by Joy Dettman
Morrie wasn’t happy about her six-month lease.
‘I have to work out my notice, and I want to get Dad’s loan paid off,’ she said.
‘I’ll pay it off,’ he said.
‘They’re my parents, my responsibility.’
‘What’s mine is yours,’ he said.
What’s mine is yours.
Tried to tell him on their final night together. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to lose their last night. Didn’t want to lose him.
Couldn’t do it until she’d driven him back to the airport, until he’d kissed her goodbye, until he was leaving . . .
And almost stopped herself then.
But he had to know. For a multitude of reasons he had to know.
He was loaded down with jacket and bag, his hands full, when she offered a recent colour photograph of Robin. He glanced at the curly-headed boy, at her, a question in his eyes, then the beginning of understanding washed into them.
‘He’s yours. I’m so sorry.’
He stood, bag slung over his shoulder, jacket over his arm, staring at what he held in his hand, the colour draining from his face.
‘Now?’ he said. ‘Now you tell me?’
‘He should never have been born, Morrie.’
‘But obviously was.’
And he turned on his heel and was gone with the crowd.
DYSFUNCTION
Television killed Woody Creek’s Saturday night picture shows. The pill may have killed their dances. Once upon a time, the only way a boy could get his hands onto a girl was on the dance floor. Not any more. By the seventies, a few of the local boys were doing what they could to evade girls wanting to get a hand onto them.
The last Woody Creek debutant ball had been a failure, attended by the middle-aged and elderly, there to watch their daughters or granddaughters curtsy to the mayor and his wife, two blow-ins from Melbourne – or they’d blown in fifteen years ago. They’d die blow-ins. It took a generation or two to become a Woody Creek local.
Georgie was a local but didn’t feel like one. She went to the ball in jeans and T-shirt, there only to see the frocks, then to watch the debs and their partners stumble around the dance floor, each doing their own version of the waltz.
The oldies knew how to dance. She’d learnt how it was done – which said something about her age. Jenny and John McPherson danced; Jim and Amy remained seated. Artificial legs and arthritic hips don’t stand up well to the dance floor.
For Jenny and John, the ball had been lucrative. Six of the debs’ gowns had evolved in Jenny’s sewing room – the best of the gowns. John McPherson’s framed photographs of the debs and their partners would decorate Woody Creek walls.
John and Amy had organised a concert each year since the centenary. The oldies turned up in droves, craving the nostalgia of the good old days. Georgie had paid for a ticket to the last one, and a youthful band had almost blasted holes through her eardrums with their screaming guitars. They had forced her to admit her age. The First Hundred Years, Jim and John McPherson had named their centenary book. Maybe they should have named it ‘the best hundred’. She felt antique tonight; felt that she’d been standing behind Charlie’s counter for a hundred years.
Not quite fourteen that first day she’d presented herself for work, scared silly that Charlie would send her home. She’d followed him around, watching him measure sugar from his bin into a brown paper bag, folding the top down so it didn’t spill on its way home in a customer’s basket. She hadn’t used that fold in years, but hadn’t forgotten it. Sugar came pre-packaged now. Biscuits, once delivered in foot-square tins, and a third of those biscuits broken in transit, came pre-packaged now in cellophane. The cities had gone over to self-service years ago. No self-service in Woody Creek. Customers still lined up at Georgie’s counter, waiting for service.
She hadn’t meant to stay so long, not at fourteen, sixteen, eighteen. Had stayed too long; long enough to put a name to every face in town, to know every house, to know how many kids had been born to those living in every house.
Shop proprietor, she wrote when obligated to state her profession. Charlie had always written shop proprietor. She was an employer of three: two part-timers and Debbie Fulton, daughter of Robert, who worked full-time. Emma, Debbie’s aunt, worked a few hours most weeks; Shane Murphy still worked weekends and school holidays. He was seventeen now and he made Georgie feel old – or his mother did. Leanne Dobson had travelled with her on the school bus, had been in her form. She’d stopped riding the bus to marry Martin Murphy. Five months later, the baby had been born with a heart problem. When Shane had come along a year later, Georgie had pitied Leanne. These days, she caught herself looking at that kid who was no longer a kid and wondering what sort of son she might have raised had she married Jack Thompson at nineteen.
Jack had taught her to drive, then for the next twelve months had nagged about a wedding – the last thought she’d had in her mind at nineteen. Now? Now she looked at Shane and wondered, that’s all.
He wanted to go to university and study medicine. His father worked for the council, repairing roads, and he had six more kids at home to feed and clothe. The oldest boy hadn’t made it to his fifth birthday.
Impossible dreams seem possible when you’re seventeen. Georgie had dreamed big at that age, then Granny and Ray had died within a week of each other and everything had changed. Granny’s house, Jenny’s life, everything.
Jenny would have been thirty-four at the time, two years older than Georgie’s current age – she’d packed a lot more living into her years. Georgie had packed hers with Charlie’s shop, with chasing chooks and the saplings determined to reforest Granny’s land – and with Margot’s problems.
Shane had his share of problems, but against all odds, he had stayed on at school. Last year, after one of his father’s regular benders, Shane had brought his books with him to the shop and asked if he could keep them in the storeroom. Georgie hadn’t asked why. She and most in town knew why. Kids took off in half a dozen different directions when Martin Murphy went on a bender.
Two months ago, he’d gone on a two-week bender, and Shane spent so much time in her storeroom she’d bought him a sleeping bag and inflatable mattress and told him she’d put him on the books as her caretaker. Gave him a raise in pay too. He took his new job very seriously.
She lifted her head as she heard the cistern out back flush – a new sound in town since the centenary celebrations. Backyard dunnies and their inimitable stink had disappeared – or disappeared in town. Every house now had a porcelain loo, and a cistern that flushed its load out to the new sewage farm two miles out along Cemetery Road, where the town’s wastes were greening up previously bone-dry and useless land.
No doubt town tongues wagged, but having a live-in toy boy sounded more up-market than lesbian – she hadn’t been out with a bloke in two years.
Shane and his books had been responsible for her new hobby. She’d signed up to do a few matriculation subjects via correspondence. Just for fun; just to see if she might have done what Shane was intent on doing. She studied with him some nights, he the teacher, she the student. They’d studied until nine tonight, then she’d left him to it and gone up to the shop to do her books.
Glanced at her watch, then at the phone, an arm’s length away. She’d half-expected Cara to call her. She’d been on her mind all day. Didn’t know if she was in Australia or still over there. Knew she’d been planning to move home to Sydney.
‘Go home,’ she told herself.
That reconstructed house had never been home. The Abortion Georgie had named it; never home, but where she lived. Granny’s little hut had been home, and the only part of it left intact after the working bee was her old bedroom. Or almost intact. Georgie slept in Granny’s old bedroom.
Elsie had promised to cook a rabbit curry on Sunday. She’d invited Jenny and Jim, but they’d made some excuse. Jim kept his distance from Margot – as did Jenny to a lesser degree – as did Elsie’s kids.
They’d been invited home to eat curry too, though Georgie doubted that any of them would turn up. Not that she blamed them. She would have got out of it herself had she been able to come up with a good excuse.
As kids, Georgie, Teddy, even Granny, used to nag Elsie to cook her rabbit curry. Teddy wouldn’t be eating his share on Sunday. He never came within a mile of Granny’s land. Ronnie had married a Mildura girl; he hadn’t been home since the centenary, nor had Brian and Josie who worked in Melbourne. Lenny, his wife and five-year-old son lived out on Cemetery Road. They drove down most Sundays. Joany lived on a property fifteen miles from town. She popped in once a month, but always with Maudy, who had married a Molliston bloke. They may turn up for Elsie’s rabbit curry. Until the myxo plague of the fifties, the Halls had lived on rabbits. As kids, the girls had roamed the bush with the boys, toting their share of metal-jawed traps out in the evenings and toting the weight of dead bunnies home at dawn – a long, long time ago.
They’d moved on. Granny’s land had been home to Harry for thirty-odd years, but he was ready to move on – or ready to put some distance between Elsie and Margot. Elsie refused to budge. She’d become institutionalised. It happened. Georgie had read about prisoners who’d served their thirty-odd years inside and couldn’t handle life on the outside. Margot had turned thirty-four in April, and for most of those years she’d been the ball and chain around Elsie’s neck.
With one last glance at the phone, Georgie stood, picked up her handbag and the padlock, and walked down to the storeroom’s new door. Shakey Lewis had hung it for her a few weeks after Shane had moved in. Rapped on it with the padlock.
‘Get to bed,’ she ordered.
‘Five more minutes,’ he replied.
‘Back door locked and bolted?’
‘Yep.’
‘Okay. See you tomorrow.’
She turned out the shop lights and let herself out the front door, Charlie’s cowbell clanging ‘goodnight’. It clanged again when she closed the door, reminding her that Charlie’s shop was her own ball and chain.
Clipped on the padlock: Charlie’s antique. Same old twin green doors – or working hard at being the same. Along with much else in town, they’d received their coat of paint for the centenary celebrations. Movie stars had facelifts, but it did them no long-term good. Charlie’s doors were the same, the new green flaking back to the old.
Shane would move on. He’d been four when his older brother died; maybe old enough to remember the doctors who had tried to save his brother, young enough to develop his one-track mind. He’d get his scholarship to university; and if he didn’t, Georgie would offer him an interest-free loan. Wanted him to succeed. Wanted to play a part in someone’s success.
*
On Sunday morning, seated on the eastern veranda, on Norman Morrison’s worn-out cane chair, Georgie was thinking of Teddy Hall, who, for a lot of years, had worn a track across the goat paddock to Margot’s bedroom. Until the night Georgie had trapped him, tripped him on his way out. She’d sat for hours that night on this same old cane chair.
Teddy would have married Margot in ’59, before Trudy had been born. Margot may have been better off had she agreed to marry him. He wouldn’t have been. Trudy wouldn’t have been. One of life’s drones, Margot Macdonald Morrison; she neither reaped nor sowed, nor washed a dish – or her own knickers. She could open a can when pushed by hunger to do it, but Elsie saw to it that she wasn’t often pushed. Margot would eat her share of rabbit curry at lunch. If she’d seen the ravages of myxo, the blind, fly-blown little bunnies running in circles on the roads, it had made little impact on her mind. Little did – or ever had. Self-centred, self-absorbed, selfish . . .
Georgie could smell that curry cooking from a paddock away – and wished she could smell roast lamb. For a lot of years, the myxo plague had seemingly wiped out Woody Creek’s bunnies. Twenty years on, the survivors, having passed on their immunity to their offspring, were at it again, breeding like rabbits. They liked the sewage farm. Drive past it and you saw the little buggers running everywhere.
Harry set his traps along the creek. Rabbits weren’t known as long-distance travellers. Harry’s wouldn’t taste of sewage.
She watched Lenny’s car pull into the drive. His wife, Val, was with him, but not their son. And she had to go over there.
Rose, and allowed her nose to lead her to Elsie’s kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later she was sorry, though not because of the meal. Margot’s chair was beside her own, and Margot slurped and dribbled the curry. Though sitting beside her was probably preferable to sitting opposite and being forced to watch her slurp and dribble. Val, Lenny’s wife, had been given the seat opposite. Not a pretty sight, Margot. A bloat of pale flesh topped by square-cut, baby-fine white hair. She was toothless, apart from four lower incisors and her two upper canines.
Val kept her eyes down and cleared her plate fast. Lenny may have hoped for seconds, but knew better than to ask. Val was on her feet, so Lenny rose and kissed Elsie’s woolly grey head.
‘You excelled yourself, Mum.’
‘We told Ted and Von we’d be back by half past one,’ Val said.
They’d left Harry’s namesake with his uncle and aunty. Kids of little Harry’s age came out with exactly what they were thinking. Adults had learnt how to censor their thoughts.
Harry walked them to the front door. Georgie walked out the back door, where she sat on the bottom step and lit a smoke. Heard Val at the car.
‘Never again, Lenny, and I mean it this time.’
‘You meant it last time too, mate,’ Lenny said.
‘And you wonder why I hate bringing your son down here.’
The motor killed Lenny’s reply.
Harry didn’t wonder why. He stepped around Georgie as he lit his own smoke. ‘Bugger it all,’ he said. ‘Bugger it all.’
He walked over to the wood heap, repeating his words, then picked up the axe and started splitting foot blocks, one after the other. He knew why his kids hadn’t come home for curry. They couldn’t stand Margot, and Margot couldn’t stand their competition. Hard to eat with. Harder to get on with.
And now she wanted pudding.
‘I’m full, Else,’ Georgie called. ‘We’ll eat it tonight.’
‘Thuit yourthelf then,’ Margot spat.
‘Put your teeth in,’ Georgie countered.
‘Get lotht.’
Margot’s lisp had been bad when she’d had teeth. It was a wet lisp now. Georgie considered a reply, but instead blew three perfect smoke rings heavenward. Watched them grow, disperse, then blew three more. Too much breeze to float them high today.
April had always heralded the end of warm days. Didn’t want another winter of discontent, or the mud of winter, or the Margot of winter. Margot didn’t like waddling through mud. Didn’t like dirt. Wore white so she could better see the germs.
Watched her waddle off towards The Abortion, while in the kitchen Elsie scraped plates into the chook food bucket. Waste not, want not, Granny used to say.
Watched Margot’s back until it disappeared inside, via the eastern door, her private entrance. Georgie never set foot in the sitting room; never lit a fire in its hearth. Those two rooms smelled of Margot: stale, closed up, detached.
She’d take a pill, have a two-hour nap and be fresh for tonight’s leftover curry and bread pudding. She was an invalid; received a pension to prove it. Invalids saw their doctor once a month, had their blood pressure checked, brought home bottles of pills for their nerves, their blood pressure, and more pills so they might sleep. They brought home laxative pills too, indigestion pills, even allergy pills. Margot had a fine collection of them, lined up on the kitchen bench. She was allergic to life, or life was allergic to Margot.
Georgie blew three more smoke rings as she turned her eyes to Harry, who had no trouble with his blood pressure or nerves. He released his spleen on the wood heap. Wished she could release a little of her own in explaining the hard facts of lif
e to Elsie. A waste of breath; she’d tried it before, many times. As had Harry. As had Jenny.
Elsie, having found her place in life too early, was scared to let go of what she’d found – motherhood. Or that was Jenny’s diagnosis. Elsie had bred younger than Jenny, had been twelve or thirteen when she’d given birth to Joey. He’d flown the coop early. Now the rest of them had gone, but not Margot.
Elsie wasn’t responsible for Margot’s pills. Georgie blamed Maisy, Margot’s grandmother, for them. It was Maisy who had got Margot signed up for the invalid pension; Maisy who, once a month, drove her down to see her doctor. She’d driven her backwards and forwards to the dentist too, while he’d attempted to adjust Margot’s partial dentures. Fixing what isn’t broken will unfix it. The only thing wrong with Margot’s dentures was their slowing down of her consumption of food – and the caramel toffees that stuck to them. She liked caramel toffees – Columbines, wrapped in pretty purple paper.
Georgie pitched her butt into Harry’s back-door ashtray, a cut-down oil drum, and returned to the kitchen to watch the large curry pot emptied into containers, to watch leftover rice emptied into another, to watch little Elsie making space for those containers in her vibrating third-hand fridge.
‘You haven’t lost your touch, Else.’
‘The trick’s in the apricot jam,’ Elsie said.
Maybe she knew why her kids never came home. Maybe she didn’t. What you live with daily you no longer see – as with that battered old fridge, the kitchen floor that ran downhill, the front door you had to fight to open, then fight again to close.
Harry noticed the door, the floor, the fridge; did nothing about it.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack-thwack. There was a rhythm to his axe, in his setting up of the next foot block. He’d split blocks all afternoon, then stack what he’d cut alongside the rear of the house. Granny used to warn Georgie, warn everyone, not to stack wood beside the house. White ants need little encouragement, she used to say.
