by Joy Dettman
‘My flat was robbed,’ she told the office woman. ‘I have to get the lock fixed and attempt to make a list of what’s missing for the police.’
Robbery was a good conversation starter. That morning, even the office woman wanted to talk. Got away from her and went to the bedroom to make a start on her clothing. Built a giant bundle for the washing machine and a smaller bundle for the drycleaner. Carried one load down to the laundry and found barely enough coins to start the machine washing its mammoth load.
Mattresses were supposed to be turned regularly, according to Myrtle. Cara hadn’t previously turned her own. She did that day, and the unused side felt cleaner. She’d need to sleep on it tonight – and for a month more. Would need to give a month’s notice at school. Would the agent hold her to the lease? Every year since ’65 she’d signed a new twelve-month lease on 18 December. Still months away.
No quilt for her bed. No pillows. No change of clothing until the washing machine washed and the dryer dried, and that dryer ate twenty-cent coins like a kid eating biscuits. Would have to go out and get more.
She washed every plate, every knife, fork and spoon, every pot and pan. Was halfway through drying them when she reached for the phone to find out if she could get out of her lease.
‘No worries, love’ – if she was prepared to pay it out.
Useless bastard. Couldn’t say it out loud, but she told him about the robbery, told him that the lock on her door wouldn’t keep a ten-year-old kid out, reminded him her safety chain had been faulty since she’d moved in.
And thank God it had been. Thank God.
‘I’ll speak to the owner about it, love.’
‘Why does that give me such confidence,’ she said, and hung up before he could reply.
Found half a column of locksmiths in the phone book. Phoned four before finding one prepared to do the work today.
Cleaned her bath then, and the tiles behind her bath, the toilet too, scrubbing the feral bitch from that room. She scrubbed her kitchen table, her benchtops, mopped her floors, vacuumed, then sprayed wild animal from the air with flyspray.
A punctual locksmith, elderly, came when he’d said he’d come. He suggested a deadlock above the original lock; a slide bolt so she could lock herself in. He suggested he drill a peephole in the door, which would allow her to identify callers before opening it.
‘Yes,’ she said to his every suggestion. ‘Yes. I have to stay here until the end of December.’
Left him drilling while she delivered a pillowslip full of clothing to the drycleaner; explained that they weren’t soiled – just dirty. The woman’s neighbour had been robbed. She understood about that sort of dirt.
Her bank account gave up a hundred dollars, five dollars of it in coins. She went shopping at Kmart for a cheap quilt, pillows on special, an electric jug, the basics of makeup, the cheapest shampoo. She’d get herself clean tonight, wash the stink of wild animals out of her hair.
The locksmith accepted a cheque which, once cashed, would leave twenty dollars in her account. That’s what happened when you spent too much money on exclusive black overcoats and fancy typewriters. Not enough left over for emergencies.
*
Less than a week after the robbery, James Collins and Raelene King were arrested at a house in Footscray and Cara’s black overcoat was found there. No sign of her wedding dress, typewriter and television, but a large tin shed in the backyard had revealed a well-grown crop of marijuana.
Two weeks after the robbery, Cara sat at an upmarket restaurant opposite Chris. For once, she was doing the talking and he listening. She told him about Collins and Traralgon; made no mention of Raelene other than as the de-facto wife of Collins. She told him of the rape trial. Chris, having been in the business of law for many years, remembered the trial and the names of the accused. He’d played squash at the time with the lawyer who had defended Anthony Bell.
‘He was as guilty as Collins and they gave him twelve months. The other one, Henry Cooper, was let off,’ she said.
‘He had a pregnant wife and son,’ Chris said.
‘Doesn’t that make it worse – a man with a pregnant wife and a son running around the streets abducting fifteen-year-old girls?’
Chris, concentrating on his meal, made no reply.
‘Does it make any difference to you if the bloke you were defending in Sydney was as guilty as hell, Chris?’
He looked up at that, and his eyes replied if his mouth didn’t. Then he changed the subject, offered to pay out her lease.
So easy to let go, to let God – or Chris – manage the worries of life, as God and Robert managed Myrtle’s life. But she’d never wanted to be Myrtle. She didn’t want to live in Chris’s flat either, or be forever in debt to him. If she’d learnt one good lesson from the conversion of Amberley, it was to do without what she couldn’t afford to pay for – or didn’t want to pay for.
Robert was still making monthly payments on his mortgage, still tutoring at night so he might make the payments. Neither he nor Myrtle had learnt how to do without, or live with second best.
Nor had Chris. Knew tonight that if she ever told him about Robin, he’d consider her second best. Tell him and get it over and done with, she thought.
Didn’t have the energy. The robbery and the flu germs it had thwarted had got into her bones and were partying on the marrow. Tired, always tired. Tired of the eternal struggle.
THE CRAZED DOG
A week later, Cara and Chris had their first heated disagreement. Solicitors are not to be tangled with and, unbeknown to her, he’d been pursuing the owner of that biting dog since Cara had photographed his bruised backside.
‘I should have made sure the photograph was out of focus,’ she said at dinner at a trendy restaurant he’d been eager to try. Trendy prices too. He liked eating out; liked being seen about, a pretty girl on his arm. And he was actually proud of his win over that old dog, which, for its instinctual dislike of running men in too-short shorts, had received a death sentence.
She’d watched an interview with the dog’s owner, on Channel Seven. They’d shown a photograph of the culprit – not a crazed, slavering albino Alsatian or a man-eating Rottweiler, but a fluffy white Samoyed/golden retriever, smiling at his owner, an eighty-three-year-old widow who’d bought Esky as a pup twelve years ago.
We were taking our morning walk when Mr Marino came running up the path behind us. He gave me such a fright – I yelped and jumped back. Esky thought he was protecting me, that’s all. He’s never really bitten anyone. He snaps, but never sinks his teeth in . . .
‘Vicious dogs cannot be allowed to roam the streets,’ Chris said.
‘He wasn’t roaming; he was on a lead. And you should have skirted around him. You could have crossed to the other side of the road.’
‘He’s done it before, and would again. The next time the victim may have been a child.’
‘How much did it cost you to find out that he’d done it before, Chris?’
‘The owner is eighty-three, of slight build and incapable of restraining the brute–’
‘I know how frail she is. I saw her on television. The dog’s been her only companion since her husband died, and now she’s lost him too. I hope you’re proud of yourself.’
‘Lower your voice, Cara.’
He liked being seen about town, but not with argumentative women. She hadn’t been told to lower her voice since she’d turned fifteen. She did worse than argue then; she insulted an imported chef. As the meal was placed before her, she took a ten-dollar note from her purse, placed it on the table and walked out.
They were supposed to be going to a show after dinner. He phoned near midnight to tell her what she’d missed. She told him she was still on Esky’s side.
‘I’ll call you when you’re in a happier frame of mind,’ he said.
*
On Sunday morning, after attempting to alter her frame of mind with a coffee and half a dozen smokes at her favourite coffee shop
, Morrie’s car stopped dead in the middle of Chapel Street. A busy street on Sundays; she caused a major traffic jam.
An RACV man came. His expression told her he didn’t like her car. He called for a tow truck, and an hour after the MG had stopped dead, the truck came to cause a bigger traffic jam. Cara stood at the kerb, watching the truckie connect the chain to Morrie’s toy’s rear end, then winch its back wheels from the road. Car abuse.
She watched him string a rope from one doorhandle around the steering wheel and onto the opposite doorhandle, then, eager to be away, he asked where she wanted it towed to.
‘I can show you,’ she said.
He told her he wasn’t there to provide a taxi service. He wanted an address.
She was purposefully vague; taxis cost money and trams didn’t go to Ashburton. ‘It’s off Warrigal Road. Have you got a map book?’
He was blocking the road. The police wanted him to move on. ‘Get in,’ he said.
Barry and Mary came out as the MG was being winched down.
‘Sorry,’ Cara greeted them. ‘I’ve just about had enough of its woes, Barry. Every time I turn around, something else goes wrong with the thing.’
‘She’s just feeling her age, love. Don’t give up on her yet,’ he said.
They had to call on a neighbour to push the car down the drive, Barry in the driver’s seat, steering and adding little weight. Cara refused tea but accepted a glass of cordial, then started walking, a good twenty-minute walk to the nearest tram.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow night, love,’ Barry said.
He wouldn’t. She’d had her phone number changed. She had his number, and he had the school’s. Two days later she was called from her classroom to speak to her mechanic.
‘Do you want the good news first or the bad?’ he asked.
‘I’ve become accustomed to bad lately,’ she said. ‘Let it rip, Barry.’
‘The crown wheel has come loose from the case and the bolt’s snapped, and we could have buggered up the diff when we pushed her in.’
‘They’d already pushed it off the road in Chapel Street,’ Cara said, unfamiliar with crown wheels or diffs. She could just about recognise a bolt. ‘Can you fix it?’
‘Anything is fixable, but we’re talking big money now, love.’
She didn’t have big money to spend. She was managing from pay packet to pay packet. She didn’t have a television or a typewriter. Space in her dogbox at a premium, a month before the robbery she’d donated her old rattle-trap typewriter back to the opportunity shop where she’d bought it.
‘Is it worth spending big money on, Barry?’
‘I’m the wrong bloke to answer that one. I’d say they’re always worth spending money on. I was yarning to a bloke from the club this morning. He’d buy it as it stands – that’s the good news.’
‘Can you give me an approximate figure to fix it?’
His approximate figure knocked her for six. She’d have to contact Morrie and see if he was interested in selling it as it stood. Or get Chris to write to him. He had Morrie’s address. He’d been in touch with him recently about the erasure of their marriage.
Odd the way the mind measures time: before the marriage, since the marriage; before Robin, since Robin. Now she’d added before and after the robbery to her time frame. She hadn’t been back to Sydney since the robbery, a plane ticket now considered a luxury item, and all luxuries banned until she had enough in the bank to feel safe.
*
Chris rang again on the Wednesday night. She told him her frame of mind had worsened due to her lack of car; however, if he was interested, it may have improved enough for coffee on Sunday morning.
‘Out of doors, just in case I raise my voice again.’
He considered her shot in silence. Then: ‘Where?’
‘That little place in Chapel Street we’ve been to before.’
‘Fine,’ he said and hung up.
She hadn’t been put on earth to keep him happy, or to eat weird meals with him in a fancy restaurant that specialised in class but not in food.
Always punctual to a fault, he was waiting for her at ten on Sunday. He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek, and spoke of a letter he’d received from the group of English solicitors employed by Morrie to free him.
‘How long before it’s done?’ she asked.
‘They believe mid-December.’
‘Your blood is worth bottling,’ she said.
He liked that. It encouraged him to say more.
‘The builders are making a start on the house next week. Their projected completion date is February. I don’t want to live in it alone, Cara.’
‘I’ve lost almost three years of my life to that fiasco of a marriage. It’s my fault, I know, but I’ve forgotten what it’s like to wake up in the morning with the biggest worry on my mind what I’ll wear to work. I’m thinking about moving home to Sydney when my lease is up.’
‘I’d be easier to live with than your parents,’ he said with a smile.
She liked his smile. It raised one of her own. ‘True.’
Tell him about Robin. He’ll walk or he won’t – he wants a large family.
Do I want him to walk? Yes. No. Sometimes.
Do I know what I want?
A typewriter.
‘My old typewriter is in Sydney. For years I’ve been promising myself one full year to prove if I can or can’t write.’
‘And if at the end of your year you’ve had no success?’
She shrugged. ‘Is writing something people can give up cold turkey, like cigarettes?’
He’d smoked at one time. He’d told her many times how he’d given it up cold turkey – had tossed a near full packet of cigarettes into an open fire, and every time he’d been tempted to replace that packet, he’d visualised watching money burn. She never smoked when she was with him – and coffees sipped alone at this café, a smoke in hand, tasted better, lasted longer.
Couldn’t smoke in Sydney. Nowhere to type up there either. No room of her own now. Miss Robertson and Mrs Collins were old enough to move into retirement homes. They’d spoken to Myrtle about moving but wouldn’t do it.
Chris’s house had a study – or fifth bedroom – but she had no intention of filling his bedrooms. After a caesarean, a woman wasn’t supposed to produce half a dozen more kids – she didn’t want any more kids. She wanted Robin.
Life was weird. Since the robbery, she’d felt stripped down to the core, like her bank account, and wasn’t too certain of what was at her core. Everything that had happened since seemed to be leading her blindly towards the next period of her life – couldn’t yet see what it was to be. Maybe she was meant to live in a beautiful house in Doncaster; to take classes in Italian so she might one day communicate with her mother-in-law.
Morrie’s car dying in this street had been a further stripping away. Maybe it knew it couldn’t live in another man’s garage. Or maybe it knew it couldn’t move with her to Sydney. No Barry up there to keep it on the road.
*
Barry called in September. He’d done the rounds of the wreckers, and, having had no luck in finding the parts Morrie’s MG required, he’d contacted a place at Brighton.
‘They specialise in MGs. They can order new parts for the old girl from England.’
‘How long, Barry?’
‘How long is the boat going to take to get here? That’s the question, love. How long is it going to take the wharfies to unload it when it gets here? Have you sounded out the chap who owns it?’
‘Not yet.’
Didn’t want to. He’d probably say go ahead and have it repaired. Whatever his decision, she wanted the last thread tying her to him cut.
It would never be cut. Robin was forever.
On a sunny Sunday in September, she drove with Chris to look at the framework of his house, and ended up in his mother’s kitchen. Hadn’t known that he still dropped off his laundry at home. The washing machine was washing before the coffee was
brewed, before the rich cake was cut, before his older sister smelled cake and popped in from next door.
This would be my life.
A good life. They were a close family. She’d have sisters-in-law instead of half-sisters. She’d have nieces and nephews by the score.
Do I want this life?
Then October, and another birthday. Myrtle sent a card and a book. Cathy might read it. Cara rewrapped it and marked it Cathy – Christmas, grateful that Myrtle hadn’t written her birthday wishes on the flyleaf. She used to. To our beautiful girl, from Mummy and Daddy.
Marion sent her a card and a TattsLotto ticket. I’ve got the numbers, and expect half if it wins the big one.
Georgie sent a card. What’s wrong with your phone?
Chris arrived at her door to take her out to Helen and Michael’s home for dinner, and as she was about to leave, Barry called, though not to wish her happy birthday.
‘I’ve been speaking to the chap from the club. He’s made a definite offer for the car. It’s a fair offer, I’d say, given the old girl’s current condition. Have you heard anything from the owner?’
She hadn’t written to the owner. ‘I’ll do it tonight,’ she said.
Helen had put on a surprise party. Only teachers; no Cathy, no Marion.
This too would be my life, Cara thought. Chris and Michael talking shop to an older guy Cara had never previously sighted, a husband of someone. Two young teachers and their males down the bottom of the garden, keeping their cigarette smoke well away from the house. Cara joined them.
She only smoked two cigarettes, but as soon as she got into the car, Chris reached over to wind her window down.
‘I thought you’d given up.’
‘I smoke at parties.’
They went to few together. She never invited him to Marion’s parties, where worse than tobacco was smoked.
