Wind in the Wires

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Not up there!’

  ‘She needs you today.’

  ‘Not up there, Daddy. Tell her I’ll meet her down here at the station.’

  ‘I need you to put your own feelings aside, Poppet, and to think of Mummy,’ he said. And he hung up – and he hadn’t wished her happy birthday – and it was no longer her birthday anyway, Gran had commandeered it for her death day.

  Cathy said happy birthday. Cara told her she had to go up to Sydney, that her grandmother had died. Cathy’s eyes filled, then she hugged her, and Cara felt like a fraud.

  She considered asking Cathy to go with her to Traralgon, then decided against it and asked her to check train times to Traralgon, to double-check the departure time of the night train to Sydney. She made the calls while Cara showered, tamed her hair, packed a small case, and nothing she owned was suitable to wear to a funeral.

  Marion owned a straight black skirt. She was a smidgen taller than Cara. Cathy, the organiser, found suitable clothing. Michelle owned a nice black sweater. Not much she could do about shoes. They packed Myrtle-supplied black court shoes with inch-and-a half heels – old ladies’ shoes, Cathy named them.

  Cathy went with her to the bank, and that day Cara appreciated her company. She and Marion saw her onto the Traralgon train.

  *

  Myrtle was waiting at the gate when the taxi pulled into the kerb. A kiss but no birthday greeting. Only Gran.

  ‘She hadn’t been well all day. John rang around noon, and I was convinced she was crying wolf again, pet. I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘Are you ready to go?’

  ‘I should have driven up with your father yesterday when John rang.’

  ‘If Daddy had driven, he wouldn’t have got there in time to say goodbye. It’s lucky you thought she was crying wolf, so stop the guilt bit, Mummy.’

  ‘You sounded like Jenny then,’ Myrtle said.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Cara had no intention of paying the taxi driver until she was back at the station. He waited, meter running, while Myrtle checked the wireless, toaster, jug, bedlamps, the back door and windows. She’d probably been ready since ten o’clock, had probably checked everything a dozen times already, but for five minutes Cara waited at the open front door, sniffing the scent of new paint, looking at new carpet.

  ‘Why the new carpet?’

  ‘It was very worn when we moved in,’ Myrtle said.

  Had Cara gone further than the doorway, she would have noticed the new bed in her room, the brand-new easy chairs in the lounge room. She went no further. Two years ago she’d promised herself she’d never enter that house again.

  Twenty minutes later they were on a train back to the city.

  Cara wanted to book the luggage through then hop on a tram up to Myer’s. She could fill hours in that store and they had four hours to kill. Myrtle wanted to keep her case with her. Her jewellery box was in it, her night attire. Left her guarding it while she picked up the tickets, and not even a queue at the ticket office to kill five minutes of those four hours.

  An hour on, and their cases weights around their necks, Cara booked them through. Freed, then, they sat in the cafeteria drinking tea, eating flavourless cake, just to fill a little time.

  A dragging day. By five, Myrtle was sitting, turning the pages of a magazine; Cara was walking, attempting to shake off a Traralgon headache. When exercise wouldn’t move it, she bought a packet of aspros and a bottle of Coke.

  Stood off at a distance, washing two pills down and watching Myrtle, wondering how she’d become who she’d become. She had no close women friends. She socialised with the wives of Robert’s friends, spoke to her neighbours, had at one time babysat for one of them, but never visited their houses. She went to church every Sunday, had joined some women’s money-raising church group – paid for her magazine with her emergency five-pound note she’d been carrying around so long the moths had probably been at it.

  And she owned Amberley, which these days had to be worth big money. She and Robert had a joint bank account most of the lodgers’ rent was paid into. Myrtle could have walked down to the bank this morning and withdrawn enough to pay for tickets to Sydney and a taxi all the way to Melbourne, but she’d waited for Cara to travel home, collect her and bring her down here.

  How had she managed to run a boarding house during the war years? She must have written cheques, paid bills, made bank withdrawals, caught taxies. With the men away, women had kept the county running, and when the war was won and the men came home, many women had refused to give up their new-won independence. Not Myrtle.

  Maybe dependency was healthy. She never had a headache. She was overweight, but as fit as a Mallee bull. Didn’t drive, wouldn’t fly, dressed as she might have twenty years ago. Her body looked its age, her unlined face didn’t. No worries to make worry lines – maybe a few when Cara had been fourteen, fifteen. Round face, curling not quite grey hair, big brown innocent eyes – currently searching the crowd for her daughter.

  Cara washed a third aspro down, and the bubbling Coke attempted to flush it out through her nose. Myrtle didn’t approve of girls drinking from bottles. Maybe Coke trickling from her nose was why.

  Wished they’d all flown up last night. If Robert had asked her to fly, Cara would have gone, not to sit by Gran but to be a bird, to see what the world looked like from the clouds. One day she would. One day she’d drive a car too.

  Myrtle now on her feet looking for her, Cara waved the empty bottle before placing it into a rubbish bin.

  Cathy swore that Coke plus aspros made you drunk. Theory disproved. She walked a straight line back to Myrtle.

  Or maybe not disproved. She asked a question she’d been wanting to ask for years.

  ‘How did you ever find the nerve to register me illegally, Mummy?’

  Startled by her words, Myrtle looked over her shoulder. ‘People are listening, pet.’

  ‘They don’t know us from a bar of soap. You’re going to be stuck in a dog box with me all night, so you may as well tell me now.’

  ‘That college is changing you.’

  ‘A lot of things changed me. How did you do it?’

  Again Myrtle glanced over her shoulder. ‘God meant you to be mine. He worked it out, He and Jenny.’

  ‘How?’

  Myrtle frowned, and maybe wished she’d flown. She settled her hat on her curls and looked over her shoulder again.

  ‘You arrived in a hurry in the kitchen. I . . . slipped and fell. Jenny placed you into my arms and told me not to move from the floor. She . . . she dressed, she put her high heels on and walked up those stairs to fetch Miss Robertson, barely half an hour after giving birth to you. They didn’t doubt for one moment that you were mine, Miss Robertson and Mrs Collins.’

  ‘She must have been . . . tough.’

  ‘She was a strong girl, and quite wilful.’

  ‘What was she like, Mummy?’

  ‘Look in the mirror, pet.’

  ‘You’ve told me that. Was she a slut?’

  ‘What sort of girls are you mixing with down here?’

  ‘If she had four kids before she was twenty-one, she must have been a slut.’

  ‘She cared very deeply for her tall soldier. She was like a lost soul when he died.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘In ’43. I believe it was May.’

  ‘And seven or eight months later, she was pregnant to Billy-Bob, which doesn’t say much for her, does it.’

  They spoke then of Gran, of the funeral, of the borrowed black skirt and sweater. Myrtle suggested they buy something more suitable in Sydney.

  ‘What did you bring to wear?’

  ‘My black frock and coat.’

  She’d clad herself for the trip in a brown frock and matching lightweight coat, a brown hat. Everything she owned looked fit for a funeral. Most of what Cara owned was pink or beige.

  ‘Did Jenny dress well?’

  ‘She did in the evenings when the
band had an engagement.’

  ‘She sang with a band? What sort of a band?’

  ‘Three elderly gentlemen.’

  ‘Elderly?’

  ‘In their sixties. They picked her up from Amberley and drove her home. Now that’s enough about it, pet.’

  ‘It’s not, you know. Whatever I am, beneath my skin, is her and Billy-Bob Someone. I’ve got a brother somewhere, two sisters. How would you feel if you had sisters and a brother you didn’t know?’

  ‘I still think about Jimmy and wonder how he’s grown. He used to call me “my Myrtie”.’

  ‘If you got on so well with her, she’d probably like to see you. When this is over, could we go up there?’

  ‘She has no doubt made a new life for herself, pet. It would be wrong for us to disrupt it.’

  ‘Don’t I come into the equation? I’m going up to the funeral of an old lady who was no more to me than I was to her. John and Beth’s kids were her blood. She was fond of them. I was never more than “that girl”.’

  ‘Be kind, pet. She was an old lady who had lived a very hard life.’

  ‘So I heard – a few hundred times. Everyone at the college was saying, “I’m so sorry to hear about your grandmother’s passing,” and I felt like a fraud. All it means to me is movement forward for Daddy and Uncle John, like life is a big conveyer belt and Gran has been an immovable barrier keeping Daddy and John safe from old age. They’ve got no protection from it now, and that makes me scared.’

  ‘You come out with the oddest things, pet.’

  Cara turned away to watch a family group to her left. They looked like a family, looked more like her than her cousins looked like her. They could have been her cousins.

  ‘Do you know if Jenny had brothers and sisters?’

  ‘She had a sister, Cecelia.’

  ‘How long did you know Jenny?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘How come you’ve got photographs of Jimmy but none of her?’

  ‘One of the lodgers owned a camera. He was fond of Jimmy.’

  Old Mr Fitzpatrick had been fond of Jenny too. Until Cara’s fourth birthday, Myrtle had owned two photographs of her. She and Robert had decided it might save questions later if they destroyed them. They hadn’t foreseen a future where they might speak openly about the girl who had altered their lives.

  A voice was calling their train, and gratefully Myrtle rose. ‘I’ve never known a day to go so slowly.’

  ‘Next time we have to catch a train, you’ll get here with five minutes to spare.’

  A TRAIN THROUGH THE NIGHT

  Time out from life, that cramped dog-box compartment, travelling through dark lands. Nothing now to see from the window, only their own reflected faces. They stopped at the occasional station, took on or offloaded one or two, then on again into the dark.

  The chap who would turn their couch into bunk beds had already knocked and asked if they wanted their beds made up. Myrtle had been ready for bed at eight. Cara delayed the inevitable, but he knocked again at nine and Myrtle invited him in.

  Lights out then and the bunks narrow, hard, and how was anyone supposed to sleep on them?

  ‘How could a woman give birth to a baby then get on this train and forget that baby had ever been born? She must have been a slut.’

  ‘I was almost asleep, and that’s a terrible word for a young lady to use.’

  ‘Was she morally corrupt, Mummy?’

  ‘I’ve already told you she wasn’t.’

  Myrtle wasn’t wishing yet that she’d flown, but perhaps wishing Robert had booked individual cabins. Cara had her trapped below, had her railed in by the ladder and clad in a skin-tight petticoat, her night attire, her dressing-gown and her jewellery box in the luggage compartment, and Myrtle convinced it wasn’t in the luggage compartment.

  Cara leaned overboard, her face almost in Myrtle’s. ‘It’s dark. You can answer me honestly.’

  ‘She sang at a serviceman’s club for the two years I knew her, and after her soldier was killed, she worked at a clothing factory. The only friend she brought to the house was a girl she worked with at the factory, Lila.’

  ‘Was she a good singer?’

  ‘I only heard her once. I’d turned the radio volume up to silence her, and to annoy me, she sang over it. She had a beautiful voice.’

  ‘Was she educated?’

  ‘She told me once she’d won a scholarship but for some reason was unable to accept it.’

  ‘You don’t know why?’

  ‘Family reasons, I believe,’ Myrtle said.

  Silence then, though a train racing through the night is never silent. There is a rhythm to the metal wheels on metal rail, the howl of warning as the night beast crosses over busy roads. A train will glide on smooth lines, lull its passenger to the very edge of sleep, then shake her awake with that rocking clack-clack, clack-clack.

  ‘She worked at a factory and sang at night while you looked after Jimmy?’

  ‘Yes.’ Myrtle yawned. ‘She sewed beautifully. She told me once that the only time her mother had sat still was when she was at her embroidery.’

  ‘Did she ever mention her mother’s name?’

  ‘I don’t recall her doing so. She told me her mother had once embroidered a rose that looked as if it must have had a perfume, that she’d tried her own hand at embroidery but hadn’t been able to give a rose perfume, so had given it up. She made all of her own clothing while she was with me, and Jimmy’s; she stitched pretty frocks for her girls. She made your first baby gowns, and all by hand.’

  ‘She actually knew me?’

  ‘She remained with us for three weeks.’

  ‘Did she touch me?’

  ‘I was inexperienced. She taught me how to bathe you, to pin on a napkin.’

  ‘She would have been around my age when you first knew her.’

  ‘She was two months away from her twenty-first birthday when you were born.’

  ‘What did she do when she left me?’

  ‘Boarded this train.’

  ‘I mean, did she cry? Was she pleased to be rid of me?’

  ‘We went with her to the station, you and I. She took your hand and said you were shaking hands with her, thanking her for Amberley and a fairytale life. She asked me to write and to send her a photograph.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I was afraid she’d return to claim you. For many years I was afraid.’

  ‘You never heard from her?’

  ‘Never, though on one occasion, when you were quite young, an unpleasant-looking fellow came to our door asking questions. Initially I was petrified she wanted to claim you, but our inquisitor’s only interest was in learning how Jenny had supported herself and Jimmy while she was with me.’

  ‘Was he or Sarah North responsible for us leaving Sydney?’

  ‘Moving was a mistake – for all of us, pet, which we very quickly became aware of. At the time, we thought it was for the best. We can never know what the future will hold. I’d taken you illegally. At the time your father and I were determined to hide the truth of what I’d done from you.’

  ‘Which brings us back to my first question. Where did you find the nerve to do something illegal?’

  ‘I’d waited too long to hold my own baby, and there you were, hidden away from me but growing daily. I loved you long before I knew if you were to be my daughter or my son – and I did what I had to do to make you mine. Now go to sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.’

  *

  Gran Norris died on a Wednesday. She was buried on a Friday. Robert couldn’t get sleepers on the Saturday train so they rode the Sunday bus home, and with every seat filled, the trip was long. Myrtle and Robert sat side by side. Cara was jammed in against the window by a grossly overweight woman who should have paid for both seats. She wanted to use both. Then a hundred or so miles out of Sydney, she took her shoes off.

  Hell is sharing a seat
with a fat dame and her smelly feet. Cara opened the window wide. The woman complained, so Cara complained of her companion’s feet. The dame put her shoes half on so Cara half-closed the window.

  Pete had loaned her a book for the journey. It was one of those novels that promise much in the first chapter then fail to live up to expectation. She learned something from it – that a novel needed a good opening chapter. She didn’t have a good opening chapter. That’s what she’d do when she got home.

  Home? Where was home? Sydney hadn’t felt like home this time. Blame the funeral. Blame the crowd at Uncle John’s, the screaming kids. Pete knew how to handle kids. He would have made a good teacher.

  She screwed her neck around to look for Robert. He had the aisle seat, two rows behind her own, his leg stretched out. His bad knee had been playing up since the funeral. His chin was down. He was probably sleeping; the pills he took for his knee made him sleepy. She couldn’t see Myrtle. Her chin had probably dropped as they’d driven down George Street.

  They woke up when the bus stopped at Albury, and by then Cara was mentally cursing Myrtle for refusing to fly. They would have been home hours ago.

  Home?

  Myrtle and Robert wouldn’t be going home tonight. They’d booked a room at a hotel, had wanted to book one for Cara. She wanted her own bed. Maybe that bed was home. Maybe the college – or Melbourne.

  She knew the central city like she knew the back of her hand. She’d been a stranger in Sydney. Robert had given her money to buy a black suit she’d never wear again. She’d bought a pair of shoes Cathy would approve of. Wore them with Marion’s skirt and Michelle’s sweater and for the first time in her life, at her first funeral, felt smart. Natalie, a cousin-in-law, said she’d looked smart.

  She’d met her twice, at Christmas dinners, the only time she saw her cousins now. Grown apart by distance and age and interests – though not from Pete.

  He’d made the funeral bearable. She’d sat beside him at the church service and he’d whispered: ‘I thought you would have worn your purple,’ and she’d damn near cracked her face in her effort not to smile.

  Then at the graveside he’d taken two sprigs of artificial purple flowers from his pocket and handed her one. ‘Double dare you. On the count of three.’ He’d counted three with his fingers, and they’d tossed their sprigs together. That time, Cara had to run.