by Joy Dettman
I wasn’t meant to be a farmer’s wife. Matt’s slut maybe, like old Papa with his sluts. He’d driven Grandma to suicide with his sluts, or so Mummy said . . . or maybe, maybe Grandma’s bitter mouth had driven him to his sluts. Maybe Mummy would have driven Daddy away if he’d lived.
She looked up at the sky, searching for a familiar cluster of stars. Beautiful, beautiful gem-studded velvet sky. Silence. She could almost hear the stars twinkling.
Her flesh cooling, she walked the back garden, looking up at her family of stars in the western sky. Daddy star was shining brightly tonight. He was up there looking after Shane, and Robby and Nicky star, and the tiny intermittent twinkle that was Teddy star. She waved to them, blew them a kiss, four kisses, then she stood still and listened to Ross. His bedroom window was at the rear of the house and she could hear his peaceful snores – peaceful from a distance.
Cool now, the breeze teasing her hair, night things on the prowl, scuttling. She stepped back, looked at the grass.
‘Old snake in the grass. Are you one of Matt’s friends?’ She teased the grass with her foot. No fangs. ‘I love this place but I don’t want to live here. I love Ross, but I can’t make love to him. That’s a lemon trying to be an orange. Sour. Bitter. Cheat.’
The warmth of the old house drew her back. On tiptoe she crept to the bathroom, washing her feet in the bathroom basin. Mrs Bertram’s bedroom waited empty. Ross’s room was diagonally across the passage. Quietly she crept into the empty room and she sat on the bed. Bed springs creaked. Dust rose. She sneezed.
‘Is that you?’
She tried to muffle a second sneeze. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just your neighbourhood burglar with hay fever.’
‘Come back to bed. You’ll have a relapse.’
To bed. To his bed. But never again her bed. She should tell him now, force him to listen.
Too late. He’d spend the rest of the night drinking coffee and smoking, looking at her with his labrador eyes, and in the morning he’d be tired and she’d feel guilty, and she didn’t need any more guilt. Easier to lie tonight.
‘Go to sleep,’ she said. ‘I won’t be too long.’
She didn’t go to bed that night. At five in the morning she dressed and crept from the house, and she drove across the milky white hills, then down, down to the signpost nearly hidden in a bank of mist.
GEELONG.
And onwards, onwards, the sun now in her eyes.
Number 29 Carter Street
Her house was still there, but it looked so old, small, low. How did it get to be so low? How did the trees get to be so tall? Was that huge spruce the one she and her father had planted the Christmas she was five, then decorated with balloons so they couldn’t see the tree for balloons? And the liquidambar, not as tall as Sally when the house was sold. Now it was huge. Beneath it a tall woman stood watering a group of pot plants. Sally glanced at her, then away to Raelene’s house, old too.
In her mind this street had remained unchanged. She had allowed no brand-new fence to lean, to fall, and she sat now looking at Raelene’s front door, knowing that Raelene had moved on, left this old street behind, left Sally behind. They’d written for years, Raelene’s long letters had kept Sally attached to Geelong – until Lakeside and Mrs Bertram.
‘My fault. I was the one who let go.’
She chewed on her nail a moment, drew a breath and left the car, walked up the drive, knocked on the door. Same door, just a different colour. A pregnant woman opened it. She was not Raelene. She wore a sari and spoke with an accent.
‘Sorry to disturb you.’ Then back down the familiar cement drive, cracked now, and stained. She looked for the trellis near the garage. Gone, long ago, like the passionfruit vines. All gone. No more green paint. No more of Daddy’s emeralds.
All so long ago. Eleven when she’d come here that time and climbed on the garage roof with the hose.
She was pulling away from the kerb when she heard her name.
‘Sally? Sally De Rooze?’
She braked, turned to see the tall woman standing beside her letterbox, waving her hose. The motor died and Sally wound her window down while she stared at the woman’s face. Not a pudding face. But the teeth, maybe. And maybe the colour of the hair. She wore glasses. Blue glasses. It couldn’t be.
‘It is you, Sally. I knew it was. You haven’t changed one iota.’ The woman lifted the hose, allowing water to splash to the nature strip, then she laughed.
‘Carol Rigg?’
‘Yeah. Or I used to be. Carol Murphy now. I’m back home with Mum and Pops for a while. How are you? Long time, no see.’
Then they were both at the letterbox and Carol Rigg–Murphy turned off the water. ‘I was almost going to let you have it when I saw you walking down next door’s drive – just for old times’ sake, but I thought, gee, what if it isn’t her? They’ll lock me up for a madwoman,’ she said. ‘You didn’t grow much, did you? You still look about twelve.’
‘You grew.’ It wasn’t easy. What did you say to an old enemy you’d pelted with passionfruit but never spoken to?
‘Yeah. Didn’t think I was ever going to stop when I was about fourteen. Went from fatso to beanpole in twelve months. Have you got time to come in for a cuppa?’
‘I was on my way through. Thought I’d drive by. See if the street was still here.’
‘You were looking for Raelene?’
‘Yeah.’ So strange making conversation with this stranger who was not so strange. Glasses on her nose. Same nose. Floral dress. She’d always worn floral dresses. And the chin. She still had a round chin. Weird. Chatting at a front fence to a house thief who now wanted to claim her as an old friend.
Why not claim her, she thought. Why not reach out a hand to someone from back then? Someone who knew you back then. She might remember who you were, help put all your pieces back together.
Stare, stare, monkey bear.
Everybody knows you swear.
You’ve got dirty underwear.
Carol was speaking, going ten to the dozen, but Sally was away. She shook her head, shook her mind back to the moment. ‘She’s in England? Raelene?’
‘I think she’s still over there. She went right through school, you know, then went on and did psychology. Then she got a job in England, so her parents went back too. They were poms, nice enough, but after they lost their son, Raelene was like their whole life to them.’
‘Little Jamey. They lost him?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have known. He got leukaemia. They kept him alive until he was thirteen, which was about the time Rae finished uni. Then he died, so they sold up and left. I’ve got their address somewhere if you want it. I wrote once, sent a few Christmas cards. I never was a letter writer like you and Rae. Come in for a coffee and I’ll see if I can find it for you. Mum’s home, and old Nan is with us too since old Pa died.’
‘I won’t . . . not today.’
‘How’s your mum going these days, anyway?’
‘She’s . . . she’s really good. Really good these days.’
‘I never knew her, of course, but Rae’s mother told Mum a bit about it. God, I’m that pleased to see you. I’ve been going nuts here. It’s a real madhouse with four generations under the one roof. My girls share with Nan, and Jake is in my room. I’ve got to get myself a place of my own, but I sort of can’t decide where I want to live. We used to live in Croydon when I was married, but if I go back then I won’t have Mum to look after the kids after school.’
Sally looked at her watch. She’d turned on a talking machine.
‘Where are you living?’
‘Melbourne. South Yarra. And I’ll have to keep moving, Carol. I’ll call you. Your mum would still be in the book?’
‘Yeah. They’re the original stay-puts. Couldn’t move Mum and Pops out of here if I put a bomb under their beds. Me and Leo wanted them to go in with us in a milk bar a couple of years back, but no go. Just as well they didn’t, really. No money in them. We went broke, then w
e broke up six months back. Which is a bit sad, but that’s the way life goes, isn’t it? I’m going mad here, though. Stir-crazy. I’m thinking of putting an ad in the Melbourne paper, getting some other woman with kids to share a house with me. I could work the night shift and she could do days. Share the kids. Have you got any kids?’
‘I’m not married.’
‘Not married? You’ve got to be thirty. Really?’ Sally shrugged, looked away. ‘God. Looking like you do, I thought you would have had to drive the blokes off with sticks. You always were pretty, though. You know what Raelene’s mum used to call you?’ Sally shook her head. ‘She used to say you looked like poor little Alice, locked outside of Wonderland.’
‘And Mum was the Mad Hatter.’ Sally replied.
Carol laughed and Sally forced a smile, eager to be gone but aware she would not get away easily.
‘Gee, you’ve made my day. Made my week. I just found out that Leo has got another woman. He went back to his old trade after the milk bar. She works with him.’
‘It happens,’ Sally said.
‘Oh, I know. I’ll find someone else too.’
Sally stepped back to the car; Carol followed her, leant on the car. Sally opened her car door. Carol held it open.
‘I’ve got two girls – Emma and Rebecca – and Jake, the boy. They’re good kids.’
Sally looked to the left, to the right. She glanced at the house across the road. They had built on a second floor. Twin boys had once lived there. Was the man mowing the lawn another stay-put? Dean. Dean or Donny Cooper. Shane used to play with them.
‘Are the Cooper twins still around?’
‘No. They left in high school. Anyway, I was telling Emma about you and the hose bit and Emma said, “Why didn’t you get your hose and shoot her back, Mum?” I mean, that’s just the sort of thing that she’d do, but I was an only child and I didn’t have the cheek that you and Raelene had. Gee, I thought you were game, running along the peak of that roof like a tight-rope walker, with Pops and Mr Mason creeping after you on their hands and knees. And that other time, just after we moved in and you came back here. You sat up there for hours singing this song about your father and brothers, and playing a huge guitar. It made me cry.’
Sally could remember that night. Mummy at the funny farm, Sally in emergency care, but she’d nicked off and walked home. And she couldn’t go in when she got there because Carol Rigg lived there. She’d crept into Raelene’s garage and found Mummy’s guitar, climbed with it onto the roof.
Behind the wheel now, she played with her keys. Couldn’t close the car door. Carol’s head was in the way. ‘I’ll have to go, Carol.’
‘You still live with your mum?’
She glanced at the house thief, who already knew too much about her past. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a call.’
‘You make sure you do. I’d hate to lose you again after finding you. Better still, you give me your phone number.’
Sally gave her her Melbourne number but she reversed the last two digits. Carol repeated it. ‘I’ll give you a call next week. Oh, and Rae’s address – that’s if I can find it. Where do I send it?’
She gave Carol Ross’s roadside delivery address, but ten more minutes passed before she got away and pointed her car towards home.
‘Home.’ She said the word, questioning it. For sixteen years home had been Lakeside. Now the hazy shape of the city skyline had become home, and she drove towards it gladly, wanting it, wanting whatever that growling Melbourne beast had to give.
When had she made the transition? In Geelong? In Carter Street?
She hadn’t felt it happen. Yesterday she’d driven home to Lakeside. Now she was driving down the freeway to her home.
The World Going by
November 1999
She slept late on Tuesday morning. It was close to ten when she crept up on the office block. Ratsus was waiting, patrolling her phones.
‘So you finally showing you face, eh?’
‘Sorry. I’ve had a virus. I had to go to the doctor this morning for some more tablets.’ She coughed, giving her lie veracity.
Queen Ratsus’s trumpet lips blew air in an exaggerated ‘Phuuumph’. She didn’t believe in human viruses. A virus was a trick played on computers. ‘You can use telephone. Yes? I personally am not so sure of this. This is why I asking you. Yes? You can use telephone? You can dial number? Yes?’
‘I was too sick, and I live alone.’ Sally coughed again, raising a worthy smoker’s cough. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I am tired of sorry excuse. You wanting work, or you not wanting work. Is you decision.’
‘I can work late all this week.’ Ratsus blew more air, but she walked away, and Sally exhaled her own air with relief. She was still among the employed. As she took her seat, Pimples stared, Ron’s dentures clickety-clacked and Cindy cackled. Nothing had changed but everything had changed.
‘Sell. Sell. Sell,’ Ratsus bawled. ‘Why it is we are here?’
And the chorus came back loud. ‘To sell.’
‘Why we can sell?’
‘Because people love to buy.’
Sally sighed. True enough. She dialled a faceless voice desperate for a dose of retail therapy. And she made a sale. The power of positive thinking.
‘Sell. Sell. Sell.’
That’s what she had to do. Accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. And she was back into the swing of the old selling game. Maybe she’d missed it. On the high that always followed the low, she sold hard.
Seven lonely days may make one lonely week, but seven lonely nights made a bulging pay packet. The bills slimmed it down. Then Monday again. Matt’s night again, and no Matt. Let him ring. And he had. Let him plead. And he had. He’d get over it and so would she.
Sue worked late most nights and on Monday she didn’t want to go home, so they walked to the casino. Sue sat at the pokies and Sally wandered off to watch the laser show and the water dance, and to walk that Gone with the Wind staircase and dream. It was a magical place, as long as you stayed away from the tables and the pokies.
At nine she wandered out to watch the lights on the river; a muddy gutter by day, the Yarra added to the magic of this place by night. And the city behind it looked like a man-made mountain range against the sky. No barrier now, that mountain. Home. Melbourne was home.
She sat alone waiting for the fire show, her self-prescribed dose of fire therapy. The first time she’d heard the roar of gas, seen those belching flames, she’d screamed and cowered. Sue had thought it was a lark. She’d laughed, but that night the fire-dream had come for Sally. She’d woken herself with her screams.
Now she forced herself to watch those flames, forced herself closer each time she came here, and tonight she was too close; when the flames roared, she felt their heat on her face. But she didn’t flinch. This place was magic land, and the fires here were made by dragons imprisoned in a cave beneath the Yarra. Every hour on the hour they came out to roar their fury into the night sky. Caged things, like her, they just wanted to fly.
It was close to nine-thirty when she went in search of Sue and found her still feeding the pokies’ greed. ‘Just another five minutes, Sall. I had a win.’
‘Quit while you’re ahead.’
‘Who says I’m ahead? Just five more. I’ve got that lucky feeling.’
‘Five more. I’ll be near that bar.’ Sally yawned and found an ashtray, lit a cigarette and watched the world go by. And it did. Including the bikie, barely recognisable, apart from his long hair.
He recognised her too. ‘No soliciting allowed here, De Rooster. Get yourself down to St Kilda.’
‘Get a job,’ she replied and turned away.
Minutes later Sue came at a run, flashing notes. ‘I told you so. Stick this in your purse.’ Sally took the notes, folded them. ‘Don’t give them back to me. Even if I beg.’
‘We’ve got to work in the morning.’
‘Fifteen minutes. I’m on a winning s
treak.’
‘Fifteen minutes and I leave.’ She tucked the rolled notes into her bra.
One of the guys from Home and Away walked by; he looked at her too, smiled. If she’d been Sue, she wouldn’t have allowed it to end at a smile. Then half an hour later, when she walked to the bar for a drink, she almost had a head-on with Sleiman the sleaze.
‘Miss De Rooze,’ he said.
She shrugged. Nothing to say.
‘A drink?’ he said. ‘Can I –’
She paid for her own wine and returned with it to her ashtray. But he followed her, his white fingers feeling up a tall glass as he showed her his beaky front teeth. ‘Your mother is on the improve again.’
She nodded. What else could she do? If she moved from here Sue would never find her.
‘Good to see you looking well. As usual.’ The beaky smile.
Maybe she should ask him about pills and fits and brain scans, and better here on her own turf than in Lakeside. She was priming herself, forming the question, when Sue found her.
‘Just a twenty thanks, Sall,’ she said.
‘I’m leaving.’
‘Just a twenty. Come on, you mean fuck.’
The sleaze flinched, stared at the red hair, at the nose ring, then down. He sucked seed and walked. Sally walked in the opposite direction.
‘You were sucking up the dregs with him, weren’t you? I wouldn’t even look at him and I haven’t had any since – Jesus, I’ve forgotten.’
‘He’s my mother’s doctor. Do you want a ride home?’
‘Give us my money and I’ll get a taxi. Come on, Sall. It’s ready to pay up big. I can feel it.’
‘I’m going, going, gone.’
Sue tailed her, caught up to her on the bridge where Sally leaned, watching the dragons’ fire again, but from a distance.
‘Wouldn’t do a seagull much good if he happened to be flying over,’ Sue said. ‘So let’s go if we’re going, you mean fuck.’
Sue offered coffee in Dandenong. They sat on the couch with a cat between them while Sally looked around a house that was a home. Sue might have a cheap love life but she had expensive furniture and light fittings. She might have rat-chewed hair and buy her gear from op shops, but her furnishings were tasteful. She had a video player too, and a video due back. She put it on when she made a second cup of coffee and Sally remembered the notes in her bra. She removed them, tossed them onto the coffee table.
