by Joy Dettman
Voters had become conditioned to trust the Liberal Party, but by the seventies, trust was a word somehow gone wrong. Truth, once to be relied on, had become malleable. Blame that on that other T word: television. In one night of viewing, five attractive women might claim that her brand of laundry powder would wash your whites whiter than any other. Commercials – for coffee, dishwashing liquid, floor cleaners, cars, furniture – bombarded the viewer with their lies.
After a hard day at work, of battling roads to and from work, the average taxpayer expected to be entertained when he turned on that box, expected quality television for his tolerance of mass commercials. Somewhere between ’66 and ’72 it became no longer enough for a politician to run the country effectively; he was expected to come across well on the box too. Big Gough Whitlam had a pleasant enough face and a humorous turn of phrase. He’d been around in the background for years, smiling like a Cheshire cat waiting to pounce on the cream. Little Billy McMahon had little going for him – other than great ears for the cartoonist’s pen and an attractive wife not afraid to show her legs. On the second day of December 1972, as easily as the taxpayers changed television channels when a program failed to satisfy, they changed their allegiance on voting day. Big Gough won the prize of the Lodge, and for the first time in twenty-three years the Labor Party won power.
Cara had ticked the Liberal boxes, conditioned early by Robert to tick them. John and Beth liked Big Gough, who looked a little like Menzies.
Way back in the fifties when those blank-faced boxes began their infiltration of lounge rooms, Robert and John had argued about their value, Robert claiming the regurgitation of rubbish to the masses would lead to a general lowering of humanity’s IQ, John claiming the box would educate the uneducable. They argued again after the election. They’d always argued.
‘Twenty years ago, Bob Menzies was a name in a newspaper,’ John said. ‘Every man in Australia knows who Gough Whitlam is.’
‘My point exactly,’ Robert said. ‘A society that is geared towards its lowest common denominator ends up ruled by it.’
While their men argued, Beth and Myrtle washed dishes. Cara walked out to the footpath and a few paces west to the cypress hedge, where she lit a cigarette and argued with herself until the butt burned her fingers.
Her year of leave was nearly over. Whether she made her life in Sydney or not, she’d have to go back to Melbourne to work out her notice and sell her furniture for a pittance – or give it to the Salvos.
Or find a flat down there and keep her furniture. And if Morrie got away, they’d have a place to go after Christmas dinner with Cathy.
She waited it out behind her cash register.
Another phone call, an early-morning call. The couple Morrie had found to move in had packed up and left after two days. Cara cancelled Christmas dinner with Cathy. She spent the day with Myrtle, Robert and Robin at John and Beth’s house, with their mob, and Miss Robertson, now a part of Myrtle’s family.
Cara stood behind the cash register until New Year, clocking up hours of overtime and hoarding every penny of her wages in the zip pocket of her zipper bag.
Morrie’s telegram arrived when 1973 was still squeaky new.
FOUND CARER WITH DOG STOP LETTY NOT FOND OF COUPLE BUT IN LOVE WITH DOG STOP WILL ARRIVE SYDNEY JAN FIFTEEN STOP LOVE YOU MORRIE
Cara replied by telegram:
WILL BE IN MELB STOP SEND FLIGHT NUMBER WILL MEET YOU IN RED TERROR AT AIRPORT
WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS
She flew south on a Thursday, and took a taxi direct to Ashburton, where for months the MG had been cosseted in Barry’s tin shed. Morrie had money in Australia and an elderly accountant in Brunswick. A phone call to him and Barry’s bill had been paid, along with a sizeable tip for twelve months’ storage.
How fine it would be to call up your accountant when the bills came in, Cara thought. And how fine it was to slide in behind that familiar steering wheel and to hear the MG’s growl of approval as she drove along Melbourne’s familiar roads. Knew them like she knew the backs of her own hands.
The little car knew its way back to school, or to the shops not far from the school. Seeing the estate agent’s office where she’d paid her rent each month for six years almost made her homesick. Just for old times’ sake, she parked out front and got out to look at his window, always full of properties for sale or to rent. It didn’t disappoint. He had plenty of single-bedroom units. She wanted something larger this time; wanted a walk-in shower recess and a bathroom accessible other than through her bedroom. Saw one possible: Two bedrooms, good-sized kitchen, walk-in shower recess.
It got her inside a door she’d promised never to enter again. Promises were made to be broken. If she’d read further, she would have seen that it was a ground-floor flat. Didn’t want a ground-floor flat, but having got her inside his door he wasn’t about to let her out easily.
‘I’m looking for an upper-floor flat, close to the tramlines,’ she said.
He had a few of those too, one with a walk-in shower, and, gullible fool that she was, she drove away with two sets of keys.
The first flat was in Malvern and had possibilities: a decent-sized bathroom, separate toilet. No walk-in shower, and it looked out on the car park and on a couple arguing there. She didn’t need that.
The second set of keys was to a flat in Windsor, just around the corner from the boarding house she’d called home through ’65. It was in an older block of only six units, with parking out front, but not enough parking. Trees though, shady. She looked at the externals before seeking the entrance. Each of the upstairs units had tiny balconies with glass doors. Balconies weren’t safe, nor were glass doors, but it also had undercover parking for six cars down the back, and a clothes line and a lawn and more shading trees. She shrugged and went inside to climb the stairs – carpeted stairs. Clean.
The door to Number Four looked solid, and already had a peephole. For a time its lock defied the key, until she realised it was a deadlock, had to turn it a full circle before it gave way.
Two-bedroom unit, spacious, the advertisement had promised. Walk-in shower recess. A walk-in shower and a bath in a room that would have made two of her dogbox bathroom. No separate toilet. Water dripping from the shower rose. She turned the taps. The rose still dripped. Apart from the drip, the bathroom was excellent, and accessed via a small passage, not through one of the bedrooms.
Good-sized main bedroom, considerably larger than that of her dogbox. The second bedroom was dogbox size. A spacious sitting-room. She unlocked the door to the balcony. It faced south, or maybe south-west, and offered a view of the street; a quiet, dead-end street.
Gripping the wrought-iron railing, she leaned over, searching the walls for a convenient drainpipe that might give too-easy access to that balcony. No drainpipe, other than one located between the kitchen and bathroom windows. Keep them locked, she thought.
She walked downstairs to check out the communal laundry. Not a soul in sight, and no coins necessary for the washing machine! The dryer demanded coins, but she wouldn’t need it with that clothes line.
The flat was a definite possible, though that’s not what she told the agent when she handed him his keys. Told him about the shower’s drip, then drove away to find her ideal unit. She saw a few that were not ideal. Looked at one in Camberwell that made the Windsor unit look palatial.
The day near done, she returned to Windsor to look again at the grounds, and at two cars now parked in their rear bays. Modern cars. Another drove in while she was staring, a fifty-odd-year-old woman behind the wheel. She wouldn’t be throwing wild parties. Undercover parking was a huge plus, as was the clothes line and the square of well-mowed lawn. Someone cared about this place.
At five thirty she signed a lease for six months, then drove out to Richmond to spend the night on Marion’s couch. It folded down to become a bed, and may have been the worst bed Cara had slept on – apart from her inflatable mattress on Pete’s floor, which hadn’t been mu
ch worse. Not that they did a lot of sleeping. Marion wanted to hear about her love life.
‘Cathy told me you were back with the pom you married.’
‘He’s over there. I’m over here,’ Cara said.
‘She thought you’d stay over there.’
‘My parents are old.’
‘Parents are supposed to lay down their lives for their kids, not the other way around,’ Marion said.
Which was pretty much Cara’s case. She knew she couldn’t place half a world between herself and Robin.
*
The furniture storage company couldn’t deliver until next Wednesday. She spent an hour on Marion’s phone attempting to learn why it would take two weeks for Telecom to connect a telephone when the phone was in the flat, the phone wires already connected. Two weeks was the best they’d offer.
She’d travelled south with one change of clothing. She’d taken three cases up to Sydney on the bus. Had a television to bring down. Robert would be pleased to be rid of it; Robin wouldn’t. And the typewriter she’d vowed never to use again – for other than writing letters. Fly up and bus it down – or train it – or drive. Barry had assured her that the car was as good as new. She’d almost missed driving it, and why pay another fare when she had the means to get her belongings south for the price of a few tanks of petrol?
Marion would have made the trip with her, but Myrtle and Robert had barely survived Cathy in ’65. They may not survive Marion, and Cara would require the passenger seat and floor to transport her load home.
She left late, intending to break the trip at Albury. The sun beating down turned the car into a moving oven, but it seemed happy to be going somewhere. A police car tailed her between Wangaratta and Albury, tailed her for five miles, but she kept her speed low and he gave up to chase a faster driver.
At six, she considered pulling into a motel flashing its Vacancy sign, but pushed on for a few more miles. The more she did today, the less she’d have to do tomorrow. Remembered doing the trip in one hop while seven months pregnant and half out of her mind. At nine, after a second toilet break, a coffee and two cigarettes, she wound her windows up and drove on.
The mind escapes to where it will when a person drives alone through the night. Like a bulldozer, it digs deep, exposing the base clay and laying it bare. Two o’clock when she parked the MG nose to tail with Robert’s wagon, and by then she knew what she had to do. Knew she had no option.
*
Robin, still an early riser, woke her too soon.
‘Where did you been, Mummy?’
‘A long way away.’
‘In . . . in a airplane?’
‘Not this time. I drove my toy car.’
‘Toy cars is not big enough.’
‘It’s a big toy car. Want to see it?’
He nodded vehemently, his curls nodding long after his head stopped.
She kissed his curls, his nose. ‘We have to creep like two little mice. Not a whisper. Not one giggle.’
The mention of giggle made him giggle, but silently. Loved him, adored him – and the older he grew, the more of Morrie she saw in his smile. Wanted to steal him while Myrtle slept, carry him away in her toy car, book a flight to London for two.
She stole him for half an hour, and before they returned, a new MG enthusiast had been born.
‘I like dis toy car best than Papa’s, Mummy.’
‘Your daddy likes this car best too,’ she said.
Daddy, an all-new word. But right or wrong, he had a daddy, so she told him all about the daddy who lived a very, very long way away, across the biggest ocean.
‘Why did he?’
‘Because he’s got a daddy too, and his daddy is very sick.’
‘Papa was sick . . . when . . . when . . .’
‘Now Papa’s all better, so Mummy has to go back to the place where she works. But we’ll sing songs on the telephone, and Mummy will fly home to visit lots of times.’
‘Why?’
She attempted to explain why while they ate Weet-Bix, while she was packing up her room in Unit Two. She told him about a school where lots of children came so they could learn to read their own story books; told him how the school gave her some money so she could buy things at the shops.
He didn’t like her cases, and before she closed the final case, she opened her photograph album and showed him a photograph of his daddy standing beside the toy car. Had more recent photographs of Morrie in the bottom of her zip bag. Myrtle didn’t know about them.
Little boys lose interest fast in old photographs and in missing daddies; he deserted her for the garden and Papa. Cara took Myrtle’s oldest album from its shelf and sat turning pages, seeking tiny Jimmy clad in his sailor suit. She found him, and the man Morrie had become was still trapped in the face of that tiny boy.
Myrtle came to stand at her shoulder, and Cara wondered if she saw little Jimmy’s similarity to Robin. No reason to question it if she did: Jimmy had been Jenny’s son; Cara her daughter; Robin her grandson.
‘Did Jenny tell you she was pack-raped on a beach, Mummy?’
‘Why on earth would she tell me a thing like that?’ Myrtle said.
‘She told me that you knew.’
Myrtle lost interest in the album and returned to her lunch preparations. Cara closed the album and followed her to the kitchen.
‘Does it alter who I am?’
‘Of course it doesn’t, but why she’d tell you–’
‘I asked her. In two years’ time, I’ll be thirty. That’s old enough for you to be honest with me.’
‘I’m always honest with you.’
‘You weren’t about Billy-Bob.’
‘I told you he was an American sailor.’
‘And that he was my father. Did you believe her when she told you she’d been raped?’
‘There are more important things to discuss. What made you decide to get a flat down there?’
‘Daddy’s bank loan – and I want to discuss Jenny. Did you believe her?’
‘Not initially. She’d been like a daughter to me. She had a beautiful little boy I loved, and she’d gone out and done that.’
‘She told you how that had happened?’
‘Don’t keep on about it, pet. It was all so long ago.’
‘That is who I am.’
‘You’re my daughter, and Daddy’s.’
‘Yeah, and a star fell from heaven, and an angel delivered me to your door, but before the star and the angel there were five not very wise men who tossed an elderly pianist from his car then abducted a twenty-year-old girl and raped her. And she told you.’
‘Yes. She told me.’
‘What did you do?’
‘She didn’t tell me at the time. Had she, I would have . . . have done something.’
‘When did she tell you? What did she tell you?’
‘She didn’t say a word until I noticed that she was carrying, and she said that a group of American sailors had taken her to a beach in Mr Whiteford’s car and they’d had their way with her.’
‘A pack of drunk Yanks don’t have their way with an abducted girl. It’s called pack rape, Mummy.’
‘That’s such a dreadful word!’
‘A dreadful word for a dreadful deed.’
‘I don’t know what she hoped to gain by telling you.’
‘I asked her and she told me – and she gained my respect. How does a twenty-year-old girl survive something like that?’
‘She told me once that her grandmother used to tell her that she had the resilience of a rubber band. She was so much like you, and the older you grow, the more like her you become.’
‘I don’t have her resilience.’
‘Oh, my word, you do.’
*
Robert unplugged the television and carried it out to the car, but carried it back inside when he saw the load. No back seat, no boot, only the passenger seat and the floor. He found rope to tie her cases into the passenger seat. He told her to drive c
arefully. Myrtle told her to call as soon as she got to Melbourne.
Robin cried when she kissed him goodbye.
And so she left for the long drive home – and, new flat or not, Melbourne was home.
The storage company delivered her furniture on Wednesday. The refrigerator had survived its year of inactivity. Given power, it shuddered into life and settled down to make ice. Her bed smelled musty, as did her linen. She aired two sheets on the clothes line before making up her bed. After the single beds at Amberley and a final night on Marion’s couch, her old bed looked inviting.
The contents of her boxes held the scent of her dogbox unit. She unearthed the near forgotten Balancing Act, still sealed into its envelope, and broke a fingernail ripping her way into it. They’d enclosed a letter and a reader’s report. Her novel had been read!
‘My God!’
She scanned the enclosed letter, last year’s date on it. The reader had enjoyed her novel, but after consideration . . . not the right novel on which to launch a career . . . interested in reading future novels . . .
‘My God!’
She’d wasted a year. Hadn’t wasted it. Had Rusty ready to go but a carbon copy publishers may not accept. Ask Morrie to bring the original over with him.
Just wait until he sees that letter, she thought.
Couldn’t show it to him. He’d want to read the novel, and a paragraph into it he’d recognise her dogbox and the out-of-her-mind protagonist pregnant to her drunken brother.
HAD NIBBLE FROM PUBLISHER STOP BRING RUSTY STOP WILL SHOOT IT OFF TO THEM STOP LOVE CARA
He replied by telegram:
TRIP DELAYED STOP DOG COUPLE CAN’T HANDLE POPS STOP DOG AND DOCTOR CONVINCED LETTY STOP POPS MOVING TO NURSING HOME STOP LETTER FOLLOWING LOVE MORRIE
March arrived before Morrie. While she waited for his plane at the airport, she knew his visit had to end in disaster. She’d known when she’d driven through the night to Sydney that she had to tell him about his son. Robin was too close, always between them; Robin and the knowledge that she had to tell him.
