by Joy Dettman
The car was waiting where they’d left it, and hot. The seats hot enough to fry eggs on, the steering wheel untouchable. And Trudy worn out by her day.
‘Never again, Jim.’
‘You’ll change your mind,’ he said.
‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘She might not look like Ray, but she’s his daughter!’
By three they were home, red-faced and sweating. Jim put Trudy into a cool bath; Jenny, stripped down to bare feet, shorts and a halter top, was tossing a salad together for a late lunch when someone knocked at the door.
Strangers, a balding male, a chubby female and two kids.
‘Would Jim be in?’ the male said.
‘I’m his wife.’
‘Ian and Lorris Hooper,’ he said. ‘Our girl, Belinda, and this is Owen.’
Jim heard them, he came with a towel-wrapped Trudy in his arms. ‘Come in,’ he said.
They were on a touring holiday. Thought they’d detour a bit and drop off a couple of photographs. They’d heard from Margaret that Jim was back in Woody Creek.
Jenny had spoken to Ian Hooper on the phone. She hadn’t told him she’d been in touch with Jim, only that she’d come across his number in the phone book. She’d given him her married name, Jennifer King. Jim’s cousin didn’t know she was the Jennifer King, the mother of Jimmy he’d spoken to on the phone.
He handed two photographs to Jim, who handed one to Jenny. And there he was, her beautiful boy, ten candles on a birthday cake. A happy ten year old caught by the camera about to blow out his candles. Still Jimmy. Her eyes filled, her throat threatened to close.
Wanted him to be happy. Didn’t want him to be so happy without her. Wiped a leaking tear, then, taking Trudy from Jim’s arms, she escaped with her to the bedroom, to clothe her in a napkin and put her into her cot.
Had to go back. She didn’t sit with them, but picked up the second photograph, this one of a lanky boy clad in his school uniform. His father’s son.
‘He would have been around fifteen when I took that one,’ Ian said.
At first glance he looked like Jim, tall, lean, same hair, but not his face. Jenny was still in his face. She saw her own eyes looking back at her, her nose too, her cheekbones.
God. God, God, God.
‘He’s grown into a lovely looking boy. We saw him a month or two before they left. He’s filled out a bit since that shot was taken,’ Lorris said.
Jenny nodded, her heart breaking but determined not to let Vern Hooper’s nephew see it breaking. But it wasn’t fair. She’d given him life and those strangers had been allowed to watch him grow. It just wasn’t fair. And she couldn’t stand to be in that kitchen with Vern Hooper’s nephew. Opened the back door and walked out to the heat of the garden, determined to control her tears and to not make a fool of herself in front of Jim’s cousin. Hoped Jim wasn’t telling them who she was. They’d know she’d signed her son away.
Shouldn’t have signed anything. Should have fought Vern for him.
She wouldn’t have won. She was Jenny Morrison. She never won.
Jim came out to the rear veranda. ‘Jen.’
‘Coming,’ she said and she went back to the kitchen where she lit a rare cigarette. Today she needed to borrow guts from nicotine. Kept herself busy then, filling the jug, emptying the teapot.
‘You’re in contact with Margaret?’ Jim asked his cousin.
‘Through her accountant.’
‘Lorna thinks we know where they are. She’s on the phone every second week,’ Lorris said.
‘And still as mad as a nest of hornets that Margaret finally got the better of her,’ Ian said. ‘She’s living in Kew. We’re just across from her in North Balwyn.’
‘Too close for comfort for my liking,’ Lorris said. ‘She’s still paying your father’s bloodhound to look for Margaret and James. He’s been around to our place. Six or eight months ago, I caught him talking to Owen out front about his Aunty Maggie. I gave him short shrift,’ Lorris said.
‘I’ll send you her address,’ Ian said.
‘Don’t bother,’ Jim said.
‘She’d probably land on your doorstep,’ Lorris said.
The three-way conversation continued at the table, Jenny no longer listening. Her mind had gone to Jimmy. Born on 3 December 1941, he’d turn twenty this year. Not a boy but a man now. He’d drive a car.
Would he remember Woody Creek, Granny’s house – and her? Jim was six when his mother died. He’d never forgotten his mother.
Why hadn’t Jimmy come back to look for her?
Because little boys believe what the grown-ups tell them, that’s why. Because the Hoopers had brainwashed him before he was ten years old, that’s why.
The three were discussing Ian’s wife’s relatives who lived on the land somewhere near Swan Hill; Jenny turned from the sink to pick up the earlier photograph of her beautiful boy. It changed the subject back to where she didn’t want it. Wanted to absorb him, that was all, to possess him for a little while.
‘Margaret threw him a party every year,’ Ian said.
‘She made him some fantastic cakes,’ Lorris said.
‘Remember when she made him a motorbike, Mum?’ the boy, ten or twelve years old, piped in, and Jenny placed the photograph down, opened her cup cupboard and caught a tear as it trickled, tickled down the side of her nose.
‘We’ve been down to the city and back. We didn’t stop for lunch. You’ll have a cup of tea with us?’ Jim asked.
‘A cool drink would go down well, then we should get a move on,’ Ian said.
‘We’re booked in at a motel in Swan Hill tonight,’ Lorris said.
Cold water in the fridge, lemon cordial; Jenny filled four glasses, delaying the pouring of tea, wanting them gone so she might look her fill at the photographs.
‘I’ll write to Maggie when we get back and let her know we’ve seen you and your family, Jim. She’ll probably get in touch with you.’
‘She’ll be up at your door when she hears about your little girl. She used to visit us just so she could play with our kids – that’s what we used to say – when the kids were babies,’ Lorris said.
Besotted by Jimmy too, Jenny thought. Couldn’t keep her hands off him when he was five months old. She’d got what she’d wanted.
Jim saw them to the door. He hadn’t told them she was Jimmy’s mother. Jenny knew why. He wanted Margaret to get in touch with him. Jenny’s name would kill any little chance of that.
‘Thanks for calling in,’ Jim said.
Jenny didn’t thank them.
NINETEEN SIXTY-ONE
Technology rushing forward, satellites moving around the heavens, America and Russia in a race to dominate space, and Russia winning every time.
In January of that year, John F. Kennedy, a young go-getter, was sworn in as the thirty-fifth president of the United States. In February, Sydney withdrew its last tram from service. A big mistake, according to many. Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, rocketed into space that year; he orbited the earth and was brought safely home.
Home to what? That was the question in many minds. Eastern Berliners, under Soviet rule, didn’t appreciate home: they were defecting to the West in droves. Nineteen sixty-one was the year the Russians started building a wall to keep their people in.
A few American states might have liked to build a wall to keep the blacks out. They were demanding their fair share of freedom and equality, protesting for it, fighting in the streets for it.
Charlie White’s daughter wanted him walled in but her diagnosis of senile decay wasn’t backed up by Doctor Frazer or his colleagues. Charlie White, sparking on at least three of his six cylinders, was back behind his counter, chiacking his customers and filching again from his cash drawer, on the phone to his city broker, buying an occasional batch of likely shares.
‘Got to keep my hand in, Rusty,’ he said.
He bought no more in his name, and when the new certificates arrived, instead of impaling them on his wire s
pike, he handed them to Georgie.
‘Stick them in with your stash, Rusty. They’ll be worth something to you one day.’
He’d never been the most popular man in town; he’d reached the age of ‘couldn’t give a damn’, an age where he enjoyed his unpopularity. He knew every man, woman and child in town, knew him by his father’s reputation and by his father’s father’s. He’d never trusted a Duffy as far as he could kick one. Since the accident, since he’d lost his kick, he terrorised Duffy babies in their prams. If he removed his dentures, he could contort his face into something so far removed from humanity that the little buggers screamed when they sighted his twin green front doors.
Jenny had known Charlie forever. She’d never feared him. In November of 1961, Raelene’s tenth birthday, she’d walked around to Charlie’s shop to phone her and wish her a happy day.
‘The number has been disconnected,’ a voice on the line informed.
Georgie rang the exchange and received the same reply.
Raelene hadn’t been back in June, or September. Florence hadn’t been in touch since July.
‘Try Donny’s home, Georgie,’ Jenny said. The Keatings were listed now as Donny’s next of kin. If their phone number had been changed, the home would have it.
They didn’t, or if they did, they wouldn’t give it up.
‘Florence didn’t look well in January when we took Raelene home,’ Jenny said.
She wrote to her that night and asked her to call the shop, during business hours. She didn’t call and three weeks later, the letter was returned.
‘Something has happened to Raelene. I’m going down, Jim.’
He was licensed to drive. He drove in Woody Creek, could manage the trip to Willama but rarely did. Jenny did the distance driving. She didn’t have the confidence to drive in the city, but as Christmas moved nearer, her need to find out what was going on with Raelene and the Keatings grew.
Georgie still considered Raelene a little sister. ‘I’ll go with you, Jen.’
They left on a Sunday morning, a week before Christmas, left at dawn, Jenny planning to go the back way into Melbourne, to leave the car at Lilydale again. Georgie had driven through town with Jack. She had a road map and no fear of city traffic, so Jenny drove to Kilmore where Georgie slid over to the driver’s seat and Jenny opened up the road map.
They worked their way from west to east, Jenny calling the roads as they crossed over, and by nine they were parked out front of the children’s home.
Georgie hadn’t seen Donny since the night Bernie Macdonald had driven her, Jenny and the kids down to the Willama hospital, the night of Ray’s funeral.
Not the fat boy-baby he’d been, but a giant boy-toddler, intrigued by Georgie’s abundant hair, or its colour. He stared at it, as he had at the flame of Granny’s table lamp.
‘He remembers your hair,’ Jenny said.
Maybe he did. Georgie took his hand, and with his palm smoothed her hair, and he sang his dirge.
‘Poor little bloke.’
Not so little. He was eleven and the size of a fourteen year old. He looked clean; thick, but not fat.
‘I should have bought him some chocolate,’ Georgie said.
‘He’s still in napkins,’ Jenny said, remembering his napkins when Ray had fed him chocolate.
‘How do they pay people enough to do what they do, Jen?’
‘They’re the heroes of this world, not the footballers and champion swimmers. I used to dream once about nursing the sick. I couldn’t have done it.’
They didn’t stay long with Donny. The map unfolded again; too large for the confines of a car, they spread it on the bonnet and plotted their course to Box Hill.
For Jenny, it was a replay of the day Laurie had driven her to Surry Hills, to Mary Jolly, her childhood penfriend’s house. A stranger opened the Keatings’ door.
‘We bought the house in August,’ the woman said. And no, she hadn’t met the previous owners. ‘Try next door.’
Jenny tried next door, as she had in Surry Hills. The neighbour had known the Keatings well.
‘Clarrie’s mother died. He was an only child and the house was left to him – down near where they make the electricity – Moe. Yes, Moe. Flo said she’d write as soon as they got settled, but she had her hands full. Did you know her baby turned out to be twins?’
‘Twins?’ Jenny hadn’t even known she’d been pregnant. Sick, Clarrie had said. A bit seedy – or getting ready to shed her seeds . . .
‘They’re identical, boys. The dearest little curly-headed mites. She was sick for the nine months she was carrying and spent the last months on her back.’
She offered tea; they thanked her but got away. Georgie wanted to see the house in Armadale, wanted to visit the school she’d attended when they’d lived with Ray.
They found the house as they’d left it. Years don’t alter bricks and mortar. They alter gardens. Shrubs planted along the fence line. A square of lawn where they’d been no lawn.
They left the car to walk, to blatantly stare in. No sign of movement behind Flora’s sitting-room curtains. No sign of their old vegetable garden. A new car parked in a cemented drive, a new tin shed down the back.
‘I wonder what Lois is doing these days?’ Georgie said. She and Jimmy had played for hours with her.
‘She was a couple of months older than Jimmy,’ Jenny said.
‘Hard to believe we lived in here,’ Georgie said. ‘What would we have been doing now if we’d stayed here, Jen?’
‘What do you wish you were doing?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Had enough of sightseeing.’
‘Nope. The school now, then your sister-in-law?’
‘Who?’
‘Lorna?’
Sister-in-law? Lorna Hooper? It was almost funny. ‘That’s where I put my foot down,’ Jenny said.
‘What if she’s found him, Jen?’
‘He’s old enough to find us, love.’
‘That’s a numbing device you’ve installed in your head,’ Georgie said. ‘I haven’t got one. Where’s Kew on your map?’
‘I don’t know, and I don’t want to know – and Jim wants nothing to do with her.’
‘If there was one chance in a million to find Jimmy, wouldn’t he take it?’
‘If Jimmy lived next door to Lorna, she wouldn’t tell me. She resents the air I breathe. If we leave for home now, we’ll be there by five.’
‘There’s not a memory I’ve got of Armadale that Jimmy isn’t in. I can remember the day you brought him home from Sydney. He’s my brother, Jen.’
She was in the car. Jenny got in and they drove around the corner to the deserted school. Not much to see. Same buildings, same fence, same gate – a new phone booth out front.
Georgie swung the car in beside it. No phone book there. She swung in beside two more phone booths before she found a tattered book. The H pages were intact. There was a bunch of Hoopers. Only one L. D. Hooper Miss with a Kew address, which Georgie copied to the rear of the map.
‘We’re not going there, Georgie.’
‘Chicken.’
Georgie found Burke Road and followed it to Cotham, which turned out to be the continuation of White Horse Road. She drove in circles around the Kew area until she called out to a young chap mowing his nature strip.
In Charlie’s shop, Georgie, dressed for comfort and her mane of copper hair tied back with a rubber band, was still a beauty; but well dressed for her day in the city, her hair hanging free, she was . . . beyond superlatives. The lawn-mowing chap couldn’t do enough for her. He stopped his noisy machine and went inside, returning with a map book of Melbourne, every street marked on it, and Jenny wanted one for herself. Didn’t want Lorna’s street, but he put his finger on it, and five minutes later Georgie drove by Number Forty-Three, a red clinker-brick, hard-faced house with a matching clinker-brick fence, black wrought-iron gates and big old black Ford parked in the driveway that looked like Lorna Hooper’s.
Hated her. Feared her – and her own reaction should she come face to face with Lorna.
‘Don’t do this to me, Georgie.’
‘Stay in the car and keep your head down,’ Georgie said, pulling into shade beneath a tree opposite Number Forty-Three and two houses down from its gate.
And Jenny saw her, not in her yard but on the footpath and walking towards the car.
‘That’s her! Drive!’
‘Where?’
‘I want to go home!’
‘Where is she?’
‘That evil old hag in black. It’s her!’
The dame in black was now crossing over the road, her back to them.
‘She’s as tall as Jim,’ Georgie said.
Not unless she was wearing spike-heeled shoes, which she wasn’t. Always wore black lace-ups and lisle stockings. Always clad her lamppost form in black garments, walked with a male’s stride.
‘Go, Georgie! Please.’
‘Stay low,’ Georgie said, and she got out of the car. Jenny ducked low and saw no more.
*
Georgie and Lorna’s diagonal paths across the road intersected at the iron gates.
‘Miss Hooper?’ A hand offered. ‘Gina Morgan,’ she said, deleting the Morrison from her name.
‘Who?’ The gust of stale sardine breath issuing with that one word might have forced a step backward in a lesser mortal. Georgie was not one of the lesser.
‘Gina Morgan.’
Lorna glared at the extended hand, didn’t take it, didn’t shake it.
Not a pretty sight, black hat, out of fashion since the twenties, spectacles balanced on a long eagle-beak nose, skirt near ankle length. She was the taller of the two, or would have been had Georgie not been wearing high heels.
‘I believe you have been looking into the disappearance of your nephew.’
‘You know where they are residing?’
‘No.’
Lorna’s sardine ‘humph’ released with maximum effort expressed her disinterest in continuing the conversation, but the gate latch was at her visitor’s back, and to get to it would require her visitor to move.
