tenacious woman, Itchy-foot had written of her. A fiery-tempered Latina. She was in the Granny file, towards the end of it. Call her Maria. Alter Gertrude to Gloria, Vern Hooper to . . . to Raymond Cooper. Itchy-foot could become Oswald. Dr Oswald Hand. It sounded good. Amber could be a Ruby.
‘Sissy didn’t like Reg much, but she misses him – or his car. She’s having a hard time getting around lately, she said.’
‘When have I been interested in Sissy’s problems, Maisy?’
‘She’s your sister, or she was for a lot of years.’
‘Dad might have turned us into sisters if Amber hadn’t come back.’
‘She’s dead, love. Give her a wave and let your anger at her go.’
‘I never learned the art of forgiveness,’ Jenny said.
‘It’s easier on the heart than holding a grudge,’ Maisy said. ‘Grudges rust your organs – not that I’ll ever forgive that pug-faced cop who took my licence – or the woman you live with. Every time I set eyes on her I want to brain her with a blunt weapon.’
‘She’ll be gone as soon as I’ve saved enough of her pension money.’
‘How about I put it to Sissy to take her in?’ Maisy said.
‘Are you holding a grudge against Sissy?’
‘I am not. I’m thinking of her stuck in a poky little single unit some place where she doesn’t know anyone. She’s got to know the neighbours where she is.’
‘I’d prefer a prison cell to living with Lila,’ Jenny said.
She got Maisy se
ttled in the car, closed the door and walked around to the driver’s seat, imagining a unit containing both Sissy and Lila, who would jump at the chance. She liked cities. Sissy wouldn’t have a bar of her – though she might if Macka’s widow drove a car.
Kill two birds with the one stone, Jenny thought. Jenny had paid Trudy’s registration and third party insurance so John could drive her car occasionally. Had intended not to waste money on reregistering it this year. It was twenty years old, and worth nothing.
She turned to Maisy. ‘Ask her if you like.’
‘Ask who what?’
‘Sissy. If she’d like a lodger. Tell her Lila owns a car.’
‘Since when?’
‘Trudy’s. We need to get rid of it.’
Jenny drove Maisy home – and Bernie’s ute was parked in the driveway. Cursing silently as she pulled in behind it, then prayed silently that he’d stay inside until she got Maisy out.
Not bloody likely. The front door opened as she braked, and he came out, suit-clad. He’d always looked ridiculous in a suit. No neck, ape arms, too much shoulder, his bald bullet head somehow attached directly to his shoulders. He nodded in Jenny’s general direction, didn’t attempt to meet her eyes. She didn’t return his nod. Didn’t bother turning off her motor; he was big and ugly enough to get his mother out of the car. But too close while he was doing it. She held her breath, determined not to inhale the air he expelled – and her brain, momentarily starved of oxygen, brought forth an image of his monumental apology.
She sucked in a breath of Old Spice shaving cream, and breathed it out fast. So what if he had spent a small fortune on that stone? He had plenty of money and nothing to spend it on. No wife. No kids. Nothing at all. And he deserved nothing. He’d stolen her childhood—
Maybe she’d stolen more from him. His granddaughter was now a Mrs Pappadimpoppa-doppalous – something unspellable – and Bernie would never know it.
She glanced at him. An ugly, clumsy hulk of a male – but as gentle as a woman with Maisy, supporting her with a long ape arm until she was steady on her feet. He’d spend his night with her. He’d sit watching old movies with her until it was time to go to his lonely bed, where maybe he dreamed of one day wearing the town’s mayoral robes – and far better he wear Woody Creek’s chains of office than another blow-in retiree.
Jenny shook the thought away and wound the window down, sucking in untainted oxygen enough to kill that mindless ripple of sympathy in her brain stem. Why should she feel sorry for him? Because he wouldn’t even have his mother to sit with a year or two from now and nor would she.
‘See you next week, love,’ Maisy said.
‘See you, Maisy.’
He was closing the car door when Jenny’s lips, already open, allowed that ripple free. Didn’t know why she did it. Maybe because grudges rust the organs and she didn’t want her organs to rust, not yet. Maybe the ripple in her brain stem got together with the vibration from the car’s motor and forced her vocal cords to vibrate.
‘Margot would have been pleased with that stone,’ her lips said.
He stopped closing the door and looked at his mother, believing Jenny’s words had been for her. Maisy was making her slow way up the ramp he’d built for her, clinging to the handrail he’d built.
His eyes were focused on Jenny’s, needing verification that her words had been for him, and for the first time in fifty-odd years she looked at eyes like fading twin violets near buried beneath overgrown clumps of the bone-dry grass of eyebrows. And fifty-odd years was long enough.
‘She liked white,’ Jenny said.
His bullet head nodded. ‘Mum said she always liked white.’
Embarrassed by what she’d done, Jenny slid the selector into reverse, wanting that door closed now. He didn’t close it.
‘Thanks for taking her out there, Jenny. I hate going near that bloody place.’
Once she’d been Jenny, a fool of a girl. Now she was Jen, and it was well past time to let that fool of a girl go. And to let that drunken youth go.
‘She knows she’s always welcome,’ she said.
He closed the door, and she backed out of the drive, feeling light-headed. Too much oxygen, or too little. And relief, a weird sense of . . . of freedom, like . . . like she’d turned the key in the door of little Jenny Morrison’s cage and set her free.
Maybe she wasn’t too old to learn how to fly.
THE FINAL YEAR
There is a calm before a major storm, a stillness to the air. Animals recognise the signs. Birds fly home; a dog’s tail will curl between his back legs, and he’ll stay close to his people, or to the door he last saw them enter.
Jenny had felt the calm of this last year of the old millennium. She’d put it down to old age, and to Johnny Howard in the Lodge and hope of stability for Australia. Trust is an odd thing. It hadn’t been built into Jenny’s psyche. She trusted Johnny Howard and his Liberal Party.
Before Her Time had been released in ’96. She’d trusted Georgie to stand between her and the publisher. Juliana Conti, its writer, was a recluse, resided on her property in Gippsland with her husband and dogs, but it was Jenny Hooper who had drunk too much champagne at Maisy’s century party the week it was released. What a crazy, crowded, rowdy night that had been. The council had donated the hire of the town hall and the whole town was there, and umpteen dozen from out of town. Georgie and Paul and Katie had been there, to celebrate Maisy’s century, or Johnny Howard’s win, or the release of Before Her Time.
It was Granny’s story, her childhood, girlhood, marriage and womanhood, though Gloria, Ray and Oswald now cavorted between its covers. No Amber in it. Her history was too well known to camouflage so Georgie had suggested they delete her, apart from the pregnancy, which had given Gloria the impetus to escape Oswald. A miscarriage on the boat home had done for Amber.
Juliana Conti was in that book, with a name and nationality change. Maria Georgio, a Greek woman, died giving birth to the baby of Oswald, who was still a ship’s doctor. Gloria, still the town midwife, was left holding the motherless baby, which supplied a possible happily ever after ending for childless Gloria and Ray Cooper – who Jenny had left studying Juliana’s ruby and diamond encrusted brooch. Given the benefit of hindsight, Jenny wouldn’t have suggested using Juliana’s brooch on the cover.
Maisy came for her final visit in September ’97, a few days after the death of Princess Di. She’d died as she should have, in the middle of a sentence, wound up that day about that beautiful, innocent little Cinderella girl who had married her Prince Charming and hadn’t lived happily ever after.
‘It’s those little boys that will . . .’
For an instant, Jenny had waited for more. There’d been no more. No more that day, or ever. The chair that had known Maisy’s shape so well had supported her until Jenny could hold her. Jim called the ambulance, the constable and Bernie, in that order. Bernie had come fast, had come into Jenny’s kitchen, then the constable arrived. They’d waited half an hour for the ambulance, Maisy seated on her chair, Jenny on one side, her arm around her, Bernie on the other side, his ape arm brushing Jenny’s. It hadn’t mattered, not a bit, not that day.
In ’98, The Stray was released. It was the Jenny file – Jenny’s life – with alterations. As Amber had dominated Jenny’s early life, she’d dominated the early pages of The Stray. Unable to delete her, Georgie suggested they alter her name to Vera, the ex-prostitute, wed to John, a widowed country parson with three children. Thereafter, the story stuck close to the original, other than the character of Sissy, who they’d turned into twins. There’d always been too much of Sissy for one person. Jenny had left out the Sydney rape and Cara. Jim didn’t know about that and he was now her editor, and a damn good editor.
He knew she had his Memory file. She’d told him he ought to do something with it. He wouldn’t. Maybe she would one day.
Lila hadn’t returned. She’d moved in with Sissy and was still with her, and Jenny was still unable to dec
ide which one to feel sorry for. She felt sorry for herself when Lila phoned, which she did once a month when the Duckworths removed Sissy from the unit for an hour or two. Sissy placed an eggtimer beside the phone every time Lila picked it up.
Jenny lit a cigarette and turned to glance at a women’s magazine, the July issue. September now, and that magazine had lain open on the cutting table at pages twenty-two and twenty-three long enough to wear a film of dust. Shouldn’t have used Juliana’s brooch on the cover of Before Her Time. It had raised Angela Luccetto out of Sydney. Way back in ’91 when Sent in Chains was released Georgie had received a letter from her. She claimed to be the granddaughter of Juliana Conti’s sister. They’d heard nothing more from her until that magazine, which had printed a two-page spread about a beautiful Italian woman who had gone missing in Australia in 1923. Now that magazine wanted to interview Juliana, the writer – as did a newspaper.
Jenny drew the magazine to her side, wiping and blowing it free of dust. Vern Hooper’s ceilings leaked dust. She’d given up chasing it. They’d printed a photograph of Angela Luccetto, a woman who might have been forty, a blood relative – distant blood relative but, as Georgie always said, blood is overrated. They’d printed an old sepia-toned photograph of Angela’s grandmother standing with her two sisters. The one on the left was Juliana, and if there’d been any doubt in Jenny’s mind, the brooch pinned to the shoulder of her frock killed it. They’d printed a blow-up of that brooch and the brooch on the cover of Before Her Time. They were identical. Maybe the jeweller had mass produced them. He’d been dead for a hundred years or more so who was to prove he hadn’t? It would go away. As Jim was still prone to saying, all things pass.
He was eighty and he had a gammy hip now to go with his gammy leg. She couldn’t think of him as eighty, but couldn’t deny it. Woody Creek had begun its preparations for her seventy-sixth birthday party – or for the birth of the new millennium – and the year 2000 sounded like science fiction. According to the media, every computer in the world was going to crash when computer clocks attempted to turn over to 2000.
