Ripples on a Pond

by Joy Dettman

  She walked around to the eastern section of The Abortion. Norman’s cane chair stood on the veranda, grown ragged but still intact – as were his couch and the large chairs that had once furnished the railway house’s parlour and now lived in Margot’s front room.

  She glanced at the brick chimney, which had known little smoke. If Margot’s life had depended on lighting a fire, she may have got a sheet of newspaper to burn. Georgie never entered those front rooms. She lit Granny’s old stove when she felt the cold.

  Old shed still standing, built strong by Granny’s father a hundred years ago. Always dark in there. The only light came in from the south side, and the shed was too deep to allow what little light was left in the night to penetrate far. Smell of dust and disuse within, with an overtone of petrol motors. Georgie’s lawnmower lived in the shed, with her chainsaw.

  Back in Granny’s days, the shed had smelt of onions and garlic. Every year, they’d hung great bunches of onions from the rafters, bunches of herbs, too, and Granny’s eternal garlic. She’d used more of it in plasters than in cooking. Hadn’t been much of a cook.

  They’d buried bags full of potatoes in the far corner, the darkest corner, then covered them with more bags to keep out the light. Had stacked pumpkins on a rusty wire mattress, stored apples in crates, preserves on rough-made shelves in that partially partitioned-off corner Jenny had once named bathroom. They’d lived off the land. Never had much money. Hadn’t needed much.

  Same row of dusty bottles on the same dusty wall stud shelf. Same wooden wash trough where for years she’d slaved over the washing. Only dust in it now, and a fallen bird’s nest, feather-lined. Petrol drums beneath the trough where Granny’s kerosene tin had once lived – and probably snakes behind the drums, getting high on petrol fumes. She looked down at her sandal-clad feet, feeling those petrol-sniffing snakes eyeing her bare toes and ankles, and stepped back, then turned and walked out to night.

  Georgie was alone in that shop after five thirty. Raelene and her bikie liked her no better than they liked Jenny.

  A voice from across the paddock lifted her head; Harry’s voice. ‘I told him I’d give him a hand tonight with the bed.’

  She waved a hand, but he wasn’t looking her way. Didn’t see her.

  Harry and Elsie were moving into town after Christmas. Harry’s pet termites had won his war. Six months ago, he’d told Jim they sang him lullabies at night with their nibbling at the rafters. When Jim offered him an advertisement of some company guaranteeing to rid a house of termites, Harry had laughed.

  ‘I wouldn’t harm one hair on their nibbling little heads. Else will move when the roof falls in on her.’

  He’d been trying to get Elsie into town for ten years. The roof hadn’t fallen in, but a couple of weeks back another of the stilts supporting the front of the house had given up the battle. Their floors ran more dramatically downhill now, and their front door refused to open. They had a nice little place to go to: a two-roomed bungalow built in Teddy and Vonnie’s backyard.

  What then for Margot?

  God alone knew. Maisy could take her in small doses, though these days the doses had become smaller. Elsie was the only one who’d put up with that lazy, snitchy bugger of a woman. A rustle in the dry grass near her exposed ankle moved Jenny towards that snitchy bugger of a woman. Harry greeted her at the back door, his arms loaded with drawers stacked one on top of the other.

  ‘Any word from town?’

  ‘The police are out at Monk’s,’ she told him. ‘Jim’s gone out there to see if he can find the entrance to the old root cellar.’

  ‘There’s been rumours about that cellar for years, from orgy to Eldorado,’ Harry said. ‘Can you grab that one, Jen? It’s ready to topple.’

  She took the drawer and followed him with it to his ute, where he added his new load to the rest.

  Harry was Jim’s age, maybe a year or so older, but by evening light he looked little changed from the half-starved fifteen year old who had turned up that day in Woody Creek. He might have been eighteen when he’d married Elsie and taken on responsibility for her infant niece and nephew. She’d had Joey, too, who had been close to Jenny’s age. A boy with a man’s responsibilities, Granny used to say of Harry, and each year he’d added one more responsibility. They’d had five of their own – and Margot. That much responsibility should have aged him, and hadn’t. If the years were creeping up on Harry, they were only obvious in the smattering of grey in his carrot-red hair.

  Not quite a brother to Jenny, Elsie not quite a sister, but both much closer than friends. They were linked by blood through Trudy, though she was unaware of that blood link. Jenny had wanted to tell her that Margot and Teddy Hall had given her life, but Jim had put his foot down. He chose to forget that Trudy wasn’t his own; chose to forget a lot of things.

  *

  Margot was sitting on her backside at the table, playing solitaire while Elsie washed the dishes. Jenny, keeping her distance, leaned against the open doorway, staring at Margot’s back.

  Hard to believe that pale bloat of a woman had grown out of runty, lisping little Margot. All body, with a pin head connected directly to her shoulders, and the lot supported on short bandy legs. All Macdonald. Necks didn’t run in that family, and if Margot had ever had one, it had been swallowed by the rolls of fat that disappeared beneath the collar of her Maisy-supplied white uniform.

  She’d developed her obsession with white as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid. Nothing Jenny could do about it. She’d tried. She’d sewn Margot floral frocks; had tried to do something about the white ankle socks she’d worn with sandals. One of the fringe benefits of her bulk now was her inability to reach her feet to put those socks on.

  She had thick, stubby little Macdonald hands, hardly any difference between the length of any of her fingers. The twins’ hands. Their father’s hands, not Maisy’s. Margot had Maisy’s teeth – or lack of teeth. Old George Macdonald had hung on to his until the day he’d died, and the twins looked like they might hang on to their own – or most of them. Ray had knocked one of Macka’s out.

  Sharing those two rooms at Frankston with Margot, her belly swelling daily with Trudy, had seen the end of a mother–daughter relationship that never was. Jenny’s audacity in bringing the evidence of Margot’s severe indigestion back to Woody Creek had made her public enemy number one.

  Maisy still believed in the wind theory. She had plenty of great-grandchildren without need for Trudy. That, too, had been Jim’s decision. He’d missed out on knowing Jimmy. For him, Trudy had filled that space.

  ‘Georgie not home yet?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘No, and I’m starting to worry about her,’ Jenny said.

  ‘She stays late with her books some nights,’ Elsie said. ‘Did Harry tell you we ordered our new fridge today?’

  ‘About time,’ Jenny said.

  Margot, who hadn’t previously acknowledged her presence, gave her the evil eye.

  ‘It’s got a big freezer up the top that goes all the way across,’ Elsie said.

  ‘You won’t know yourself, Else.’

  ‘Lenny and Val are giving us their old bed. Their new water bed was supposed to be delivered today,’ she said.

  Harry came from the bedroom, toting the body of a dressing table. ‘Their old bed is twenty years younger than ours,’ he said, and placed his load down while he rolled a smoke. He got it lit, then, with it gripped between his teeth, he again picked up his load.

  A happy man tonight, Jenny thought, new bed, new fridge, new residence and new life. He’d had enough of Margot fifteen years ago; and enough had gone well beyond far too much since his kids had stopped coming home. He’d lost his first family at thirteen and had no intention of losing his kids and grandkids.

  Jenny was holding the back door wide for him when Georgie’s ute drove in through the boundary gate. Relief washed from her ears to her toes. No matter how old your kids grew, you never stopped worrying about them – or some of them.
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br />   ‘I’ll leave you to it then, Else,’ she called, and walked back across the paddock as Georgie pulled the ute into its space beside her own car, their noses to the chicken-wire fence.

  Watched her slide from the ute, then lock its door. She looked sixteen from a distance: long jean-clad legs, hair tied high in a ponytail. Jenny loved that kid. Always had. She could have been anything, could have done anything, had the looks of a movie star, the brain of a banker. She’d been leg-roped to this town, first by old Charlie and now by his shop. And when Harry and Elsie moved into town, she’d be leg-roped down here by Margot. It wasn’t right.

  ‘What are you doing skulking around on my property?’ Georgie greeted her.

  ‘It’s mine, and I’m seeking sanctuary,’ Jenny said. ‘Any news in town?’

  ‘One of the Jenner brothers reckons he saw Raelene’s car not long after dawn.’

  They entered the house together, through Granny’s old front door. Georgie flicked her bedroom light on as they passed and it lit enough of the black hole of Granny’s old kitchen. Up high steps to the laundry, through the laundry to the room Harry and Ray had built as Jenny’s bathroom-cum-laundry, now a book-lined junk room. Jenny followed Georgie through it to the kitchen, once Ray and Donny’s bedroom.

  Granny’s old table still commanded its space here. There were all manner of tables about these days – laminated, easy-to-clean; polished tables that weren’t easy to care for – but a kitchen table had to feel right, and Granny’s had always felt right. It had known a few generations of chairs. Jenny pulled one out and sat while Georgie removed the rubber band from her hair and allowed the copper mass to fall free.

  ‘Where have you been to this hour?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Monk’s. Half the cops in Melbourne must be out there.’

  ‘Jim’s out there too. John told them he’d know where to find the entrance to the old root cellar.’

  ‘That’s why you’re skulking.’ Georgie scratched her scalp, easing hair roots after their long day of confinement. ‘They’ve set up a roadblock on the bridge. They’re stopping everything, coming and going. Maisy was in before I closed the shop. She reckons that Raelene and her bikie kidnapped a three- or four-year-old girl from her bed, that they got in by cutting a hole in the window.’

  Maisy would know. Maureen, her daughter, had a son and daughter in the police force and two brothers-in-law who were higher up in the cop world.

  ‘I hope she told them that they did the same to my back window,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Do you doubt it, Jen?’ Georgie asked.

  The water running, she filled the jug, plugged it in, and was measuring coffee into two mugs when they heard Harry’s ute start up.

  ‘Where’s he off to?’

  ‘He’s moving Elsie’s dressing table into town. Granny bought it for her. He knows Elsie will follow it.’

  ‘They’re not going to fit much into those rooms.’

  ‘Two people don’t need a lot of space,’ Jenny said, speaking from experience. She and Jim rarely entered most of their rooms.

  The coffee made, two cigarettes were burning when they heard footsteps approaching. Two heads lifted, then Elsie called at the old front door to announce herself, and Georgie rose to find more coffee mugs.

  ‘Harry said he could be an hour or so,’ Elsie explained as she entered, Margot panting behind her. ‘He said to stay together until he gets back.’

  Plenty of space around the table. More chairs materialised, one from the bathroom, one from the junk room, then the four sat, Georgie and Jenny with their backs to the window, Elsie and Margot opposite, their backs to the junk-room door.

  Warm in that room; a sauna when the sun beat on the western windows. The sun now gone down behind the trees, the windows open, the suggestion of a breeze stirred the air. No stove burning. It never burned in summer. An electric hotplate lived on it during the summer months, its electrical cord snaking across the floor from the one lone power point and a double adaptor. It cooked what Georgie needed it to cook, which was little.

  She opened a packet of dry biscuits. Margot, who had trouble with her digestive system, suffered if she didn’t eat a biscuit with her coffee. The women sat sipping coffee, crunching biscuits, discussing Lenny’s new water bed. They didn’t mention Teddy’s bungalow. No one mentioned Teddy’s name if Margot was in earshot. ‘The new place’, they said, or ‘the place in town’.

  ‘They put the lino down yesterday,’ Elsie said. She hadn’t had new lino for thirty years. ‘It’s plain green. Vonnie said a pattern would make the rooms look smaller.’

  ‘You won’t know yourself,’ Georgie said.

  They sat until eight, their ears more alert tonight. Every car on the road turned their heads, until Georgie took a pack of old playing cards from the dresser drawer. The night had to be filled, and was there a better night filler than a game of canasta? They’d played canasta at that old kitchen table the night Ray had died, Georgie and Jenny against Harry and Elsie. A cold night that one, and wet, the old stove stoked up to the hilt, the chimney dripping. A different night, but somehow the same.

  The women swapped chairs. There was no question as to partners. Georgie refused to partner Margot. Margot rarely spoke to Jenny, though she’d condescend to sit opposite her for a game of cards.

  They played then, Jenny and Elsie on the western side, Margot and Georgie on the east, and Margot whingeing about every hand she was dealt.

  ‘That’th the third time I could have picked up the pack if I had any wild cardth.’

  Her lisp had been bad when she’d had teeth. It was worse without them, a spitting wet lisp. Jenny glanced at her – and caught her with her lower lip sucked in, attempting to grind on it with her gums. The habit had caused a permanent rash between her lower lip and chin.

  Mine, Jenny thought. She slid out of my body.

  She felt confronted by her bulk, only feet between them. Their feet, sharing the space beneath the table, touched once. Jenny tucked her feet beneath her chair and tried not to look at Margot. Looked past her, over her, at the fan of her cards, at the stubby hands. Watched them shuffling the pack, spilling cards that were faded by use, thickened by play. Hard to shuffle a pack like that without spilling.

  ‘Is this your best pack, Georgie?’

  ‘It’s the only pack of canasta cards. I bought a new five hundred pack a while ago.’

  Margot wanted to play canasta. They overruled her. She whinged, but she’d whinge anyway, so Georgie took the new pack from the dresser drawer where the playing cards had always lived, and together Jenny and Georgie sorted through them, removing the excess cards, the twos, threes, the black fours, the elevens, twelves and thirteens, necessary when six played but only four tonight. Georgie dealt four piles of ten cards and the three central ‘kitty’ cards, the prize for the highest bidder.

  Margot made the first bid. ‘Thixth no trumpth,’ she said.

  ‘Pass,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Give me a call of something,’ Georgie pleaded.

  ‘Six clubs then, but I warn you, they’re not worth calling.’

  ‘Clubs?’ Elsie asked. ‘I’ll have to go seven over you, lovey.’

  ‘Pass,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Eight diamondth,’ Margot said.

  One of the doctors Maisy had taken her to see had said Margot could improve when she hit menopause. Another had said she could become worse. How much worse? She swallowed Valium to slow her down, Mogadon to put her to sleep, high blood pressure pills because she was too fat, allergy pills because she was allergic to life. She’d been told to exercise, to lose weight. Invalid pensioners couldn’t exercise. She sat on her bum all day and put on weight – and the taxpayer paid her to sit on her bum.

  I should pity her, Jenny thought. I used to.

  Pity erodes. Guilt doesn’t. Guilt gets a grip on your psyche and it worms its way in deep. She blamed herself for what Margot had become, aware that every cell in Margot’s body, back when they’d started multi
plying, had been aware they were not wanted.

  She glanced at Georgie, so unwanted she’d almost aborted her. Georgie’s cells hadn’t given a damn whether they’d been wanted or not. Maybe they’d known that the finished item would have time to force love when the project was completed and out. At birth, she hadn’t looked lovable: more squashed-faced little orang-utan than human, her tiny hands clutching for what they could grab onto. They’d grabbed a piece of Jenny’s sixteen-year-old heart and that was that.

  She watched Margot’s hands rake in the three-card kitty, select two from it, add them to her fan of cards, then discard three. Her hands may have grabbed at Elsie’s heart and Maisy’s. If not for their interference, Margot would have been signed away at birth. Should have done it. As the only child of strangers, with no competition, Margot may have been a different girl.

  She led a small club; Jenny played her king; Elsie beat it with her ace. Georgie played the six of clubs and Margot scooped the trick to her side while Elsie led a small diamond. Georgie hit it with her ace; Margot took it with the joker. She and Elsie played too often. They knew each other’s game, and took every trick.

  Cards shuffled again, dealt. Twice Georgie left the table to walk to the window and peer into the dark. She knew every sound in that creaking house, could identify the rattle of a vine on her bedroom window, the loose spouting on the veranda, scraping tonight in a breeze grown stronger.

  Less than twelve months younger than Margot, Georgie looked twenty years younger – or Margot looked ten years older than her years. Hard to relate those two to the kids they’d been. Impossible to think of Jimmy as anything other than a six year old. He would have had his thirty-sixth birthday on the third of December. He was a man, and she couldn’t visualise the man. He’d had her eyes and brow, his father’s smile, his hands. They knew he’d married a few days before Margaret Hooper’s death, that he’d lived in England since he’d turned seventeen. The day Lorna had come to their door she’d told them, or told Jim; not out of the kindness of her heart – she didn’t have one – but to prevent the sale of her father’s land, which Jim had no interest in saving.