by Joy Dettman
She opened it as she walked away from his pad; read it at a bus stop. Three pages from Myrtle, full of Robin and questions as to why Morrie had been with her in London. A page about Robert’s knee. She’d enclosed a photograph of Robin, seated on Santa’s lap and looking like Morrie.
Had to show it to him. She had to.
He’d wanted Phyllis’s baby. He’d want Robin. And he couldn’t have him.
Damn feeling guilty about Georgie’s birthday. Damn Bernard’s pneumonia. Damn Pete too. She had to shred that letter, shred that photograph.
She tore the letter into tiny bits and tossed it into the station bin. The photograph she zipped into a pocket within her zippered shoulder bag; a lighter bag without the bulk of Rusty.
Phoned Morrie from the station. He took her to a pub for dinner. She drank the wine but barely tasted the meal, her mind away with the shredded letter. Myrtle had asked why she’d been with Morrie, then warned her not to make a second mistake so far from home – namely, a second pregnancy. She believed what she’d been told: that the cad had married her daughter in order to inherit his grandfather’s estate, that he’d impregnated then deserted her. In Myrtle’s eyes, Morrie was the bad guy.
There would be no more mistakes. They’d made certain of that. Cara now swallowed her daily pill; and until its chemicals had taken over her cycle, they’d been careful – after that first night they’d been careful. No care that night, no thought, just howling, aching love, and, thank God, no repercussions.
She spoke to Morrie about that letter, in bed, in the dark, allowing Pete to have received a long letter from home – and loathed her dishonesty.
‘Dad has seen a surgeon who believes he can improve his knee. He can no longer drive. Pete’s father’s been driving them everywhere, and he’s already spent years running around after Gran Norris. I’ll have to go home for a while, Morrie.’
‘I’ll find someone to move in here and we’ll go together,’ he said.
‘No. It won’t be the same over there.’
‘If you go back alone, your head will get in the way again and you won’t come back.’
‘I will. I know where I want to be now,’ she said.
She wrote two pages to Myrtle and Robert that night. Made no mention of the letter or the photograph; mentioned meeting Morrie in London where she’d signed a few papers about the divorce. She spoke of her new job, playing secretary to an elderly lady who wanted to write her memoirs, another lie, but Cara had an exercise book full of Letty’s girlhood, her umpteen sisters and brothers, her scatterbrained parents.
Surgeons have come a long way since the war, Daddy. I’d suggest that you go ahead with the operation. If you don’t, then Mummy needs to start taking driving lessons.
Didn’t mention coming home, or Robin, or his birthday, but offered them Leticia’s private box number.
March was done, Robin two years old, when Myrtle’s reply arrived.
Daddy will be admitted to hospital on the twenty-second of April. His surgeon said that all being well he’ll be able to drive again in six or eight weeks . . .
‘I need to do something about my furniture, Morrie, and pick up my other novels.’
They’d worked on Rusty together. He knew a local typist, who’d agreed to bring her typewriter to the house, and in only a week she’d produced three hundred and sixty pristine pages and a smudge-free carbon copy. They’d delivered the manuscript to the publisher’s door the day they had a drink with Pete. Morrie had been haunting the post office since. Not Cara. She’d had a lot of experience with publishers.
‘I’ll be back here before we hear anything,’ she said.
The flight booked for 18 April, every day became a precious thing; then every hour, until that final hour.
Kissed Letty, patted Bernard – less of him now for his large chair to swallow. Television still playing the same old shows. Nurse coming by morning, noon and night to change his pants – and maybe Cara was getting away from that too.
She was almost ready to leave when she picked up the carbon copy of Rusty, weighed it a moment in her hand, then zipped it into her shoulder bag. Loathed herself for its last-minute, secretive packing, unsure of why she’d taken it from the drawer. Told herself she’d put too much of her life into it to be separated from it by an ocean. Told herself it had flown over with her, and it would fly back with her in July, in time to see England’s summer.
Then she flew away.
*
There is a halfway mark drawn across land and sea and sky. Sometime while the world outside was dark, she must have crossed that line. The plane, previously dragging her away from Morrie, started impelling her towards Robin. She took the photograph of her wide-eyed boy and Santa from its pocket and, by the narrow beam of her personal light, looked at it again. His curls made him look like her, but the worried expression in his eyes was all Morrie.
Reality coming fast to get her.
PART TWO
HIS MOTHER’S SON
Cara had left Sydney on a steamy December day; she returned to a mild April morning. Three months she’d been gone, and her entire life had changed. Sydney hadn’t. Same taxis waiting in the same place – brash, common things after London’s sedate black cabs. Brash blue sky, demanding ‘look at me’; less traffic on the roads, familiar roads.
Then home, and it wasn’t. Felt sick. Felt like a con artist preparing her story for the greatest sting ever made.
Let herself in, left her luggage in the hall.
‘You’re here already, pet. We weren’t expecting you until tonight.’
Kissed Myrtle in the doorway, then entered the parlour to kiss Robert’s brow – and noticed one change. Her old portable television set had been resurrected from its dark cupboard and set up in the parlour, ousting Myrtle’s prized rubber tree from its corner. Before it, and too close to it, sat Robin, avidly watching a kindergarten show.
‘Look who’s come to see us, darling,’ Myrtle said.
Robin glanced Cara’s way. ‘Dat’s my mummy.’
‘Nanny told you she was coming home today, didn’t she.’
‘On a airplane.’
‘A long, long, long way on an aeroplane,’ Cara said.
He nodded, then turned back to his kindergarten show. She squatted at his side for a moment, but a sometimes visitor mummy can’t compete with a man and lady who come five days a week at the turn of a knob. Left him to watch it.
Left Robert to his reading, and followed Myrtle through to the kitchen, where she dug deep in the pantry cupboard for the large jar of instant coffee she’d brought with her two years ago. Still plenty left in the jar; Myrtle and Robert didn’t drink coffee. She spoke of England, of aeroplanes, of Pete, of Buckingham Palace, made no mention of Morrie, or Leticia. Mentioned the manor house where she’d spent a little time while writing the old lady’s memoirs. She’d made no mention of Morrie’s wedding so had no need to speak of its cancellation.
‘Turn this thing’s volume down if you’re going to stand out there,’ Robert said.
‘I’m making a cup of tea, Robert. We’ll bring it in,’ Myrtle said, then in a whisper: ‘Go in and talk to Daddy, pet.’
Blame his knee for the tetchy tone in his voice, Cara thought. Blame the television or his loss of mobility. Don’t blame his irritable old battleaxe of a mother. Don’t see her pink scalp glowing through sparse white hair. Don’t see her face in profile.
The last three months of pain had aged Robert and eaten the little fat he’d had on his bones. He looked almost as small as Gran Norris.
‘Is he eating well, Mummy?’
‘No,’ Myrtle said. ‘He’s living on pills. The pain gets him down, and he’s got no faith in the surgeon.’
Gran had not had any faith in her many doctors. Couldn’t find one to agree with her that she’d been dying.
Please, God, don’t grow old yet, Daddy. And if you have to, please, God, don’t grow old like her.
*
Cara delivered Ro
bert and his case to the hospital. John brought him home before May began. The surgeon had removed six pieces of shrapnel and considerable scar tissue. He’d pronounced the operation a success. Cara and Myrtle were yet to see its success. May was on its way out and Robert still wincing when Robin approached at a run.
‘Watch Papa’s knee, Robbie,’ Cara said.
‘Don’t shorten it, pet,’ Myrtle said. ‘Robin is such a nice name.’
John and Beth came by, as they always had. John sat with his brother; Beth questioned Cara, wanting news of her aimless, wandering son, where he was living, where he was working. Cara told her about Pete’s pad, but not all about it. She told her about his Aussie friends and their communal van. Didn’t mention Pete’s ponytail, or his watering holes, or that one of his flatmates had looked lousy. She told her she’d seen more of Pete by night than she had by day. Didn’t tell her he caught up on his sleep by day, that he was probably living on the dole. She mentioned a sausage factory somewhere. One of Pete’s mates had spoken of time served in a sausage factory.
‘Did he say when he’d be coming home?’
‘He asked what I’d paid for my airfare,’ Cara said.
Beth brought up the subject of Morrie. ‘Pete said he seemed like a decent enough chap.’
‘Did you see much of him?’ Myrtle asked. ‘Did you tell him–’
‘The marriage now being null and void, that particular subject is banned, Mummy.’
Australia had banned all French imports, in protest against nuclear testing in the Pacific. Robert had banned the use of the television, other than for Robin’s allocated hour on weekday mornings and his half-hour in the afternoons. He was an atrocious patient, and his knee wasn’t healing as well as any of them had hoped. Cara drove him to doctors, to physiotherapy. He’d been told to swim, which would exercise his knee without the need to put weight on it. He’d never been a swimmer, and at seventy-three had no desire to take it up.
The shock of Mrs Collins’s sudden death in early June may have prevented Robert atrophying in his chair. Mrs Collins’s son and daughter-in-law arrived to collect their mother’s few personal belongings. The son, a high-school principal, had met Robert when he too had been a high-school principal. Forced to rise to the occasion, Robert did.
No funeral in Sydney to attend. The son lived in Malvern, in Melbourne. Mrs Collins’s grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, lived in Melbourne. She’d be buried in the city she’d only ever visited at Christmas and Easter.
Miss Robertson travelled down with the son and daughter-in-law and returned on the train, worn out and bereft at the loss of her colleague and flatmate. She helped to keep Robert from his chair. Two, three times a day she walked the few steps from her door to Myrtle’s, then sat too long in Robert’s parlour where she spoke of a residence for retired businesswomen that she and Mrs Collins had been considering.
Cara, eager to take over Unit Two, drove her to the place to look over the facilities, walked with her through something that appeared midway between guesthouse and private hospital.
‘Very pleasant surroundings, Miss Robertson.’
‘Poky little rooms, dear.’
‘Pleasant people.’
‘Elderly.’
Rooms not so poky to one who had lived six years in a dogbox. A pleasant communal sitting room, full of the elderly – most of them junior to Miss Robertson. Cara drove her home.
On rent day, when Miss Robertson paid her share of the rent and Mrs Collins’s, Myrtle pressed half of the notes back into the old lady’s hand.
‘Jesus, Mummy.’
‘Robin heard that! Do you want him learning to say that?’
‘Well, you’re acting like you’re running a charitable institution!’
‘She’s on a pension.’
At June’s end, John gave Robert a cheque to cover June’s bank loan repayment.
‘They’re on pensions too!’ Cara argued.
‘They know that Daddy will pay it back.’
‘His pension is huge by comparison with John’s, and you get rent from the upstairs units! What are you doing with your money?’
‘We were managing well until Robert had to give up tutoring. There are bills, and the operation cost a fortune. Not all of it was refunded by our medical insurance. We’re just a little short at the moment.’
‘And you go out and spend a fortune on shoes for Robin that he’ll grow out of in a month – and fillet steak! Do you think Beth and John are eating fillet steak tonight?’
‘It’s the only steak your father will eat, and you said yourself that he’s too thin.’
‘I’m taking those shoes back.’
‘He needs new shoes.’
‘I’ll buy his shoes.’
‘Cheap shoes ruin a child’s feet for life.’
‘Stop listening to the bloody television commercials. They’re all bullshit.’
‘Cara! Do not use that language in this house.’
‘Well, they are.’
‘England has changed you.’
Not being in England had changed her. She couldn’t live with Myrtle. Couldn’t, and had to. I’ll be back by mid-July, she’d told Morrie. She ached for him, and June was almost gone and she couldn’t go back.
Wrote a cheque for the storage company for another six months, then took Robin’s new shoes back to the store on the corner. They refunded the money, or most of it. Spent a third of it on a pair of cheap desert boots, big enough to last a while. Myrtle wasn’t pleased, but Robin liked them.
She kidnapped him the next morning, his feet clad in his new boots. They rode a train into the city, where Cara went job hunting, her boy riding in his expensive stroller. Myrtle had only ever bought the best of everything. They didn’t hunt long or far. She could have got a job in a boutique, which may have been fun but would mean weekend work. Took a job copy typing in a huge office. Her magnificent obsession had given her one very saleable skill. She was a whiz at copy typing, and until the robbery she’d known how to work a whiz-bang typewriter.
Kissed Robin goodbye each morning through July and caught that train. Kissed him goodbye through August, paid the bank, paid back Uncle John, then typed a six-page letter to Morrie on her old portable in Mrs Collins’s unused room, which Miss Robertson didn’t pay to use and which Cara now did.
In September, three months ahead on the loan, she bought Robin a pair of blue plastic sandals from Kmart. Paid ninety-nine cents for them. Myrtle had a blue fit. ‘Cheap and nasty!’ She denied plastic, other than plastic buckets and plastic bags; she liked them. Robin loved his blue shoes.
In September, Cara told him that only big boys wore blue shoes and big boys could ride alone on slippery slides. Caught him at the bottom of it and they laughed and he wanted to do it again, and again. In September, she knew she could never leave him.
In September, Morrie wrote to tell her the London publisher had returned Rusty. To hell with Rusty, and to hell with typewriters. If she never saw another in her lifetime, it would be too soon.
Swapped the typewriter for a cash register in October: got a job as a checkout chick in a supermarket close to home. A year ago, she may have named it research. Not any more. She named it money, and put her hand up for every offer of overtime. Needed her own flat, or her own room somewhere. Miss Robertson was as hard to live with as Myrtle. She named it exercise too. Ran to work each morning, her feet clad in runners, worked all day in them, then ran home to one unit or the other, depending on which one of them she could stand the least.
Morrie’s first letters had been retrieved from the mailbox before Myrtle sighted them. Not those that had arrived since July. Since July, they waited for her on the parlour cabinet like an accusation, the English stamps, airmail stickers and perfect copperplate script a dead giveaway.
‘Did you tell him about Robin?’
‘No.’
‘Were you with him over there?’
‘Am I pregnant, Mum?’
She was slim, could r
un a mile without breaking into a sweat – and was torn between two loves. Robin needed her. Morrie wanted her.
Robert was driving again, his knee better than it had been in twenty years; so much better he was returning to his tutoring after Christmas. She could go . . .
And Myrtle still spoon-feeding Robin his Weet-Bix.
‘For God’s sake, stop that, Mummy. You’re making a fool of him.’
‘He’s still a baby.’
‘He’s two and a half years old. Let him grow up!’
Stood behind the checkout into December while the herds rolled on by her register, while elderly ladies tut-tutted at screaming kids who wanted what their mother wouldn’t buy. Robin wanted the checkout lady when Myrtle brought him in; screamed when he couldn’t have what he wanted. Cara wanted to scream at Myrtle, who bought him a chocolate frog instead of his mummy. Checkout chicks can’t scream at mindless customers.
Then Morrie phoned, while she was at work, and left a message.
‘He said he’d found a reliable couple prepared to move into the house with his father. He said he’d see you around Christmas,’ the tight-mouthed, wet-eyed messenger said.
He couldn’t. She couldn’t let him.
He called again, not trusting the messenger.
‘Book your flight through to Melbourne,’ Cara told him. ‘I’m spending Christmas with Cathy.’
Cathy knew she’d been with Morrie in England and was eager to hear all of the details in person.
Myrtle heard too. ‘I thought you’d spend Christmas with us this year.’
‘Morrie’s car is still in Melbourne. I have to do something about it, and my furniture.’
‘Why Christmas? And what about your job, pet?’
Job? It was her money tree, that was all. And if she’d learnt one thing since last Christmas, it was that there were worse ways of making a living than standing in a classroom. You were allowed to yell at obstreperous kids.
*
Way back in 1966, when Bob Menzies quit Australia’s top job, stability screamed ‘Help’. No one listened. Harold Holt may have steered the country into a better future had he not gone for an early-morning swim down at Portsea. He swam out to sea and didn’t swim back; and with no steadying hand at the helm, Australia’s boat rocked while Liberal politicians played musical chairs, too many desperate to claim the prize of the Lodge.
