Wind in the Wires

by Joy Dettman

  She’d bought a small leather-covered book, and into it began copying bank names and addresses, the version of her name used there with the amount, a page for each bankbook.

  ‘Have you thought any more about Miss Hadley’s party in June?’

  ‘I still don’t know where I’ll be. Every time I mentioned taking a holiday, Charlie would present me with a batch of shares. I’ve been nowhere. I might go to England – except I’ve got no real desire to go there. I’ll probably drive off into the sunset and just keep on going.’

  ‘He didn’t look rich,’ Cara said.

  ‘He wasn’t, or not on the books. He had a cheque account for the shop but there was never much in it.’ She closed her book and placed it into a zip compartment of a new and larger handbag. ‘A few years ago, he had my name added as a signatory to his shop account. I’ve signed his cheques since someone ran him down and he had no arm to sign with.’ Bits and pieces being transferred now from her old handbag to the new. A plastic bag of plastic notes, placed into the shoe box with the mouse money.

  ‘It’s gone down,’ Cara said, as she may have spoken about a boil on a backside.

  ‘I’ll get there,’ Georgie said. ‘I wonder what Hilda is doing with his shop. I meant to call Jen and ask her if she’d opened it today.’

  ‘There’s a phone box on the corner.’

  ‘I’ll go home in the morning, see what’s been happening.’

  She opened another shoe box later. That one contained shoes, beautiful shoes, their price still on the box.

  ‘I’m addicted to shoes – I dare say we crave what we didn’t have as kids. We lived in black lace-ups. I’ve got a dozen pair of high heels at home and rarely go anywhere to wear them.’

  ‘Stay down for a while and wear them, Georgie.’

  ‘I’ll try to get back in June – if you’ll come to the racetrack with me again.’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for quids.’

  ‘Charlie was right, you know – that doesn’t sound the same if you change the quids to dollars.’

  Two shoe boxes was one too many for the bag. She removed the box of notes.

  ‘You can’t carry that around in a ute, Georgie?’

  ‘I’d put it into our safety-deposit box, but if I put notes in there, Hilda will consider them hers. I might get my own. I dunno yet what I’ll do.’

  ‘Would you trust me with your bankbooks and a bit of it? I could pay some into your accounts each payday. No one comes here, or the few who do are not likely to go poking around in my drawers.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘You’ve got seven books. You’d get rid of seventy pound a week.’

  ‘Multiply that by fifty-two,’ Georgie said.

  The cake tin of Cara’s dream seemed as sensible as anything had this weekend. They loaded it with mouse money and Cara placed it into the rear of her pantry cupboard, then got the giggles imagining Myrtle and Robert turning up one day with their key and opening that cupboard seeking cake.

  The couple in the unit next door heard the laughter, a rare sound from Number Ten. They heard movement before daylight on Tuesday morning, heard a door close and footsteps down the stairs.

  Then Number Ten was silent again. Silent and lonely, and Number Ten’s car space looked lonely.

  No laughter that night, only an ongoing rattle, punctuated by the bang of the typewriter carriage, ongoing for hours.

  ‘What the hell is she doing in there?’

  *

  Rusty, Cara’s protagonist, a tall redhead with emerald-green eyes, was as hard-headed as a lawyer, but as gentle as a lamb with her elderly grandfather, Archie. She could work out the accumulative interest on a three-year bond without need for pencil and paper. Her mother, an evil woman, would end up in jail for murdering the elderly grandfather.

  Tale of Three Sisters, she named it.

  Rusty had been raised by Archie Fleet, her maternal grandfather. Her younger sister, Lena, a spoiled overweight bitch of a girl, had been raised by rich paternal grandparents, and then there was Sarah, the unknown kid sister, raised by her mad mother. The tale was plotless. Cara had no idea where it was going, but it kept on growing.

  HAVING A SISTER

  Dear Cara,

  I swore a dozen or more times that I’d never again unlock Charlie’s doors, and where am I writing this? Your lack of telephone forced me to buy a new writing pad. You won’t believe what has been going on up here while I’ve been missing. I don’t. I fluctuate between bouts of hysterical laughter and practising arguments for my defence. Don’t panic. It’s not about the mouse money.

  In the late fifties Charlie was in hospital with a broken arm and his daughter signed him into the hospital’s geriatric annex, which, to put it mildly, upset Charlie to a point where he should never have been upset.

  He spent most of his time absconding, and must have absconded long enough one day to make a six-page will. He left me his shop, its contents and one of his houses – and that was before I’d kidnapped him the first time.

  I’m not his only beneficiary. He owned three other shop buildings. Miss Blunt rented one for her drapery business and her father rented it before her. Charlie left it to her. Fulton’s hardware shop went to the Fultons, along with the house Mrs Fulton has been renting for forty-odd years. She’s probably paid for it ten times over, but now it’s hers. Charles White, justice of the peace, universally described in the past as the meanest old coot in town, has in death become the town philanthropist.

  His granddaughter got his shares and the fish and chip shop building. And if you saw her, the snobbiest snob Woody Creek has yet produced, you’d see the justice in that legacy. She’d look good up to her elbows in slimy fish and boiling fat. Hilda, Charlie’s daughter, inherited the family home – and a tenant with a five-year lease.

  It goes without saying that they are threatening to break the will, which they may well do, though Robert Fulton and his mother will fight them to the death. They’ve been Charlie’s family, and me, according to his will, since Hilda and her dead husband took off with Charlie’s car and sundry. There were two pages of sundry listed on his will. He lost his hearing, and much of his sight, but he never lost his marbles. God, how I wish I’d been a fly on the wall the day he made that will. I loved that old man.

  Margot is home. Elsie is like a cat who raised a tiger cub – can’t or won’t see that the kitten she licked clean has grown big enough to eat her. I’m currently sleeping in Charlie’s storeroom. Hope Hilda doesn’t decide to burn the place down one night.

  See you in June.

  *

  Dear Property Owner,

  Miss Hadley remembers you as a bright little redhead with a pain in the posterior sister and a very attractive young mother. We’ve rounded up thirty-odd students from the forties and fifties. You might meet someone you used to know. Warning. Warning. I’ve told no one that you’re my half-sister. No one, not even Morrie, knows that I’m adopted, so you and I are distantly related through your grandfather.

  I think I mentioned Chris Marino to you when you were down. I’ve been out with him again. He works with one of the teachers’ husbands. He called me at school today. He’s got tickets to another show and he asked me to go with him, so I’m going. I feel as if I’m two-timing Morrie, which is crazy. He was supposed to fly over in February and didn’t make it. I need some sort of order in my life, but the way things are with Morrie, I can’t get any order into it.

  After the party, I’m going home. I haven’t seen Mum and Dad since Christmas. How about flying up with me? We can take a trip out to Long Bay.

  See you soon.

  Cara

  *

  Dear Cara,

  I’ve been planning to go up to Sydney since my fourth birthday when Jenny told me my father was up there. I’ve since learnt that he was in Long Bay Jail when I was born. He’s probably still in there, some bald-headed old bruiser, or a poor cowered old con the screws use as a punching bag – which is the roundabout
way of saying, not this time. Thanks anyway . . .

  *

  Dino Collins was released at the end of May. Dave told Cathy, Cathy told Cara. She didn’t want to know.

  Georgie drove to Melbourne on the Friday evening before the party. They went to the races, but you can’t recapture a perfect day. They were there to change mouse money for plastic, and they had a time limit. There would be two dozen elderly teachers at the party and elderly teachers preferred to be home at night. The party started at five, and to Cara, it was leaving work to carry bricks. She served tea, passed around sandwiches and sausage rolls, followed by cake.

  Miss Hadley had too many hands to shake, and more in common with elderly teachers than old students wearing name tags. Georgie met a Billy Mathews, one of Jimmy’s friends, and too hard to explain the facts to him, she didn’t.

  ‘Sorry,’ Cara said when they got away. ‘You could have done without that.’

  ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ Georgie said. She left for home at eleven on Sunday.

  Morrie phoned two days before school broke up. It was a poor line, every word Cara spoke had to be repeated.

  ‘I wrote to you. I’m flying home for the holidays,’ she shouted through the line.

  ‘Can you delay it?’

  ‘I can’t keep on delaying my life until you can find a week for me, Morrie.’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘I know your mother has been sick. You have every ounce of my sympathy. Can you fly into Sydney?’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Stay with your mother. I’ll be in Sydney for a week.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A week. Seven days. If you come, come up there.’

  And they lost the line, and she couldn’t call him back, not from the school phone. She stood for minutes, expecting him to ring back. He didn’t.

  *

  Rusty’s mother bumped off her in-laws that night instead of Archie. Cara was halfway in love with flirty-eyed old Archie. That chapter would lead into a scene where two policemen and Rusty’s two half-sisters turn up at his door. Rusty, who hadn’t set eyes on her mother since the age of two, was not aware that she had younger sisters. With the grandparents dead and the mad mother in jail, she and Archie would become the guardians of those girls.

  She was writing herself into areas she knew nothing about. What happened when a person was arrested? How soon before a long-lost daughter could visit her imprisoned mother? She knew someone who would know. Chris Marino, solicitor, who, according to Helen, Cara could catch by crooking her little finger. Didn’t want him. She wanted Morrie.

  Her new manuscript accompanied her to Sydney, and when Robert felt the weight of her case, he told her the renovations had been completed, that no more bricks were required. Her brand-new typewriter, which was supposed to be portable but wasn’t, was in her case. It left little space for clothing. She wouldn’t need much. She planned to spend her ten days at Amberley writing.

  The building looked much the same externally. Inside nothing was the same. Walls had disappeared; new bathrooms and kitchens had been installed; external stairways had been constructed, fire escapes for the upper floor units. The old staircase, now a boxed-in entrance foyer, serviced the upstairs units. The lodgers’ kitchen had become a communal laundry. No more backyard, back lawn. It had become a bitumen car park, with numbered spaces. The front door was the same door. The leadlight window had survived the transition; the parlour was somewhat shrunken; the big dining-room table had gone to play conference table somewhere.

  Mrs Collins and Miss Robertson continued to survive their shared rear unit. Totally different in appearance, interests and personality, Cara had expected one or the other to move on. Not yet – probably never. Robert charged them a ridiculously low rent. The couple in the front upper floor flat had a five year old. A little noise filtered down, though not as much as before. The builders had probably done a good job, though to Cara, Amberley now resembled a staid old Packard with a modern Holden interior.

  She gave her parents one day before setting up her typewriter on the kitchen table. Myrtle came in to chat. She moved into the parlour, explaining her pile of pages as a project she was working on. They jumped to the conclusion that it was for school.

  ‘You’re on holiday, poppet.’

  She set up the typewriter on her dressing table, typing at night and going to bed with a back-, neck- and headache. The light in her bedroom was poor.

  Gave it up, packed her manuscript and typewriter away and made a batch of fruit scones which were more like rock buns. Cream and jam disguise most failures.

  She was trying her hand at braised chicken, her favourite meal, when Myrtle came to the door to whisper. ‘There’s a man on the phone asking to speak to you, pet.’

  ‘I told Morrie I was coming up here. Was it long-distance?’

  ‘It sounded local,’ Myrtle said.

  ‘You came,’ she said, certain it was Morrie.

  ‘Chris Marino speaking,’ he said. ‘I’m stuck in town for the night and Helen gave me your parents’ number. Would you by chance be free for dinner?’

  She was cooking dinner, and so disappointed she could have howled. Her first reaction was to refuse. But why should she? There was no reason in the world why she should. She wasn’t engaged to Morrie. She hadn’t seen him in almost twelve months.

  ‘Where will I meet you?’

  ‘I’ll pick you up at seven,’ he said.

  ‘Was it Morrie?’ Myrtle asked when the phone was down.

  ‘Chris Marino, a solicitor. His firm has got an office up here. He spends his life flitting backward and forward. You’ll have to finish cooking dinner, Mummy. I’m going out.’

  He rang the new doorbell at seven on the dot. Robert didn’t ask his intentions but invited him in for Myrtle to eye as a prospective son-in-law. He charmed them while Cara waited at the front door, clad in black slacks, black sweater and her overcoat.

  They ate at a swanky restaurant where the food was good and the wine no doubt expensive. He had her home by ten-thirty, walked her to the door and shook her hand – a very satisfactory conclusion to a pleasant enough evening – and she’d learnt what happened to a prisoner when he was arrested.

  Myrtle and Robert asked his age, his genealogy. She knew a little about him.

  ‘He came out from Italy with his parents and sisters sometime after the war. He’s the baby of the family – and for the record, I’m not planning to marry him.’

  ‘He has a pleasant face.’

  Pleasant, but not exceptional. Morrie was exceptional. Was he in Melbourne?

  Footsteps overhead and all three glanced up. ‘You wouldn’t need them to throw a wild party up there,’ Cara said.

  ‘It’s better than it used to be. Jenny and Jimmy lived in Number Five and I heard every footstep,’ Myrtle said.

  Cara nodded, aware that there would never be a more perfect time to come clean – and that it might get their minds off Chris Marino.

  ‘I went up to Woody Creek a while ago. I’m in contact with one of my half-sisters.’

  It was not the perfect time. Her admission created a silence.

  ‘And?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Her name is Georgie. I’ve seen her three times, but we write. She’s four years older than me, looks nothing like me.’

  ‘Have you seen Jimmy?’ Myrtle asked.

  ‘They haven’t seen him since he was six. He was raised by his grandfather. Jenny is married to his father, a second marriage.’

  ‘I thought he died in the war,’ Robert said.

  ‘According to Georgie, he spent years in a prisoner of war camp. Jenny didn’t meet up with him again until ’58.’

  ‘My goodness. Do they have other children?’ Myrtle said.

  ‘A seven-year-old daughter. They’ve got Jenny’s first husband’s daughter living with them. He was killed in a mill accident a few months before she ran into Jim.’

  ‘Is she what you’d hoped she�
��d be, pet?’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to her, or not alone. I’m the image of her. She lives in a big old house in town, drives a good-looking car. I still don’t know who she is – or understand how a woman who already had three illegitimate kids could have a fourth and hand it over to a stranger – and don’t take that the wrong way. I thank God every day that she gave me to you, just don’t understand why she did it, that’s all.’

  ‘I wasn’t a stranger, pet. From what I recall, her husband’s family hadn’t approved of her relationship with Jim and had been attempting to gain custody of Jimmy for some time. She told me she’d lose him if she took another baby home.’

  ‘Then what was she doing having one? Where was Jimmy when she was out sleeping with Billy-Bob and putting him at risk?’ Myrtle shook her head. ‘Or did she bring him back here? Was I begotten over the parlour?’

  Robert, uncomfortable with the conversation, went to bed. Myrtle walked to her sink to dry the cups and put them away, to wipe the table, the bench top.

  And Cara gave up and left her to her cleaning.

  She was brushing her teeth when Myrtle tapped on the bathroom door.

  ‘I know I’m being silly, but I’ve been worrying since you told me you were having the phone connected. If he sees your name in the phone book –’

  He, Dino Collins, that unspoken, unspeakable name. Cara didn’t reply immediately. She spat toothpaste, rinsed her mouth.

  ‘He’s been released,’ Myrtle added.

  ‘Cathy told me. I’m paying for a silent number.’ Or the mouse money was. ‘It won’t be listed in the phone book.’

  Myrtle picked up the toothpaste and replaced the cap; Cara stood, her back to her mother, smoothing on face cream, paying attention to her eyes, looking for the beginning of Jenny’s crinkles beside her eyes, Myrtle watching until the lid was back on the cream.

  ‘I received a phone call last week, very late at night. The caller identified himself to me as a police constable and he said there’d been an accident and that I’d need to come down to Melbourne to identify . . .’ Myrtle closed her eyes, shook her head. ‘I’d been asleep, pet. I was inconsolable. Your father rang the police and it proved to be a cruel hoax. I know it was him.’