by Joy Dettman
That old racing heartbeat, that breath-stealing thumpit-thump-thump. ‘How could you know?’
‘He has a distinctive voice.’
Cara turned from the mirror, believing, and not wanting to believe. ‘You haven’t heard his voice in years. You said you were half-asleep.’
‘As I was many times in Traralgon when I rose to silence the phone.’
‘Did Daddy tell the police who you suspected?’
Myrtle reached out a hand to touch Cara’s face. ‘He did. He’s done the paperwork to alter our number. Be very careful. You’re precious to us.’ She turned away, then turned back. ‘It’s wonderful that you’ve found a sister, but tread lightly there – until you know her better.’
Far too late for that.
JOCKEYS WEARING RED
That was the beginning, those ten long days in Sydney, and finding a letter from Morrie when she returned, and Chris Marino’s perseverance, and his punctuality. If he said he’d pick her up at six, he picked her up at six. And when he brought her home, he saw her to her door and didn’t expect to be invited in. He kissed her goodnight. He phoned her some nights, even when he was in Sydney, and he didn’t seem to give a damn how much it cost.
Cathy told her that Morrie was flying over to be Gerry’s best man at the wedding. He wasn’t at the rehearsal. Roger, the university friend, a second groomsman, was driving up. He offered to drive Cara, Cathy’s first bridesmaid. She caught the train.
‘I’m bringing Chris to the wedding, Cath.’
‘Who?’
‘Chris Marino.’
‘As in sheep. That would make a good author’s name, Cara Baah.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Morrie will be here.’
‘Don’t bank on it.’
‘How would you feel if your mother had cancer?’
‘Bad.’
He was there on the day and Cara felt bad, bad for Chris. She introduced him to Morrie, had to dance with Morrie, but she sat with Chris and, determined to prove she was with the one she wanted to be with, clung to his side and drank too much.
Then drove home with him.
*
Morrie’s grandmother’s engagement ring had crossed the ocean in his wallet. It spent Cathy’s wedding day in his breast pocket. As the silver-grey Mercedes backed out, Morrie slid the ring onto the MG keys.
The bride and groom gone, no Cathy to direct him, he drove back to Gerry’s house and went to bed. Wrote them a note at dawn, thanked them for their hospitality; then, his case on the passenger seat, he drove.
He got drunk in Adelaide then drove up to Broken Hill and got drunk there. He was out beyond the black stump when he worked out where he wanted to be; it took him two days to get there.
He’d told his mother he intended asking Cara to marry him. She’d given him the ring and, new boyfriend or not, he was determined to get that ring onto her finger before his flight home tomorrow.
Saturday morning, not quite eight when he parked out the front of her block of flats. Too early to knock on her door. He walked down to the corner, to the phone box, where he searched his wallet for the number Cathy had given to him.
Her phone rang umpteen times before her annoyed, ‘Hello.’
‘Any chance of breakfast?’
‘It’s eight o’clock.’
‘I’ll cook?’
‘I don’t eat breakfast on Saturday mornings. I sleep.’
‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’
‘It doesn’t work for women.’
‘I’m in your phone box,’ he said and he hung up.
She was pyjama-clad, blue-pyjama-clad, barefoot. She let him in then disappeared into her bedroom. He made toast, made coffee and served her when she came from the shower, jeans-clad, shoes on.
‘How’s your mum?’
‘Good at the moment.’
She ate a slice of toast, drank his coffee. He made good coffee. ‘I’ll employ you as a butler when I’m rich and famous,’ she said.
*
So easy to talk to. They talked until ten-thirty, when she told him she had to leave around eleven.
‘Meeting Con?’
‘Chris is in Sydney.’
‘Two-timing him, eh?’
‘Three,’ she said. ‘You’re here.’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘The racetrack, and I plan to get there for the first race.’
‘Mind if I tag along?’
‘It’s a free world,’ she said.
He tagged along, sat close to her on the tram to the city, his mind on the ring, on his key ring, in his pocket.
He tagged behind when she queued to place her bet with a bookmaker and watched her place her money on two rank outsiders.
‘I’ve got more chance of winning,’ he said.
‘I get nothing back if a favourite wins,’ she said.
She didn’t win, not on the first or the second race, but she kept queuing up. He started queuing with her, and learned she was placing five-bob bets and cashing five-pound notes to place them. Amused, bemused, he accused her as she made her way back to watch the race.
‘You’re laundering money.’
‘It’s been laundered already.’
‘Is it his?’
‘Whose?’
‘Con Baah’s.’
‘Chris Marino, and he’s a solicitor. And if you must know, I’m researching gambling, attempting to work out how much an inveterate gambler might lose in a day.’
‘Not much if he only places five-bob bets. And why keep changing fivers if you’re not laundering money?’
‘That’s none of your business – and if every cent was a dollar, he’d lose plenty.’
‘Why do you want him to lose?’
‘Because that’s who Archie Fleet is.’
‘Archie who?’
‘Fleet – as in fleet of foot. The publishers didn’t want Angel so I’m working on a new one – having fun murdering people, so watch out.’
She got a second in race four and a first in race six, an outsider who paid her twenty-five to one.
‘Told you so.’
He watched, impressed, as she collected her winnings, watched her place those notes into a separate purse. Watched her lose on the next race, then win on the last, and on another outsider.
‘It’s not working today,’ she said. ‘You’re willing them to win.’
‘Praise me, don’t blame me.’
‘Archie’s granddaughter inherited her murdered maternal grandparents’ house and fortune. She’s under-age, so he ends up her guardian, and guardian of her money. He’s supposed to embezzle it and lose it at the racetrack.’
‘Does he eat out?’
‘Why?’
‘He could blow his winnings on French champagne.’
‘I’m going home,’ she said.
He sat beside her on the tram, a crowded tram, sat too close, tried to hold her hand. She removed it. She said goodbye to him in the drive, but he followed her upstairs.
‘Go home, Morrie.’
‘I make good sandwiches.’
‘I’m involved with Chris.’
‘I still make good sandwiches.’
He did. Maybe she wanted one. There’d been little tension between them at the racetrack; dodging around each other in the handkerchief-sized kitchen created tension, and the table was too small.
At eight she told him to leave. He told her he was going home in the morning but until then her flat was the next best place.
‘And that’s the crux of our problem, Morrie. I’m no longer interested in being the next best thing.’ She stood, placing distance between them. ‘I need you to leave now.’
‘I love you.’
The magic words, and he’d said them, and he tried to hold her, but she shoved him away.
‘Why didn’t you say that at the wedding, or last year, or two bloody years ago?’
‘I was two years younger two years ago.’<
br />
‘Me too,’ she said. ‘It’s too late now. I’m with Chris.’
‘You’ve been with me longer.’
‘I’m with Chris – in every sense of the word.’ And in case he didn’t understand that, she added, ‘I slept with him the night of Cathy’s wedding.’
‘That’s too much information,’ he said.
‘Then go before you learn more.’
‘I’ve got nowhere to go,’ he said, and he raised a demon in her.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Good old convenient Cara. Tell her you’ll be here in February, then change your mind; tell her April, June, and change your mind again. She’s always available. You couldn’t put off flying over for Cathy’s wedding, could you, and that’s the only reason you’re here now, and if they weren’t on their honeymoon, you’d be in Ballarat with them. Sorry, but I’m no longer available.’
‘Except to your mafia man –’
‘And you’re so bloody unfair. My bed has been available to you for two years – and I let you know it too. Now that I’m involved with him, you suddenly decide you want me. You’re a dog in the manger, Morrie. You never wanted me. You just don’t want someone else to have me.’
‘I thought he had – the night of Cathy’s wedding.’
‘Get your smart Pommy mouth out of my flat. Now!’
‘I’ll bet he held a loaded gun to your head – your money or your virginity.’
‘I hate you. I loathe the sight of you –’
‘I love you.’
She was crying, trapped between bench and sink, and he reached out again to hold her, but she snatched for her breadboard and held it as a shield before her.
‘Get out, or by God I’ll flatten you with it.’
He left.
*
She took two aspros, set her alarm clock for seven and went to bed. Three times she went to bed that night. Couldn’t force her bones to still. Couldn’t get him out of her head. Hated him, loathed the sight of him. And how dare he come here and . . . and screw up her head.
At one-thirty she emptied her handbag to the table, forcing head and hands into occupation, sorting change from Georgie’s mouse money, totalling it, working out how much she’d spent, how much she’d won. The winnings she claimed as her own and placed into her handbag, poured the coins into a screw-top jam jar, then rubber-banded Georgie’s share and placed it into the cake tin. Not a lot of mouse money left. One more round of the banks, one more trip to the racetrack should do it.
In the wee small hours of morning, she rewrote the Archie chapter, or rewrote three pages of it. Archie still embezzled his brat granddaughter’s trust fund, but Cara now allowed him to win at the racetrack. Readers preferred to read about winners.
Two or three times she’d attempted to alter his name. She’d tried Ernie, Herb, but no other name worked. Initially he’d been placed into the novel as a background character, doomed to die fast at his daughter’s hand. Then he’d opened his mouth and she’d realised that Archie was nobody’s victim. Given his head, he’d damn near taken over the novel. All three sisters now lived with him, in the in-laws’ mansion. She’d chopped a few years from their ages. Still hadn’t written the jail scene, or not more than sketched it in.
She was at her desk when her alarm clock started jangling.
Seven o’clock? She went to her bedroom to silence it and to pick up her new jogging shoes, purchased for her by Chris, and probably expensive. He was into running, and so fit. He could run six kilometres and not break out in a sweat. The first morning she’d gone with him, she’d caved in after a hundred yards. She did a few blocks most mornings now, had stopped smoking and was a lot fitter for it.
Not this morning, though. Chris was in Sydney and she was going to bed.
SWIMMING AT PORTSEA
She didn’t want to go to Chris’s birthday dinner. His family always made her welcome then conversed around her, or his parents did. Chris did when he spoke to them.
His nieces and nephews were bilingual. They swapped from Italian to native-born Aussie mid sentence, even a tiny girl, who adopted Cara. Kids everywhere. Chris’s eldest sister had six and his youngest had four, the middle sister had limited herself to two.
She learned Chris’s age that day. He was thirty-four, an early Christmas present, his mother said.
‘You teaching. You like many children?’
Easier to nod than to shake her head then explain why she’d shaken it.
December the seventeenth, a long and noisy day, Cara lost amid the adult Marinos gravitated towards the kids. One of the older boys had a transistor radio. She heard the news flash.
‘Chris,’ she called. He didn’t like interruptions. Harold Holt, prime minister of Australia, had gone for a swim at Portsea and he hadn’t swum back to shore. ‘Harold Holt is missing,’ she added.
That got his attention. It got everyone’s attention, got the older sister translating for her parents.
John McEwen was sworn in as prime minister. He held the fort until January of ’68 when John Gordon landed the top job.
Cara flew home for a weekend in January. Chris was working from his company’s Sydney office. He ate dinner at Amberley, and he told Myrtle and Robert he wanted to marry their daughter. Their response to his proposal was classic.
Cara’s wasn’t. ‘I’m not ready to make a lifetime commitment yet,’ she said.
She had a novel to finish. She’d found a sister she could never introduce to him as her sister.
She’d told him about her novel. She picked his brain for information if he was in the mood. He’d explained to her one night, as he might to a child, that thousands of novels landed each year on a publisher’s table but very few made it to publication.
In April he asked when she might be ready to make a lifetime commitment. She was watching the news.
‘Shush,’ she said. Martin Luther King, a gentle man, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign to gain rights for American Negroes, had been murdered, shot dead on the balcony of his second-floor motel room. Violence was erupting across the United States, the blacks looting, burning what they could.
That was the week Cathy told her that Morrie and his parents were thinking about moving to Australia.
‘They’re looking for a house they can rent in Ballarat.’
Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June and Chris wanted to book a flight for two to Italy, a honeymoon trip.
Do it. Before Morrie comes back. What more could you want in a husband? Say you will. He’s got a good job, he’s reliable, punctual to a fault. Myrtle is damn near in love with him.
And I’m not.
Love grows if it’s given a chance.
And what if it doesn’t?
Chris flew away alone in August. Morrie’s boat docked before he flew home and every time the phone rang, she was sure it was Morrie. He didn’t ring.
Chris came home and he wanted to fly Myrtle and Robert down for Cara’s birthday. She’d be twenty-four in October. Robert’s knee was playing up and Myrtle wouldn’t fly. They sent a card and a woolly dressing-gown.
Everyone of Cara’s age was engaged or married. Helen was expecting a baby. She offered the news at Cara’s birthday dinner at a city restaurant, and Chris ordered a bottle of French champagne to celebrate.
The bill was huge. He paid it – then added a tip. That’s the way he lived, the way she’d live if she married him. He worked long hours, flew backward and forward to Sydney, flew overseas at the drop of a hat.
He’d bought her a pair of diamond earrings for her birthday and not tiny diamonds either. She felt so bad. Felt so old. Felt so . . .
‘It’s too much, Chris.’
‘A pre-engagement gift,’ he said.
‘They’re gorgeous.’ They were. She’d had her ears pierced six months ago. His sisters and nieces had pierced ears. She removed the small gold rings she wore to keep the holes open and he watched while she fitted his diamonds in their place.
&nb
sp; ‘They’re beautiful. I love them,’ she said.
‘And me?’
Sometimes you have to lie.
They rang Myrtle and Robert the following morning, or he rang them. He rang his parents. She had to ring someone so she rang Cathy.
‘Morrie’s mother has got lung cancer now. He said that’s why she wanted to move over here.’
‘For the better air?’ Cara asked.
‘Because she knows she’s dying and that he’s crazy about you, you moron. And you go and do a thing like th–’
Cara hung up the phone. She was engaged to be married. It was supposed to be a time of celebration, of congratulation not castigation.
In November Rain Lover won the Melbourne Cup and Cara watched the race. She had more than fifty cents riding on his back, and was the only one in Chris’s party who had a win. The others weren’t there to win or to watch horses run in circles; they were there for the social event and to be seen, and Cara wasn’t one of them – or with them, not in mind. She was back with Georgie on that first day, when they’d backed the jockeys because they liked their shirts. She was back with the laughter of that day, and the comfortable shoes and jeans.
Not dressed for comfort today. Her heels were too high, and her hat felt ridiculous and she couldn’t take off. Hats had never had a happy relationship with her hair. Wished she was wearing jeans and flatties. Wished she was changing Georgie’s mouse money for dollars.
No more mouse money to play with.
No more true laughter either, except at night when Georgie called late and spoke long.
THAT FINAL INCH
Yards of aged and faded Christmas decorations removed from cardboard cartons stored all year beneath the town hall stage were unpacked, untangled, shaken into shape and hung once more in the streets of Woody Creek, hung from light pole to light pole. Those employed to do it had done it all before. They hung lights from veranda post to veranda post. A few new globes got them working. By day they looked tatty but they brightened up the old town by night – or some said so. Some said, ‘Bloody Christmas again.’
