by Joy Dettman
‘I don’t tell Cathy everything. She talks before she thinks.’
‘You think before you talk.’
‘I’ve learnt it’s safer to. That could be why I write. I can dive into the lives of others and let them do the thinking. Tell me something Cathy doesn’t know about you.’
‘Cathy demands. I obey,’ he said.
‘Not one skeleton in your family closet?’
‘Uncle Henry’s ghost lives in an upstairs wardrobe.’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘You’ll believe in Henry.’
‘Your father’s brother?’
‘Pops is Letty’s brother. She’s eighteen years his senior. Their own kids kept dying, so she and Henry took Pops in when his mother died. He was a Grenville but old Henry needed an heir, so Pops tacked on the Langdon.’
‘What did he do for a living?’
‘Not much,’ Morrie said. ‘An artist.’
‘A good one?’
‘He sold a few. He had a bit of success over here in the fifties.’
‘What was he doing over here in the fifties?’
‘Mum is an Aussie,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t admit it over there, but I think she knew she didn’t have long to live and she had unfinished business over here which is why she wanted to come back.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It never came up. I spent my first sixteen years here, went to school here. Here’s a skeleton for you. Pops came out from England to marry Mum’s sister, old Henry’s niece, and Mum stole him from under her nose – anything under Aunt Lorna’s nose was in shadow anyway.’
‘That almost tops mine. It would make a good story.’
‘Lorna wouldn’t raise a lot of empathy in your readers. Mum has been writing to her since before Christmas, wanting to make peace with her, and the hard old bugger sends the letters back unopened.’
‘Not devoted sisters.’
‘She’s why we moved to England.’
‘Will we live over there?’
He reached for the light switch, and the small light died. ‘We’ll take Pops home, then rethink our options.’
‘Tell me about your manor house.’
‘It’s overrun by Letty’s dogs.’
‘I like your Aunt Letty. I’ve wanted a border collie pup since I was old enough to say puppy.’
‘She breeds King Charles spaniels.’
‘Of course she would. She lives in a manor house.’
His arm was beneath her shoulder, her arm over him, holding him close, so . . . so safe. She was Cara Langdon-Grenville and she was going to fly to England, live in a manor house and write a hundred novels.
‘How tall are you, Morrie?’
‘Six-two and a bit.’
‘My favourite cousin is six foot two. He was a weed at sixteen. After we moved down to Traralgon, I only saw him once or twice a year, and I honestly didn’t recognise him one Christmas when we went up there. He must have grown a foot in twelve months. I haven’t grown since I was twelve or thirteen, haven’t changed much in shape either.’
‘Precocious brat.’
‘My real mother must have been. She had her first baby at fifteen, her second at sixteen, her third at eighteen and me at twenty. My half-sisters look nothing like her but I do. It’s as if God pointed his finger when she gave me away, and said, “Don’t think you’re getting away with it that easily.”’
‘Do you know who your father was?’
‘Billy-Bob Someone – a Yank sailor.’
‘He sounds more like a firewater distiller.’
‘Mum says he probably died in the war. My half-brother’s father was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for two years. According to Georgie, had the war lasted for a few more days he wouldn’t have made it home.’
‘Georgie?’ he asked.
‘Rusty. The old grocer she worked for called her Rusty.’
He didn’t reply. She heard him swallow. Knew he was thinking of his mother, so she lay beside him, allowing him time to think.
He broke the silence. ‘Do you know your birth mother’s name?’
‘Jenny. Jennifer Morrison, now Jennifer Hooper.’
The arm beneath her shoulder stiffened, then he freed it and moved away. Too much space in that bed, she moved with him to place her arm again across his chest.
And his heart was racing.
‘What’s wrong, Morrie?’
He lay on his back, swallowing, attempting to swallow something he couldn’t get down. Then he stopped trying to get it down and rolled his feet from the bed.
‘What’s wrong?’ She reached again to draw him back to her side but he removed her hand. ‘I asked what was wrong?’
‘You talk too much,’ he said.
‘You were the one asking questions.’ But he was off the bed and at the window, looking down. ‘Are you thinking about your mother?’
‘My mother is a liar,’ he said.
‘You can stop this right now and tell me what’s wrong.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m wrong. Everything is wrong. Get dressed.’
‘Talk sense, for God’s sake!’
‘You captured her in the first paragraph of Rusty,’ he said. ‘Captured her as an adult. Hair like flame, you wrote, sparking embers beneath the naked globe, a spill of molten copper. It’s Georgie,’ he said. ‘They’ve all gone to live with the angels, my mother said. She lied to me.’
‘Please stop this. You’re making me scared.’
And he turned from the window. ‘Jim Hooper is my father.’
She heard him. He was a great one for jokes, and that wasn’t a joke – and it wasn’t meant to be. She could hear it in his breathing, in his voice. Knew then why his voice wasn’t Morrie’s. He wasn’t Morrie. Jim Hooper was his father. He was . . .
Out of that wide bed then, dragging the sheets, the blanket with her, dragging them as far as the bathroom door, where she shed them and ran to vomit expensive champagne into the toilet bowl.
Couldn’t stop vomiting. Even when there was nothing left inside her, she couldn’t stop. Her hands gripping cold white porcelain, her stomach heaving, while in the bedroom he found the bedside light switch, not a lot of light, but enough to share a little with the bathroom, enough for him to see her naked form cowering over the toilet.
He came to the door, no further, breathing short, breathing fast until she turned to face him. No words. Two faces, similar in construction, disbelieving eyes staring wordlessly into similar eyes.
You’re a perfect match, Cathy had said.
Too perfect.
And the bile rose again in Cara’s throat.
He came then to offer a wet cloth, a towel. He didn’t touch her.
‘I could write my name when I was four,’ he said. ‘They turned it around when I was six, put the Morrison in the middle, the Hooper on the end. I told them it should have been the other way around. I told them it was James Hooper Morrison, not James Morrison Hooper. She said my daddy’s name was Jim Hooper and my grandpa’s name was Vern Hooper and they’d like it so very much if my last name was the same as theirs, and wasn’t Morrison such a nice middle name.’
She cried then, for the loss of Morrie’s voice, for the loss of his big farmer’s hands, and the loss of him. Someone stood three feet from her, watching her heaving shoulders, staring at the shape of her crouching over the bowl. Someone picked up the sheet to drape over her nakedness. She dared not name that someone. Then he went away and she removed Morrie’s rings, placed them on the vanity unit, and vomited again for their loss.
He returned clothed to the doorway. She tried to stand, but as in any nightmare, her legs had no strength to raise her.
‘I used to dream about them,’ he said. ‘The lost-boy dreams I called them. Little Jimmy always trying to find his way home. Back when they started, I knew he was me. They never stopped, but home changed too often for my dreams to keep up, and after a while he wasn’t me but Peter Pan. He
could run like the wind, ride his bike at a hundred miles an hour. He could fly. I loved my lost-boy dreams.’
His voice was ripping holes in her heart. Her head on the toilet bowl, she bawled for him, and for her. Wanted him to hold her, and was revolted by what she wanted.
And by what they’d done, in that bed, in her bed. Couldn’t live with it. Didn’t want to live if she couldn’t live with him. Wanted him to go, to stay. Wanted to scream at him to shut up and make love to her. Wanted to scream at him to get out of her sight.
‘Mum told me they’d gone to live with the angels. I never doubted her. Jenny used to tell me that my daddy had gone up to live in the stars, and that I’d never forget him because he’d been given the job of painting all of the rainbows, and that every time I saw a rainbow, I’d know he was up there waving his paintbrush to me. I saw him too.
‘I worked out my own way not to forget Jenny. She was the scent of lemons. There was a plant in the Balwyn garden that had lemon-scented leaves. For years, every pair of trousers Mum washed, she found a few of those leaves in the pockets. I still do it, crush lemon leaves, pick lemon verbena, lemon-scented geraniums.’
His sigh was a deep sob of a sigh, his voice breaking when he tried to speak of Georgie. But he swallowed, breathed deep and continued.
‘Granny used to say Georgie’s hair looked like a spill of new-minted pennies. I didn’t know what a new-minted penny was, but shiny pennies became Georgie. I had a jar full. Mum and Grandpa used to save me the shiniest ones. I never spent them. I’d sit in the sun, pouring pennies backward and forward from the jar to a little beach bucket, chanting, “Georgie, Georgie, Georgie.”’
‘Stop it. Please God, stop it.’
He walked around her, swept the two rings into his hand, then dropped them into his pocket.
‘I’d forgotten what Jenny looked like, forgotten her hair. I loved the scent of your shampoo. It’s your hair. Her scent is all over you. I should have known.’
‘Please God, Morrie.’
He couldn’t stop. ‘I put them away in England. Everything stopped over there, the dreams, the moving, the changing faces. I took my middle name when I went to university, determined to be someone brand new, called myself Morrison Langdon, became the son of an Englishman, living in a five-hundred-year-old manor house, its roots so deep in the soil, a bomb couldn’t move it. I’ll take Pops home. I’ll . . . I’ll undo it.’
And he picked up his case, his car keys, and he left her, left her kneeling on cold tiles on the bathroom floor, left her alone to howl.
About the Author
Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which, Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday’s Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry’s Daughter, One Sunday, Pearl in a Cage, Thorn on the Rose and Moth to the Flame. Wind in the Wires is Joy’s fourth novel in her Woody Creek series.
Also by Joy Dettman
Mallawindy
Jacaranda Blue
Goose Girl
Yesterday’s Dust
The Seventh Day
Henry’s Daughter
One Sunday
Diamonds in the Mud
Woody Creek series
Pearl in a Cage
Thorn on the Rose
Moth to the Flame
More Bestselling Fiction by Joy Dettman
Pearl in a Cage
The first novel in Joy Dettman’s sensational Woody Creek series.
On a balmy midsummer’s evening in 1923, a young woman – foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant – is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek.
The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her – but the baby lives.
When no relatives come forth to claim the infant, Gertrude’s daughter Amber – who has recently lost a son in childbirth – and her husband Norman take the child in. In the ensuing weeks, Norman becomes convinced that God has sent the baby to their door, and in an act of reckless compassion, he names the baby Jennifer and registers her in place of his son.
Loved by some but scorned by more – including her stepmother and stepsister who resent the interloper – Jenny survives her childhood and grows into an exquisite and talented young woman. But who were her parents? Why does she so strongly resemble an old photograph of Gertrude’s philandering husband? And will she one day fulfil her potential?
Spanning two momentous decades and capturing rural Australia’s complex and mysterious heart, Pearl in a Cage is an unputdownable novel by one of our most talented storytellers.
Thorn on the Rose
It is 1939 and Jenny Morrison, distraught and just fifteen years of age, has fled the tiny logging community of Woody Creek for a new life in the big smoke.
But four months later she is back – wiser, with an expensive new wardrobe, and bearing another dark secret . . .
She takes refuge with Gertrude, her dependable granny and Woody Creek’s indomitable midwife, and settles into a routine in the ever-expanding and chaotic household.
But can she ever put the trauma of her past behind her and realise her dream of becoming a famous singer? Or is she doomed to follow in the footsteps of her tragic and mysterious mother?
Spanning a momentous wartime decade and filled with the joys and heartaches of life in rural Australia, Thorn on the Rose is the spellbinding sequel to Pearl in a Cage.
Moth to the Flame
In Moth to the Flame, Joy Dettman returns with another dazzling tale of the unforgettable characters of Woody Creek.
The year is 1946. The war ended five months ago. Jim Hooper, Jenny Morrison’s only love, was lost to that war. And if not for Jenny, he would never have gone.
‘An eye for an eye,’ Vern Hooper says. An unforgiving man, Vern wants custody of Jenny’s son, his only grandson, and is quietly planning his day in court.
Then Jenny’s father Archie Foote swoops back into town. Archie offers Jenny a tantalising chance at fame and fortune; one way or another he is determined to play a part in her life.
Is Jenny’s luck about to change, or is she drawn to trouble like a moth is drawn to the flame?
First published 2012 in Macmillan
by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
Copyright © Joy Dettman 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Dettman, Joy.
Wind in the wires / Joy Dettman.
9781742610788 (pbk.)
A823.3
Adobe eReader format: 9781743345375
EPub format: 9781743345382
Online format: 9781743345368
The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Typeset by Midland Typesetters Australia
Cover design by Xou Creative
Macmillan Digital Australia: www.macmillandigital.com.au
Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.
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Joy Dettman, Wind in the Wires
