by Joy Dettman
‘One of the teachers had gallstones,’ Cara said.
‘She was in agony,’ Robert said. ‘I thought we were going to lose her, like we lost her mother.’ Loading, shovelling Weet-Bix, and that mouth always open and ready for the spoon. ‘He’s had a busy morning. He’ll sleep well this afternoon. Pour some of the hot milk into the bottle for me, poppet, then fill it with the cold.’
‘How much hot?’
‘Your mother tests it on her wrist. Blood heat,’ he said.
She did as she was bid, an outsider in that kitchen, and the curly-headed boy knew it. She fitted the top, attached the teat, watched Robert undo the straps holding the boy prisoner, then lift him from his Weet-Bix-plastered chair. She followed with the bottle, to her room, a modern cot beside the window, the smell of baby permeating the air. Stood watching from the doorway. Bottle now in his tiny hands, mouth busy on the teat, his eyes watched – and accused her. She turned away from his accusation and went out to the kitchen to wipe his chair, his table-tray, the floor.
Robert came, his suit jacket on, his hat in hand.
‘Don’t go, Daddy!’
‘He’ll sleep for two hours. I want to be nearby when your mother comes out of the operating theatre.’
‘She’ll be asleep until tonight.’
Cara had been after they’d cut into her. It had taken her a day to shake off the anaesthetic.
‘They may allow me to sit with her.’
‘At least call them first,’ she said.
‘I’ll be back before he wakes.’ Keys in hand, wallet in his pocket. ‘Have you told his father?’
‘I told you, it’s over.’
‘You knew him for years, poppet,’ Robert said.
‘It’s over. I’m here. Let that be enough.’
And he was gone.
Should have stayed in Melbourne. Should have found out the name of the hospital and called them. Or was this Myrtle’s ploy? Was she with Beth and John, waiting for Robert’s report?
She stood for minutes looking at the kitchen bench, all new since the renovations; at the stove, one hotplate still showing signs of spilt milk. Then she reached for a cupboard and a large jar of coffee and Cara’s personal mug buried behind Myrtle’s dainty teacups.
Drank her coffee in the passage while staring into her room – his room now. He was sleeping. She crept closer, close enough to hear his breathing, to see his tiny hands open on his pillow, relaxed in sleep.
Didn’t touch him.
He slept for two hours and then some. Robert didn’t return. Four-thirty when he woke and demanded release from his cot. She didn’t release him. Stood in the parlour, watching at the window and willing Robert’s car to return. The demand became a disaster siren, and the passage and her room – his room – no longer smelled baby-scented. She’d had nothing to do with babies. Didn’t know where to find a clean napkin, or what to do with one if she found it.
Mrs Collins had raised a son fifty years ago; she had grandchildren, great-grandchildren she’d spent a month playing with every Christmas and Easter for as long as Cara could remember.
‘I heard our young gentleman protesting,’ the elderly woman explained when Cara answered her gentle knock.
‘Come in. Dad’s at the hospital, and I don’t know where Mum keeps the napkins.’
Eighty if she was a day, Mrs Collins, but she knew where to find a napkin and how to deal with the atrocious mess the polluter had made of himself. She knew how to put the side of the cot down, how to lift him from it – and was delighted to stay on, to chat and drink tea until Robert returned. Cara was delighted to chat to the retired teacher that day and to do what she had to do to keep her there.
The defiled napkin, sealed into two plastic bags, had been relegated to the garbage bin seconds after it came off his backside. A second napkin, urine-soaked, was in a bucket in the bath before Robert came home. Women washed. Men left their soiled clothing in a heap on the bathroom floor for their women to pick up and wash. Cara washed the napkin in the handbasin with perfumed soap, then draped it over the shower rail to drip dry before driving alone to the hospital to kiss the face of a sleeping Myrtle.
Her lids fluttered.
‘Sleep, Mummy. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Robin,’ Myrtle said.
‘He’s fine.’
*
And in fine voice before daylight. And he’d done it again. Cara was out of her bed before Robert came, dressing-gown clad, his white hair bed-tumbled. In his world, women dealt with messy backsides. He’d raised one who didn’t instinctively know how to deal with it. Too early to wake an eighty-year-old lady, Cara utilised the plastic bucket again, filled it two-thirds with warm water and placed it into the bath. Robert did the lifting, together they dealt with the safety pins.
‘Plastic bag,’ Cara instructed as she lifted the bellowing boy from the mess, shook it from his backside, then lifted him into the bucket.
He folded down into it, and she left him up to his armpits in warm water while, with finger and thumb, she dropped the napkin into the bag held open by Robert. A bar of soap dealt with the mess, and, aware that it was a funny bath, the tiny being chuckled.
He protested loudly when removed from his funny bucket bath.
Robert wrapped him. She emptied the bucket into the toilet, then washed the bath.
Later, two teachers, their heads together, worked out how to assemble something resembling a napkin and managed to pin it on.
On the second day, after relegating a third towelling napkin to the bin and with twenty on the clothes line, Cara drove to a chemist’s shop. Mrs Collins had told them about Dry-Tots, a form of disposable napkin with a long pad that slotted into side-clipping plastic pants. Her granddaughter considered them a miracle of modern man. Armed with three packets, expensive as hell – or the plastic pants they slotted into were as expensive as hell – Cara drove home. Myrtle wouldn’t approve of the plastic, but may have been less pleased with their method of getting rid of the soiled towelling napkins.
They wouldn’t have managed without Mrs Collins, without Beth and John and Dry-Tots, but with them they managed for the seven days Myrtle was in hospital. When she came home, disapproving strongly of Dry-Tots, she couldn’t do a thing about them. She wasn’t allowed to lift the boy.
‘That plastic is rubbing his little leg.’
‘He’s survived a week in them, Mummy.’
‘Bring me a proper napkin and I’ll pin it on for you.’
‘Are you going to wash it?’
They managed until Christmas was gone, until the new year reared its head. By mid-January Myrtle was well enough to take back control, but Cara remained in Sydney until the Friday morning prior to the new school year’s commencement.
‘Wave goodbye to Mummy,’ Myrtle said, that two-toothed boy in her arms.
Cara wasn’t his mummy. She told herself she was pleased to be in the taxi and away, but she thought about him, thought about Dry-Tots and Robert, who would be pegging napkins on the clothes line before her plane touched down at Tullamarine.
She thought about his chuckle, his two-toothed smile, while opening windows. The dogbox unit was stuffy; smelled old, used, empty. Thought about him while mopping floors, vacuuming, when she opened accumulated mail.
A telephone bill, and barely a call on it. A reminder from her dentist. Hadn’t seen him in over twelve months. One envelope with nothing in it other than a grease-stained business card: Barry Simpson. Ashburton. Pencilled on the rear: Re MG. Barry Simpson the MG enthusiast. Had almost forgotten about him. Had almost forgotten about Morrie and his car – and it wasn’t her problem; nor was that little two-toothed boy. Myrtle and Robert had made the decision.
She opened the bills before picking up Morrie’s. Usually recognised his blue aerograms; this one was business-sized and chubby. Loved the way he wrote her name, loved his handwriting. He’d told her once he’d practised it for hours with his Aunt Lorna standing over him, demanding, ‘Again, boy
. Write it again.’
She stood weighing the envelope on her palm, knowing it contained something to do with the wiping out of their eight-hour marriage. He’d turn thirty this year, though not until December. Could have been with him, she and that two-toothed boy–
Placed the envelope down and picked up one that was card-shaped and addressed in Georgie’s large block print.
Why had those two arrived in the same batch of mail? Placed the card beside Morrie’s, and side by side they were so right – and so wrong.
Didn’t open either. Left them side by side on her desk, picked up her handbag and went out, unable to stay alone in that empty place today.
RAELENE’U WINDFALL
Georgie was leaning against a veranda post, smoke in one hand, coffee mug in the other, when the big Harley roared in from the west. Neither rider nor passenger fond of her, they told the town, concentrating so hard on screaming their insults they damn near didn’t make the right-hand turn into Cemetery Road. For an instant Georgie willed the swine to lose control of that bike, but it roared on, Raelene still clinging to his back. They’d wipe themselves out one day, or wipe out someone else.
The police station was on that corner. No sign of him. Probably taken his wife shopping in Willama, Georgie thought. They spent little in town. He’d move on in a month or two, a new cop would arrive and for a time he’d try to do what he was paid to do. Then Woody Creek would get into his psyche – or into his wife’s.
A few cop wives had gone stir crazy; they’d got their husband’s twelve-month sentences cut. One cop wife had spent so much time at the hotel her husband should have run her in for drink-driving. From her veranda vantage point, Georgie had watched maybe a dozen cops and their wives come and go since Jack Thompson.
She was waiting on a delivery truck which should have been here two hours ago. In the old days, Charlie’s goods had come in on the passenger train then waited on the station platform until Charlie, Mick Boyle or she had got around to bringing them that last hundred yards. These days a truck backed up to the storeroom door, the driver unloaded the goods and wheeled them in. The world had changed since she’d started work behind that counter in ’54. Her own life hadn’t altered much.
‘Sell up,’ Jenny said every second time she saw this place. ‘Get out of this town and do something with your life.’
Do what?
Trudy was getting out sometime next week, heading for high school at the Methodist Ladies College.
And the Harley came roaring back around the corner, heading west. He’d offloaded his passenger.
He was around Georgie’s age. When he’d started hanging around Woody Creek, he’d tried his luck with her. His bike had looked nothing like Ray King’s motorbike, but she’d given him short shrift and he’d called her the red dyke since.
Georgie tossed her butt to the gutter as a customer came out of the post office and headed her way with a basket in hand.
‘Warming up,’ Georgie greeted her.
‘They say there’s more heat coming across from Perth tomorrow,’ the woman said.
Ten minutes later, the customer gone on her way, Georgie’s cash drawer four dollars sixty better off, she heard a truck change gear out front. She had an ear for motors, and that one sounded like the delivery truck. She walked down to the storeroom, where she pulled four heavy bolts, installed with the new door the year Charlie’s evicted tenants had robbed him. That door might have been the strongest part of the building. He’d had its exterior steel-plated.
She swung it wide as the truckie backed his load to within inches of her washroom wall, maybe sixty years younger than the shop’s wall. ‘You’ll knock it over one day,’ she said.
‘Not today,’ he grinned.
He was a nice bloke, tall enough to look her in the eye when she was wearing high heels. She’d had a drink with him one night. Usually made him a coffee after he’d unloaded. Jenny had joined them for coffee once. She’d been impressed. He claimed to be single. Maybe he was, but he lived in Melbourne, and who was to say if he was or not.
She was packing cartons onto shelves when the cowbell clanged, letting her know she had another customer. ‘Make yourself a coffee if you like. The makings are on the sink bench.’
‘I’ll take a raincheck. I’m running late,’ he said.
She signed his book, told him to close the door when he left, then returned to the long counter to deal with a Duffy invasion, three women, five assorted kids and two dogs watering Charlie’s green doors. The truck left before the last Duffy, her cash drawer two dollars and ten cents healthier. Then Maisy came in with a shopping list as long as her arm. Macka and Bernie, her twins sons, and Dawn, an unmarried daughter, still lived at home. Maisy was a good customer.
There was a run of customers after Maisy. Fridays were usually busy. She paid Emma Fulton to come in for a couple of hours on Fridays and Wednesdays, and not until Emma rang the cowbell did Georgie find five minutes to run out to the lavatory-cum-washroom.
The storeroom door’s bolts shoved home, she made herself a ham and pickle sandwich, made coffee, then reached for her cigarettes, or for the handbag her cigarettes were in. Not where she’d left it. She always left it in the corner of the bench beside the sink and a sick lurch shook her stomach. There was more in that handbag than cigarettes. She did her banking on Wednesdays and Friday afternoons while Emma was here to watch the shop. Yesterday’s takings were in that handbag, and her chequebook.
Had she moved it when the truck drove in? Wouldn’t have. She trusted that bloke.
He might have got himself a drink and knocked it off the bench. She searched the floor, looked beside, behind the new cartons. She was still searching when Emma came to the curtained doorway. She was Jim’s age, and for years had been helping out behind Charlie’s counter. Like Georgie, she knew everyone in town.
‘That second boy of Leanne Murphy’s wants a packet of smokes. He said that Shane will pay for it when he gets paid.’
Georgie shook her head and walked up to the shop. Shane Murphy worked for her on Saturday mornings and during the school holidays.
‘They’ll stunt your growth,’ she said to the kid.
‘They’re for Dad.’
Maybe they were for Dad, but something had stunted his growth. ‘No can do,’ she said. He slouched out and she returned to the storeroom to continue her search, to lift cartons down from shelves and look behind them, aware she wasn’t going to find her handbag there but searching anyway, unwilling to admit her bag was gone, or unwilling to admit that she’d been set up. And that bag had more in it than money and her chequebook.
She dialled Cara’s number at two. No answer. She’d tried to call her a few time during the past weeks. She phoned Jenny. ‘What day does school go back in Melbourne, Jen?’
‘We’re taking Trudy down on Monday. She starts on Tuesday,’ Jenny said. ‘Why?’
‘Just wondering when Cara will need to get back.’ Georgie told her about her missing handbag, about leaving her back door open for the delivery bloke, about the Duffy mob. ‘My storeroom door was unlocked for an hour or more.’
‘Did she get much?’ Jenny asked.
‘It’s not the money. Cara’s address was in it. I wrote to her last night and hadn’t got around to posting it.’
‘You didn’t mention anything about Trudy’s school to her,’ Jenny asked, fear in her voice.
‘No. No. She’s probably moved. She said a while back that she wanted to get a bigger flat. How’s Trude?’
‘Excited. She wants to go.’
Back in December, they’d driven Trudy down to have a look at the school and she’d told Georgie how they’d seen her aunty Lorna Hooper’s name on two of the school’s honour rolls. Lorna the sportswoman was hard to believe. Lorna, dux of the school, not so hard.
‘It will be good for her,’ she said.
‘I’m not looking forward to it,’ Jenny admitted.
‘I ought to hitch a ride down with you, kill two b
irds with one stone. See Cara and do something about my Melbourne accounts.’
‘I don’t know why you haven’t had them transferred to Willama.’
Easier said than done, Georgie thought as she placed the phone down.
She had seven accounts in Melbourne and not all of them in her name. One was. One was in Georgina Morgan Morrison’s name, the name on her birth certificate and driver’s licence. She’d also opened one for Gina Morgan, one for Morgan G. Morrison and a few other variations of her name she couldn’t bring to mind right now, but between the seven, there had to be ten thousand dollars sitting around Melbourne, earning a pittance of interest.
It was Charlie’s black money. She’d found his stash in a rusting biscuit tin a few days before he’d died. Seven thousand pounds of the old money and at the time Australia had been midway through changing over to dollars. She’d had to get rid of her ill-gotten gains fast and bank accounts and investments had seemed like the easiest way to do it at the time – and her red ute. She’d handed over a wad of Charlie’s old notes and driven away on her brand new wheels, promising them a trip around Australia. It hadn’t happened.
She’d looked after Charlie and his shop for years and in his will he’d looked after her. Left her one of his elderly houses complete with tenant. Left her his shop too – and six times a week and twice on Sundays she wished he’d left it to his daughter.
At two thirty, she walked down to the bank to cancel her chequebook then over the road to the police station to report her stolen handbag.
He wrote a report. She signed it.
At four, Emma went home and Georgie dialled Cara’s number again. Still no answer, nor was there at four thirty, five or five thirty.
If she’d moved, there was no urgency.
*
Cara returned to her dogbox at five forty, and was on her way out the door an hour and a half later when the phone rang. Almost closed the door on it. Knew it would be Myrtle, making sure she’d arrived home safely.
She picked up.
‘The wanderer has finally returned,’ Georgie said.
‘I’m meeting a girlfriend. A minute later and I would have been gone.’
