by Joy Dettman
Cara didn’t say she would or she wouldn’t. Wanted to say something. ‘Do you have any idea how incredibly beautiful you are, Georgie?’
‘Watch it!’ Georgie warned. ‘Half the town has already got me pegged as a lesbo.’
No time to say more, but more she might say, now that she was leaving. Bus driver, already running late, itching to be on his way.
‘I’m glad I met you, Georgie.’ She stepped on board then and the door slapped shut behind her.
Plenty of empty seats; she chose one on the left side so she might wave goodbye. Knew Georgie would stand there to wave.
And she did.
Then gone, and Jenny’s town disappearing behind her, all of the old houses, the few new ones looking foolish beside their ramshackle neighbours. A scattering of shops on either side of another railway crossing; a scratching dog forced to give way to the bus’s bleat; another ute, another hawking driver and his dog.
Watched the houses give way to paddocks and trees. Watched the land outside that window until her eyes stung with their staring. Then she closed them, closed the lid on Pandora’s box, sealed it.
Sealed Georgie in.
I’ve done what I said I’d do one day. Now it’s over.
Bus driving into fog, and it seemed so right that Jenny’s town should disappear back into the mist like some godforsaken Brigadoon.
Let them sleep, she thought. I won’t be disturbing them again.
THE CONNECTION
Too late. She’d already disturbed Jenny. She walked her garden that morning, righting pots, collecting scattered garden furniture, staking leaning plants, knowing she had to tell Jim the truth about the relative she’d seen last night. He wouldn’t blame her. She’d told him how she’d met Georgie’s father, how she’d watched the police arrest him in Geelong. He knew about the babies she’d aborted in Armadale, about Vroni’s health farm.
They ate a porridge breakfast and she couldn’t tell him, not with Trudy and Raelene at the table. Instead she added to her lie when Raelene mentioned Amberley. Jim remembered that boarding house.
‘Her mother lived there,’ Jenny said. ‘Cara was born a few weeks before I came home.’
Not a true lie, but sickened to the stomach by it anyway. Told Raelene to wash the dishes, told Jim to watch-dog Raelene for half an hour, then she walked across the railway line to Georgie, her protector of last night, her confessor that day – between customers.
‘I have to tell Jim, but I can’t stand for him to have the image of those raping mongrels in his head. It’s bad enough having it in my own head.’
‘She won’t be back,’ Georgie said.
‘What did she say?’
‘That she had no intention of disrupting your life – and you told her last night that you didn’t want it disrupted.’
‘I didn’t say anything like that.’
‘You took those kids down there so you wouldn’t have to speak to her alone,’ Georgie said.
‘That wasn’t the reason. Jim had to go around to McPherson’s and I wasn’t going to leave Trudy alone with Raelene.’
‘That’s your justification. If you’d asked him, he would have stayed home.’
Jenny couldn’t deny it. ‘She looks like me. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her. I’ve tried to build up a mental image of her for half of my life and I could never see her other than as a tiny baby. I never for one second considered that she might look like me.’
‘Charlie saw the resemblance before me – and Maisy saw it. She had a scarf over her hair when we booked the hotel room, but they would have seen her at breakfast.’
A customer opened the door. Georgie walked up to serve her and Jenny stayed on, stacking packets of biscuits onto battered shelves and watching her girl at work.
Some give birth to daughters who will ever be strangers. Georgie was a chip off Jenny’s soul – and Granny’s. In so many ways she was Granny. Couldn’t tell a lie to save her life, but when she’d known a lie was necessary to save Jenny skin, she’d come up with a beauty. And it was no real lie. Cara was a relative of Itchy-foot.
The customer left with her basket, and Georgie returned to unpack and stack, only one topic on her mind.
‘She teaches at the Armadale primary,’ she said. ‘She told me this morning.’
They spoke of Armadale, of Ray. Jenny spoke of Robert Norris, a teacher before the war.
‘Were they snobs?’ Georgie asked.
‘I thought Myrtle was when I met her. Her family would have been, but they lost everything in the depression – except Amberley. She spoke with a plum in her mouth but was a nice woman – shy, and very churchy.’
If she closed her eyes, she could raise an image of Myrtle, clad in her old-lady outfits, her whispering rubber-soled shoes. She could see her big wet eyes the day she’d offered Granny’s telegram.
‘The house must have been a palace in its heyday. Myrt told me once they’d had half-a-dozen live-in servants when she was a girl.’
‘How old was Cara when you gave her up, Jen?’
‘Minutes. I’d already given her to Myrtle before she was born, and as soon as she was, I . . . I gave her. I wanted to forget I’d ever had her, and thought I’d be able to. You can’t,’ she said. ‘She was born on 3 October 1944, exactly two months before Jimmy’s third birthday. How do you forget something like that?’
‘Margot can.’
‘And Elsie needs her head read. Harry wants to move in with Teddy. And you need yours read too. You’ve got to stop pandering to her, Georgie. Let her get her own sleeping pills, fill her own hot-water bottle.’
‘She’d scald herself.’
‘What did she say about Cara?’
‘She ignored her. Cara thought she was a nurse. She told me this morning that she’d seen photographs of Jimmy. I think he was the only one of us who was real to her.’
‘I gave Myrtle a couple of photographs.’
‘He’ll turn up one day. Everyone does sooner or later. It’s uncanny about her teaching at Armadale.’
‘Did she say what brought her to Victoria?’
‘She didn’t say much.’
‘I knew they’d educate her, that she’d be something, do something with her life. I used to tell myself that if she ever found out what I’d done, she’d thank me for giving her away. We tell ourselves what we want to believe.’
‘She’s got guts. A spur of the moment trip, she said. Just caught a bus and came up here to see what she could see. I haven’t got that sort of guts.’
‘Do you still think about your father?’
‘Not until something starts me thinking. I dreamed about him last night. He was trying to find your brooch,’ Georgie said. ‘You know you ought to keep it in Charlie’s safety-deposit box.’
‘Then I couldn’t wear it when I felt like wearing it.’
‘When did you last wear it, Jen?’
‘I know what you’re saying,’ Jenny said. ‘What did you think when she told you who she was?’
‘She didn’t.’ Georgie tapped Jenny’s hand. ‘I offered her a smoke and saw your hand reach for the packet. It was one of those mind-bending moments, when your eyes are seeing one thing and your head separates from your eyes and sees something else. One and one still makes two, Jen.’
Cow bell ringing as three generations of Duffy entered, two women with three kids and a battered pram – and if she didn’t watch them, that pram would exit with more than a small Duffy in it.
Georgie stopped stacking biscuits. ‘I don’t know if Margot ever said anything to you, but the day she was with you and you ran into Lila Roberts at Blunts, she mentioned a bulge in your belly in Sydney. Margot didn’t let go of it for twelve months.’
Charlie didn’t hear much but he heard the cow bell. He’d been keeping his eye on the Duffy family for sixty years. He toddled up to keep an eye on them and the Duffy pram left with only a small screaming Duffy in it.
*
The phone rang early on Monday mo
rning. Only old Mrs Davies wanting to know if Ernie had been in yet, and could Georgie add baking powder and washing soda to her order when he finally got there.
‘He’ll be talking to someone in the street,’ she said. ‘I send him out to get butter for my breakfast and I’ll be lucky to have it for my lunch.’ Like her husband, Mrs Davies was partial to a chat.
Charlie’s phone didn’t ring often, but each time it did during the following days, Georgie picked it up, hoping for those STD beeps. She told herself Cara wouldn’t call, told herself she hadn’t been able to get on the bus fast enough, told herself her previously unknown half-sister had been expecting something very different from what she’d found. But you can’t kill hope, or it refuses to die easily. All week Georgie hoped. All week she felt . . . felt the loss of some intangible something she couldn’t quite grasp or name, maybe the loss of a connection never made.
WILLS AND THINGS
In October, Raelene was transferred to Florence’s care for two months. Jenny and Jim were flying to England with the McPhersons. They’d considered taking Trudy with them, but when Elsie and Harry offered to move into town to look after her and the garden while they were away and they accepted their offer. Trudy loved her Nana and Poppy and, because of Margot, saw too little of them.
Elsie was concerned about Margot. Jenny worried about Raelene. Georgie was more worried about ineffectual Florence and her four little kids.
Jenny and Jim had Raelene under semi-control, or they and their support team in the city had her under semi-control. Every six weeks they drove her down to an appointment.
According to the experts, Raelene’s desire for proof of her parents’ unconditional love was why she kept pushing the boundaries. Georgie had once driven Raelene down to Moe and heard that kid’s verbal attack on her mother; she’d since made her own diagnosis, which was diametrically opposed to that of the court-appointed expert.
Raelene was the image of Florence but all Ray inside her head. One minute a pretty, compliant kid, then within an instant, a snarling, fighting wild thing.
On the morning the two couples were to leave on their grand tour, Georgie drove them and their cases to the bus stop, where Jenny offered her two sealed envelopes, one addressed to Cara Norris, care of Armadale Primary School, To be delivered in the event of my death printed over the seal. The second was a copy of their wills.
‘Scott and Wilson have got the originals,’ she said.
‘Pilots want to get to where they’re going as much as you, Jen.’
‘I know. I just need to know that everything I can do is done.’
The bus arrived, the cases were loaded. They watched Jim mount the high step. He’d been fitted with a more modern and better balanced leg. He said it was better. They had a long trip ahead of them, a lot of steps to climb. For twenty years the McPhersons had been promising themselves a trip home. Amy had relatives over there, offers of free beds.
‘Promise me you’ll move into the house with Trudy if anything does go wrong, Georgie, that you’ll keep her away from Margot.’
‘It goes without saying, Jen.’
‘I know. I just needed to hear you say it.’
Bus horn beep-beeping. Granny had known how to hug. Jenny had never been good at making the first move. She made it that morning.
‘Love you, kiddo,’ she said.
‘Ditto, kiddo, now go or they’ll see the sights without you.’
The bus may have been in Willama when the phone rang – still early enough to be Cara, calling on her way to school.
It wasn’t. ‘I can’t stand it here! They’re driving me crazy!’
Georgie stood, picking at a ripped fingernail, allowing Raelene to get it out of her system – five minutes of brainless Florence, moron Clarrie, shithouse Moe.
Raelene had good fingernails, as did Margot, both runts. Had their unused growth gone in fingernails? Cara had been tall enough to look Georgie in the eye – and had stubs of fingernails.
‘I’ll work in the shop, Georgie. You don’t have to pay me.’
Charlie trusted her about as far as he trusted the Duffy mob. Georgie bit the nail. ‘Two months will be gone before you know it.’
‘I can’t stand another bloody day of it!’
‘I’ve got a customer, Raelene.’
A phantom customer, but he saved her.
*
At five-thirty Georgie fed Charlie, locked up, then went home to feed Margot. Fed her eggs on toast. The fridge was riddled with eggs.
‘You know I can’t eat toatht.’
‘Put your teeth in.’
‘They hurt!’
Heard it all umpteen times before. Tuned out tonight and ate her eggs on toast, made coffee, then took her mug out to the old kitchen to sit in the doorway and look over Granny’s land. Summer letting the world know it was on its way tonight.
Had Granny been alive, her tomatoes would have been flowering, or getting ready to. No Granny. Mint growing wild where her garden had been, a few self-sown silverbeet plants, a clump of self-sown pumpkins. One of them might win the battle for survival and bear fruit. Gum saplings were winning the war for Granny’s land. Should dig them out before she had a forest to cut down. Didn’t have the time, or maybe the incentive to keep fighting the forest.
Granny had. Jenny had.
She could remember Jenny taking to a clump of saplings with the axe a few weeks after she’d brought Jimmy home from Sydney. Could remember Jimmy rolling his fleet of wooden cars along the floorboard roads of this room. No more floorboard roads. A slab of cracked and uneven concrete floored the old kitchen now.
She could remember Jimmy the day Jenny brought them home from Armadale, Granny sick in bed, Jimmy finding eggs in the hens’ nests.
He’d loved eggs. They’d been starved of them in Armadale. There’s millions, Jenny. To Jimmy everything had come in millions. A million dandelions growing on the sides of the road in spring. A million stars in the sky.
She’d missed his millions. He’d been close enough in age to be a companion. Could still conjure up the feeling of his hand when they’d walked to school.
Hold his hand, Georgie.
Not the oldest one, but always the one made responsible for the other two.
Never wanted that responsibility. Didn’t want it now.
No responsibilities for Cara. My half-sister, the schoolteacher. Wondered if she taught in her old classroom, or Margot’s, or Jimmy’s.
Meeting her, shaking her hand had been . . . been like shaking Laurie Morgan’s hand, or like shaking an adult Jimmy’s hand, unreal, but soul-bending.
‘What are you thitting out there for?’
‘Thinking.’
‘Why did they have to go over there anyway?’
‘To see something they haven’t seen. Put your teeth in and I’ll have a game of cards with you.’
‘They hurt!’
‘Suit yourself.’
*
A telegram arrived the day the travellers landed. FEET ON THE GROUND STOP WILL MAKE WAY TO DORSET STOP LOVE JEN STOP.
Amy McPherson had an elderly aunt in Dorset. They intended making their base with her. Georgie considered sending a telegram back, not that there was anything to write in it.
Two weeks into their trip, had she felt the incentive, she could have told her that Josie and Brian Hall, who hadn’t been home since the Christmas Day war of ’59, came up for the weekend; could have told her that Charlie was driving her mad with his denial of dollars and cents, that spending her days with him and her nights with Margot had diminished her tolerance levels to a point tolerance levels shouldn’t reach.
Couldn’t be bothered. Couldn’t be bothered arguing with Charlie either.
‘Signs have to be in dollars and cents, Charlie. It’s the law.’
‘Not in my shop it’s not, Rusty.’
The concept had been simple enough for her generation to grasp, and the transition made easy. Twenty shillings had always equalled one pound, n
ow twenty of the new ten-cent coins equalled a two-dollar note, designed to look much like the old pound note, as the dollar note had been designed to look much the same as the old ten bob. It was Charlie’s lack of say in that transition that got up his nose.
He did a lot of sneezing, maybe an allergic reaction to the new plastic notes, or to dust. She’d pretty much given up her battle with dust. The shop’s ceilings rained dust.
‘What happens to the two pennies they’ve got left over? Tell me that, Rusty. Who gets them?’
As with many who lose their hearing, Charlie talked more, and louder. He had no trouble understanding what he said, only what others said.
‘The cent is worth more than the penny, Charlie.’
‘That useless bloody little thing. A kid won’t bother to pick one up if he sees it on the ground. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves, my old man used to say. The government is looking after them. That’s what’s happening to them. Every time we spend a shilling, they end up with two extra pennies.’
‘Every time we spend ten cents, Charlie, and there’s only ten cents in ten cents. There’s no extra pennies.’
Then she went home.
‘Elthie maketh thoups and cuthtards.’
‘Make your bloody own, Margot. You’re here all day, sitting on your backside.’
Three weeks into Jenny’s trip of a lifetime and Margot’s sleeping pills lived on the table with a selection of Heinz’s baby food and a tin opener. There was a good range of baby foods, egg custard, pureed peaches, chicken broth, pureed brains.
Two weeks before the travellers came home, she was frying a thick slab of rump steak when Margot went into her bedroom and returned with her teeth in and her eyes threatening murder, but she sat at the table and ate half of the steak and chips and eggs. She’d developed a taste for Ray’s steak in Armadale.
A postcard arrived that week, a view of Paris by night. Not much space for words. Not what I imagined. By the time you get this, we’ll be back in London. Love London. Jenny XXX
Two days later, another arrived, this one of the Bloody Tower. I could spend six months here and not run out of places to see. Love Jenny XXX
