by Joy Dettman
And to a small blue car parked in the drive. Bernard’s nurse, come to put him to bed? Too early for bed.
Her coat pocket was stuffed full of tissues and serviettes – a tourist can’t survive for a day without a pocket full of tissues and serviettes. She wiped her leaking eyes with one, blew her nose, then stared at the car.
She’d visualised many cars, guests everywhere; had visualised a late dinner served at a long dining room table, a classy Aunt Leticia presiding over two dozen guests, uniformed maids hovering. She’d brought a dressy frock so she might dress for dinner. That’s what they did in English fiction.
Life rarely reflects fiction.
She reached into her second pocket and removed her beret – which she was about to pull on when she remembered her itching scalp. Tossed it, certain it was crawling with lice. Found cigarettes in that pocket and lit one. She’d smoked too many with Pete’s mad mob, had gone through packets of the things; had smoked with her Yank roommate. Couldn’t smoke when she went home. Twice during her day in Sydney, her two nights, she’d crept away to her friend, a neighbourly cypress hedge. Myrtle, who had a nose on her like a bloodhound, had smelt smoke when she’d come inside.
She glanced over her shoulder to the open door, which was allowing Letty’s heat to escape and the cigarette smoke to seep in. She pulled the door to, but didn’t latch it, then stood with her back to it, blowing smoke into a dark night. Wondered how they’d cut the stones to build this place, how they’d cut the massive beams, lifted them. No mechanical cranes back then, only manpower, horsepower and cheap labour.
So much to see. So much to learn, but she couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t trust herself in the same room as Morrie.
Couldn’t go back to Pete’s pad, either, and wake up lousy again.
Everything had been fine, she’d been in control, until she’d mentioned Robin. ‘Stupid.’ Wine always loosened her tongue. The night she’d fallen in love with Morrie, she’d downed three and a half glasses of champagne.
The cigarette, the car, knowing that a second outsider was in the house, that there was a way out, had calmed her. And the chill. The nurse would be a local. He’d know of a place in town where she could get a bed.
A little light filtered through a window to her right. She walked to it, then to the corner. Light seeping from the rear of the house. A long house. Wanted to see it by daylight. Wanted to spend a night in that five-hundred-year-old room – with Henry’s ghost next door.
The nurse came morning and evening, Morrie had said. The German woman came in daily – maybe not at weekends, but Bernard would need his nurse at weekends. If she drank no more wine, if she stuck close to Letty’s side . . .
England had surprised her. She’d expected to find a land capable of giving birth to Australia, but other than language she’d found no family resemblance – and in a few places had found little resemblance in the language. The variety of accents had surprised her. How could such a tiny country be so diverse? From one side of Australia to the other, people sounded basically the same; as did the newer arrivals, if they started speaking the language in childhood. Drive ten miles in England and the accent altered.
She smoked the cigarette down to the butt, buried it in a barren garden bed, found her expensive beret there and placed it on a windowsill for the night to freeze. Head lice didn’t do well in winter. During her years in the schoolroom she’d become an expert on the habits of head lice.
Went inside then, to thaw and to find Letty.
Muted sounds coming from a passage to the left. She tracked them to an open door where she glimpsed a middle-aged male spoon-feeding Bernard. Thought of Robin, of the cruel circle of life, the spoon-feeding of babies and of old men, and walked by fast and down a passage leading perhaps to the rear of the house.
How did three people live in a house built to house dozens? Apparently, they locked most of their doors. She tried four before finding one that opened – into a room with a step-down flagstone floor. A long room of many windows, dark, no light switch that might show her a door leading outside. She could see the shape of another building out there, but no definition. What was outside this house? What was hidden away in those locked rooms? She’d brought three notebooks, plenty of pencils, and had barely filled half of one book. A day in this place and she’d fill it and half a dozen more. An hour with Letty and, if she could write fast enough, she’d fill the lot.
To this point, England had disappointed. This place didn’t. If she spent tonight in that four-poster, she’d have all day tomorrow to explore, and to use the film she’d intended using at Morrie’s wedding. Had to keep him at a distance, that’s all – and drink coffee instead of wine.
That’s what she needed: a strong coffee. They had to have a kitchen somewhere.
She returned to the passage, retraced her steps back to the entrance hall, then to the long room, expecting to find Leticia seated there. The television was playing. No one watching it. Walked through to the small room where Morrie kept his bottles. No one in there either. It was like being locked into a museum when the staff had all gone home – or like being lost in one of her dreams. She’d open a door in a minute and find that room with the claret curtains.
Walked deeper towards the rear of the house, and smelled burning – burning toast. Toast meant kitchen. Kitchens had coffee. Her nose leading the way, she found Morrie lit by a weak globe set on the wall. He was standing over a modern gas stove, stirring the contents of a small saucepan. A modern refrigerator behind him.
‘I take it that you won’t agree to eat with me at the local,’ he said.
‘I need a coffee,’ she said.
‘Jug to your left. Coffee beside it.’
She made two coffees. He made and buttered unburnt toast. She looked at the old walls, the modern floor covering, modern stove and fridge, old chairs and table – like the stairs, worn by the years. Cooks had once prepared meals in this kitchen. Maids had carried what was prepared here to a polished dining table – somewhere.
He served an anaemic meaty mess onto buttered toast, then placed plates on either side of the table, knives and forks between them. Salt, pepper. He was placing a bottle of tomato sauce when, from a distance, came the howl of the damned.
‘Henry’s ghost?’ she asked.
‘Pops,’ he said, and sat down to his meal. She sat too, and, unable to identify the mess on toast, poked at it with her fork.
‘It tastes better than it looks,’ he said.
‘Where’s your aunt?’
‘In her room. The nurse helps her into bed before he starts on Pops.’
‘It’s early.’
‘He’s got others to put to bed.’
‘Running a private nursing home for the elderly is no life for anyone,’ she said.
He didn’t reply. She watched him fill his mouth and, hungry enough, she cut a small corner of toast and anaemic stew. Tasted it and he was right. It tasted better than it looked.
‘How did Phyllis lose the baby?’
‘She was chosen to ride in an equestrian thing in early March. She would have been six months pregnant. I’m not a hundred per cent certain she lost it.’
She looked at him. He looked at his meal.
‘What are you saying?’
‘That I’m not a hundred per cent certain she lost it,’ he repeated. ‘She and her mother went up to London for the weekend and they came home without it.’
‘You think she got rid of it!’
He didn’t reply.
She ate more toast and anaemic stew. ‘There must have been more to the relationship than a baby.’
‘Horses,’ he said. ‘Four of them. They eat my grass.’ He filled his mouth, emptied it. ‘I’m not fond of watching equestrian events. Her parents are. I’m not fond of her parents either.’ He filled his mouth again. ‘I liked the idea of producing a wee Langdon. I don’t have a lot I can call my own.’
She looked at him, felt the heat moving again to her face. Looked down
at her plate and filled her own mouth before her tongue could tell him of her tiny curly-headed Langdon in Sydney.
And of course she couldn’t. Robin belonged to Myrtle and Robert; belonged with them. If they lost him, it would kill them.
‘You’ve got plenty that’s your own,’ she said. ‘Come home and we’ll drive up to Woody Creek together. We’ll tell them I ran into you in a pub in London.’
‘They’ve gone to live with the angels,’ he said.
She ate the last of her stew and felt better for it. ‘I asked Jenny why she kept the three of you and gave me away. She told me she was abducted on her way home from the place where she sang and pack-raped by five American sailors.’
‘And you believed her?’
‘I do.’
‘Sucker,’ he said.
‘Sucker you for believing your mother when she told you Jenny and your sisters had gone to live with the angels. Sucker you for believing that ghoul-faced, black widow spider you call Aunt Lorna too. And sucker you for believing that any woman would sell a six-year-old boy she loved for two thousand miserable bloody pounds.’
‘Want another piece of toast?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘There’s more stew.’
‘Did it come out of a pommy tin?’
‘It’s one of Anna’s concoctions – the German woman. She cooks enough to feed an army, and as I’m the only eater, I freeze what’s left over – which gives a whole new meaning to pot luck. I don’t get around to writing labels.’
Footsteps approaching, two heads turned.
The male nurse. ‘G’day,’ he greeted them. ‘I’m a bit concerned about the old chap’s plumbing,’ he said, in Australian English.
Cara, homesick for Australian accents, listened until she realised he wasn’t discussing the water pipes but Bernard’s. She made her escape with her coffee mug; not back the way she’d come, but via the only well-lit passage, which led her again to the flagstone-floored room. A search of its windowed wall rewarded her with a switch and a light, and a door that offered access to a cobblestoned yard.
Light enough escaping that wall of windows to guide her feet to a low stone wall, circular; in some past era, it must have surrounded a well. She sat on the stone, too high for a comfortable seat – her feet were off the ground, which was good. Cold, cold ground. Should have bought boots with heavier soles. Her coffee mug placed down on history, she dug into her pockets for cigarettes and lighter, aware that the mason who had cut the stone she sat on hadn’t known about that smoking weed growing wild in the Americas. It was mind-bending, the generations of time; the maids who had come to this well to draw water for the generations of Langdons.
She thought of the tiny Langdon boxed up in a unit in Sydney, afraid of slippery slides and swings.
I don’t have much that is my own. His words reminded her of Georgie’s: I’m short on blood relatives. Somehow joined, those two, the brother she wasn’t allowed to love, and the sister who had become a part of her life.
Heard his footsteps on flagstones. He’d tracked her down.
‘You’ll freeze,’ he said. ‘You can smoke inside.’
‘I told everyone I wanted to see a white Christmas. At least I’ll be able to tell them I froze solid.’
He stood in the doorway, and she stayed seated, until the ember was too close to her fingers, until frozen feet made his overheated rooms seem desirable. Slid from her perch then and killed the butt on stone. Left it where it died and followed him back to the long room, to Bernard and Letty’s comfortable chairs and the television, still playing. He sat on Bernard’s chair. She removed her coat, then sat on Letty’s.
A flashing screen draws the eye if not the mind. Some canned-laughter show playing, and too hot in that room. Her dogbox unit had rarely been warm in winter. Cold, wet England knew how to heat a house. Her mind flitted to Pete’s pad. No radiator there. No comfortable chair. Any warmth at Pete’s had come from packed-in bodies and the hot air they’d expelled.
Closed her eyes while a bellowing commercial espoused the benefits of its washing powder over all others.
‘Go to bed,’ he said.
‘I’m just resting my eyes.’
Closed her eyes again five minutes later.
*
Blame the heat, the aspros, wine, Letty’s comfortable chair. Never in her life had she nodded off while watching a show on television. Never in her life had she fallen asleep in an upright position, but was there a better sleeping pill than an American sitcom with frequent breaks for mindless commercials?
Eyes that had closed briefly, just during commercials, forgot to open and the canned laughter merged with dream.
She was at the wedding party. She’d bought a new dress. It wasn’t the black and white, but black lace, and beneath it she was wearing the running shoes Chris had bought for her. And it wasn’t a wedding. There was a body on Morrie’s kitchen table, surrounded by food.
‘Snuffed out like a candle,’ Letty said, grown larger in dream.
Someone had to tell her to move the food; that she couldn’t spread food around a body – a naked, mummified body, the colour of smoked cod.
Dreams don’t make sense. A dreamer doesn’t attempt to make sense of her subconscious. A dreamer follows where her dream leads.
Robert was there, and he wanted his comfortable chair, but, paralysed by weariness, she was unable to move. Then he was carrying her up the stairs to bed – and he couldn’t carry her. His knee was too bad to carry Robin.
She woke when her shoe caught on the stair’s handrail, and she smelled the scent of him. Knew who was carrying her.
He carried her to the room in the roof, where he placed her gently down on the bed. She was awake, but her eyes remained closed, unready to let go of her dream. He removed her boots, lifted her again while easing back the quilt, tucked her in, then his lips brushed her own.
‘I dream of this,’ she said. ‘Night after night, I dream of this, then I wake up and you’re gone.’
‘Ask me to stay, and I’ll stay,’ he said.
‘Stay,’ she said.
*
You can hide in a manor house, where for five hundred years stone walls have guarded the master’s secrets. You can alter departure dates, and when that date creeps nearer, you can alter it again.
Cara stayed through January, through February. She stayed away so long she became afraid to go home. Why go home to confront what she’d done when she had all that she’d ever desired at her side?
Robin would have his second birthday in April, but if Morrie couldn’t know him – and he couldn’t – then why should she be allowed to know him? Far better for her to disappear before she became more to him than a mummy who sang to him on the telephone. At two, he’d forget her.
He’d forget how to ride a slippery slide. He’d start school at five, afraid of the mass of tiny boys and girls, and he’d catch every disease known to modern man.
I survived. So will he.
Myrtle and Robert wouldn’t live forever. In ten years’ time, Robin would be the head carer in an old people’s home – as was his father.
She’d loved his father before she’d loved him . . .
February ended and March began, and Cara lived happily on Letty’s acres. Never before had she been so aware of the changing of seasons. At Morrie’s side, she watched chubby buds burst from seemingly dead trees, watched curled leaves emerge, then, like the tiny crumpled hand of an infant, open up to life. She watched barren garden beds send forth shoots that became flowers. Walked hand in hand with him beside a shallow stream, which would have dried out in a day in Australia. Not in England. Spotted trout played there, camouflaged well by the dappled sunlight filtering between the trees. And daffodils, a host of golden daffodils, blooming like weeds on the banks of the stream.
She sat with Aunt Letty, filling notebooks while the old lady spoke of her dogs, while she opened an ancient cabinet to show off trophies won for ‘best of breed’. Letty
spoke of the history behind her Henry; and, on a day when the sun came out to warm old England and the skies turned blue, even agreed to allow Bernard out to enjoy the natural warmth.
He was barely sixty, but a feeble old man. He clutched at Cara, grasping at what he could; clawed Morrie with too-long fingernails. Morrie picked him up in his arms and carried him like a child back to the safety of his chair, his television, his Letty.
‘I’m here, little one. Your Letty is by your side. I’m here, my little one.’
The male nurse agreed to sleep over for a weekend. Freed for two nights, Morrie and Cara headed off to see what sights they might, to be Mr and Mrs Langdon who made love in strange beds. Joyous days. Joyous nights.
They escaped to London for a day while Anna, the German woman, cleaned and cooked her stew. They had a beer with Pete and two of his mates. Halfway home, Cara wanted to turn back to warn Pete not to tell his parents she’d been with Morrie. Myrtle and Robert believed their globetrotting daughter was working as a typist in London. But Pete’s letters home were rare; they didn’t turn back.
Mid-March, and Georgie’s birthday only ten days away. Woody Creek infiltrating. Every year since ’67 Cara and Georgie had exchanged birthday cards. It had to end. Morrie agreed that her relationship with Georgie had to end.
Then Bernard was admitted to hospital with pneumonia, Letty convinced he’d caught a chill when she’d allowed them to take him outside.
‘Tell them to let him go, Morrie,’ Cara said. ‘He’s not alive.’
Didn’t say it if Letty was within hearing distance.
Poor Morrie, stuck in the middle. He became Letty’s taxi driver; and for two weeks drove her daily to and from the hospital.
Cara caught a train alone to London, walked there alone, bought postcards of London Bridge by night.
Dear Georgie, hope you had a great birthday. You need to see this place. Love, Cara.
Dear Mum, Dad and Robin, having the best time of my life. Love, Cara
Posted them on her way to Pete’s pad, and found him and four more there. She didn’t stay, only long enough to warn him not to mention Morrie if he chanced to write home. Too late. He’d posted his monthly card the day he’d had a beer with them. After a lengthy hunt, he found an envelope addressed to her care of Peter Norris.
