Ripples on a Pond (36 page)

Mind whispering its secrets again. He'd once known a dark-skinned woman. She'd lived in Granny's paddock and had kids who'd kicked a football with bare feet. ‘Alice, Annie.' A short name. ‘Iris, Amy.' None was right. It annoyed him that he couldn't raise the right name from the depths of little Jimmy's recall.

The fuel gauge was showing empty when the town started slinking out of a flat landscape, one farmhouse, then another, then a group of new houses. His eyes scanned beyond the houses for a petrol pump, and he sighted a service station on his left.

A young chap filled his tank, washed his windscreen. ‘Nice-looking car,' he said.

‘A hire car,' Morrie said.

‘How does she handle?'

‘It's comfortable. Doesn't appear to be too heavy on fuel.'

‘You're not from around here, eh?'

‘I flew in from London this morning.'

‘You sound like it. Got family up this way, have you?'

‘Land,' Morrie said.

He paid his money, strange money, then drove on, following the road's curve into the town. Not a lot of the town. Blunt's Drapery on his left – and he knew it, knew that old veranda, knew Jenny had bought him new socks from boxes in Blunt's Drapery. Suddenly he knew where she'd bought sausages, and where that railway line led; knew that his red trike had travelled home one day on the train – from Ray's house – and the station was too far from Granny's house for him to ride his trike home.

Red trike. Silver bell.

Vroom, vroom, vroom, down Ray's veranda and around the corner, bell ringing . . .

S-s-stop r-r-ringing that th-th-thing.

And he wanted to howl for little Jimmy's lost trike.

He hadn't howled when his mother died, just drank a lot. He'd felt relief when the curled-up shell of Bernard had stopped breathing. He'd almost howled for Letty. She'd lived for Bernard, they'd said at her funeral. Not five, not ten, but two dozen or more had said it.
She lived for her brother.

That's what I'm lacking, Morrie thought, someone to live for, someone to hang on to the land for, to hang on to Letty's house for. He had no one.

I'm suffering a severe case of the injured dog syndrome, he thought: the life-battered, mixed-breed mongrel crawling home to its kennel mates, needing one of them to lick its wounds.

He'd felt wounded since that day at Amberley when he'd seen his son – or before that. He'd felt wounded since that day at the airport when Cara had handed him the photograph of his curly-headed boy.

Two boys and a dog meandered across Woody Creek's main street. They separated and he drove between them. Their dog, offended by the near new car, chased it to the corner, where Morrie made a right-hand turn.

No grand old hotel on Woody Creek's corner. A long low country pub; one old bloke holding up a veranda post – or the post holding him up.

A taller, red-roofed house on his right. Morrie'd seen a photograph of his grandfather's house in the centenary book, a black and white photograph. Probably it.

He slowed to look at the bare branches of a mighty tree to the south of the house. He'd once known such a mighty tree at Grandpa's. As an infant he'd played beneath the canopy of its pale green leaves. If it was the same house, the same tree, Jim Hooper and Jenny lived there with their daughter – his sister.

Lorna had seen the niece, born in wedlock and thus with more legal claim to her grandfather's estate than he. Always the bastard, little Jimmy Morrison.

What now? Knock on their door, accuse them – or claim them. Claim Georgie of the molten copper hair.

‘Brothers and sisters have I none,' he whispered, then, selecting a gear, he drove on.

His grandfather's land was ten or so kilometres west of the town, over a bridge, Roland Atkinson had said. Roland knew this town. He'd been driving up to the farm annually since '47. In his mid to late seventies now, with no wife, no kids, to age him, Roland had the mind of a man of half his years. The bridge was where he'd said it would be, a few hundred yards past a sawmill, then around a bend. Morrie saw it.

And saw a fork in the road, and a signpost.
Forest Road Caravan Park 5 K.

Granny's house had been down that road. Little Jimmy's bones remembered walking that road a hundred times with Jenny.

Always Jenny, never Mummy. Margaret had been Mum.

The last of the weak sun starting to disappear behind the trees as he made the turn onto not much of a road. Its crown wore a surface of bitumen, breaking away at the edges. He clung to the crown, hoping no speedster came around the bend. All bends and potholes, a few of them deep. He drove slowly, the car in second gear, glancing left, glancing right, wide awake now.

Crumbling huts to his left. No goat paddock. He saw a house on his right, a tall, narrow house; saw the hulks of two rusting vehicles there, and a second, larger house behind the first. No goats, and that second house was too big to be Granny's. He could remember something of the dark of it, the small of it, Jenny's sausages wrapped in bread . . .

Drove on by. Drove by another sawmill to his left. His grandfather had owned a sawmill. It said so in the centenary book. Norm Nicholas's mill had become Vern Hooper's in 1918. He'd read every word in that book – because Cara had posted it to him, because it had been proof that she'd cared enough to post it.

No mention of a caravan park in it. He saw the park on his left – far too new to find a space in
The First Hundred Years
. A brick house and facilities block, lawns well trimmed, rows of modern cabins, caravans parked amid trees. An oasis of civilisation surrounded by grey forest, he thought as he turned onto the gravelled track leading into the park. A sign:
Onsite cabins and vans. Office behind house
. And a white Kombi van wanting to get out.

He backed up, allowing the van driver out. The van turned towards town, so Morrie followed it, eating its dust until he was approaching that narrow house again. From the eastern angle he could see the tall stilts it stood on, and her name came.
Elsie'
s house.

Elsie and Harry and their tribe of barefoot kids. He'd played hide-and-seek with Georgie and those barefoot kids, had hidden beneath that house.

He pulled off to the side of the road to stare a while; to stare at the house in the far paddock. Definitely not Granny's, but definitely on her land.

A woman popped her head out of the house on stilts to glance at the car.

Coming, ready or not.

He wasn't ready. Drove on fast, drove on to where the road curved. There, out of sight of the house and the woman, he parked on the gravelled verge and turned off the motor. Got out to suck in deep breaths of frosty, eucalypt-scented air, to walk down a clay track worn between old trees.

It led him to a wooden gate – left open for him – if he dared.

And he saw Granny's little house, or the western side of the larger building, framed between the trunks of two trees. He recognised the green growth that had covered it, and the old tank where Jenny had drawn her buckets of water. And the white hens that had laid a million eggs. And the rooster, lifting his head to sing out his song to the end of day.

What's he saying, Jenny?

Time-to-get-to-roost. Eggs-to-lay-in-the-morning. Stay up too darn late and tomorrow you'll be yawning.

Always Jenny; Jenny of the tickling gold hair.

Sucking too much cold air, he turned and walked fast back to his hire car, where he started the motor and drove carelessly back to where the road forked, then on towards the bridge. A singing bridge, its boards rattling as he crossed over.

Before he was across, the sun setting in the middle of the road blinded him. One hand shading his eyes, he persevered, knowing that road would curve. In this place, all roads curved. Not this one. It was heading for the sun and determined to take him with it.

His eyes needing little excuse to close, he pulled off to the side to sit until the sun dipped low enough for him to continue. Leaned his elbows on the steering wheel, one hand supporting his neck, while the sky turned red – red enough to convince primitive man that a fiery hell awaited those who walked too far from the beaten track. He'd walked that road. He'd slept with his sister and she'd borne him a son.

Sat long enough for that raw fury to fade into an ocean of salmon-pink waves, their peaks tipped with the liquid gold of Jenny's hair; until that same patch of hellish sky took on beauty enough to convince primitive man that there may well be a paradise out there for those who lived a righteous life.

An artist with a cruel sense of the ridiculous, the God residing over Woody Creek.

While Morrie sat contemplating the hell of life, the artist dipped his paintbrush again and turned paradise into the purple and yellow bruise of Jenny's black eye. And he knew why his red trike had ridden home to Woody Creek on that train.

I l-l-love you, Jenny.

Little Jimmy, worming his way deeper into Morrie Langdon's psyche. And why not? Morrie Langdon was planning to sell his inheritance so he might hold Langdon Hall together for the son who should never have been born.

If he had to sell his grandfather's land, then he didn't want to see it. Turned the car around and drove back across that bridge, following the route he'd taken into town out of it.

Vroom, vroom, vroom.

C
HRISTMAS
C
HICKEN

P
ete went home in late June and they missed him. Robert missed him. He'd been better since they'd moved. Cara watched him the week Pete left, expecting him to backslide.

He didn't. He liked the space of the house they'd furnished with familiar table, chairs from Amberley. He liked his easy chair with its built-in footrest – and far better to see him seated on that chair than in bed. And he was showing an interest in Tracy. The first time he'd lifted her to his lap, they'd sat for minutes, two very serious faces studying each other. Then Tracy had blown a raspberry and Robert had smiled, a first in a long, long time.

The complete works of Dickens, a parting gift from the school, had found a home on Amberley's bookshelves and looked fine there. The cardboard cartons of books, sealed since Cara had moved from her dogbox, had been unpacked.

From one of them, she unearthed her copy of
The Lady's Garden
and read it again, wondering if it might help to explain to Robin how Tracy had grown in another woman's tummy. She'd told him half a dozen times, but information given before a child is ready for it is as water off a duck's back. He knew who Tracy belonged to. She was his sister.

There was a possibility, however remote, that if Raelene managed to live a decent life when they let her out, she could be given custody of her daughter. It was highly unlikely but possible, and Robin had to be made aware of that possibility.

Tracy knew who she belonged to, and by July, she'd claimed Robert. She used his immobile legs as supports when she pulled herself up to stand on chubby legs.

‘She's more adventurous than Robin was at the same age,' Robert said.

Cara had seen little of Robin before his second birthday. She had time to watch every step of Tracy's progress. She wasn't watching the day Tracy tested one of Miss Robertson's chairs; her dining room suite had found a home in their kitchen. Her chair, not as stable as Robert's legs, fell on top of Tracy, but a foster mummy's kisses were good enough to take away the pain of a bump.

By August, Raelene was back on the streets and her daughter was taking her first steps. Phone calls during business hours became feared things. Few had the Doncaster number, but Linda Watson's office had it.

September came, and spring. Robert was so much better he was making his shadow puppets on a new wall – a perfect wall for their playground when the afternoon sun poured in. Like Cara before him, Robin learned to make the clucking hen that had laid a giant egg. Both he and Robert laughed at Tracy's antics as she chased shadows, squealing when she failed to catch them. Whatever Cara's reasons for fostering, it had been the best decision of her life. Like a tiny bud grafted onto a dying tree, that little girl had introduced new sap, which, by September, had reached the oldest branch. Robert was back; older, smaller, but definitely back.

On 2 October, Tracy had her first birthday. One day later, Cara celebrated her thirtieth – and celebrated the fact that Raelene had disappeared from her accommodation.

Cara found out why when Cathy rang that night.

‘Happy birthday,' she said. ‘I haven't got happy news though. Dave said they've let Collins out.'

Raelene's bikie knows the bloke who bought Monk's place. They've got a cabin out there
, Georgie had once written.

Cara knew where Raelene would be and if she was with Collins, no judge in his right mind would give her custody of her daughter, not while she was the common-law wife of a convicted rapist.

November came and went. Not a word about Raelene. Then December, and they bought a Christmas tree and Christmas lights, baubles, a golden angel and too much tinsel.

*

The weather, though a little inclement when they'd left for church this morning, had cleared by noon. There was a slight breeze from the east, a cloud or two about, but no rain. They were halfway home when Duckworth slowed her feet before a residential property where a team of ungainly reindeer, cut from plywood, drew a garishly painted sleigh across a residential lawn towards a bedazzled pine tree.

Lorna scoffed, then, taking a firmer grip on her companion's arm, she continued forward.

Certainly Jesus had been born, and perhaps in the month of December – born of woman, and no doubt in much the same way as the lamb is born of the ewe, a scene witnessed by Lorna during her girlhood. Birth is bloody mess. Lorna had barely survived her own and her mother hadn't. She abhorred the commercialisation of Christmas.

And again, her companion's eyes were drawn to a similarly bedecked tree and an inflated fat man teetering on a roof strung with wires and uncountable globes.

‘It must look wonderful at night,' her companion said.

‘Piffle,' Lorna said. ‘Where in the Bible is there mention of festooned pine trees, or of an overweight cretin in red chanting “Ho, ho, ho”?'

Poor sight forced her to retain her grip on her companion. In her youth, Lorna had clung to no one. She could not recollect the touch of another until her toddling sister Margaret had reached up to hold her hand, a habit she had continued into adulthood.

The sister's interests had been diverse to the extreme. At an early age Lorna became addicted to newsprint, her only reading material during the twelve years spent on that flyblown farm of her childhood. Margaret's interest had leaned towards kitchens and knitting needles. Inseparable though, until their forties, until separated by a pernicious pile of pommy pig poop.

Duckworth had filled the vacancy, though quite early in their association it had become obvious to Lorna that she'd lacked in education. Given a word of more than three syllables, the woman's pronunciation had been pathetic. A glance, a correction offered with raised brows makes for efficient teaching – if the subject possesses adequate intelligence to learn. In recent years, Lorna's sight having deteriorated to a stage where she could no longer read the small print of newspapers, she'd become reliant on Duckworth's sight; her reading was adequate.

Margaret had not been a walker. Under sufferance she had accompanied Lorna, if the day had been fine. Duckworth walked in fine weather or foul. At times she reminded Lorna of the house dog Jim's mother had once owned. It would fetch its own lead when Joanne had said ‘walk'. As eager as that wretched dog, Duckworth fetched hats, overcoats, raincoats, as the season dictated. She sat willingly at Lorna's side in theatres where, unlike Margaret, she appeared to relish a little blood and gore.

A more than efficient housekeeper, in her natural element in the kitchen, non-argumentative; all in all, Duckworth had proven to be a satisfactory replacement for Margaret.

They were a bare two blocks from home when a male child, propelling an out-of-control billycart, cannoned down a driveway and braked against Lorna's shins. She flew, and took her companion with her.

*

A tall tree falls further, falls harder than its scrubby mate. Amber, fast to regain her feet, was shaken, her hand and knee scraped, but she was otherwise intact. Lorna, also scraped, remained on her backside on the concrete pavement a few metres from Alma and Valda Duckworth's driveway, into which their vehicle was currently turning.

The pair ran to assist. Lorna held them at bay with a raised hand while others gathered. A passing churchgoer offered to drive the women to a hospital.

‘Ambulance,' Lorna commanded. She had self-diagnosed a snapped shinbone.

Valda Duckworth made the phone call, and while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Amber had no protection from the mother and daughter, who for some time had been intent on finding a common link between their family and Miss Elizabeth Duckworth's.

That morning, the duo spoke of Uncle Charles, a parson, and his son, Reginald, who, when only a lad, had become involved in an unfortunate love affair which ruined his life.

‘The names are not familiar,' Amber lied.

They were very familiar. In another lifetime, Charles the parson had carried that squalling stray to Amber's bed, and in her distraught state she'd believed it to be her dead son, and returned to life. In another lifetime, she'd known cousin Reginald, in the biblical sense. Amber suffered torture for the twenty minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive.

They loaded Lorna on board and were closing the door when the voice from within demanded, ‘Duckworth.' Three women moved forward, but it was into Amber's hand that Lorna gave her bunch of keys.

Home alone then, those keys gripped in her hand. Home to unlock an empty house, to think, to plan. Tonight was her own, and if Lorna's diagnosis was correct, then a few days more.

Amber removed her ragged stocking. She cleaned and dressed her wounds while admitting to herself that Duckworth had been a poor choice of name. Far better she had chosen Smith, Jones, Brown. She'd been given no time to consider future consequences. Elizabeth Duckworth had been born in a hurry, born of necessity. And she
must
disappear before she was exposed.

Her death would not be as easy to manage as her birth. She'd come into the world with nothing other than a hospital issue gown, a plastered leg and bandaged head. She now owned a wardrobe full of clothing, a pair of Royal Doulton vases, found at an opportunity shop in Richmond and carried home to grace the mantelpiece in Lorna's parlour. Pretty things, large enough to demand, see me, but delicate. Her Waterford Crystal bowl, also picked up at an opportunity shop, was heavy. She possessed several pairs of shoes, also heavy, a selection of hats. Hats were not easy to pack. Nor would be her overcoat.

And she didn't want to be Mrs Smith or Brown, existing in a boarding house room, watching the funds she'd managed to accrue dwindle away. In Lorna's house she'd accrue more. And it had become her house. She dusted, polished it, ran it the way a fine house should be run.

An early-morning phone call to the hospital verified Lorna's diagnosis, and at ten that morning, Amber took two trams to the hospital, a small case packed with Lorna's night clothing, dressing-gown and slippers, then, freed for the day, she went about her own business.

Midday found her at a wall of private mailboxes at the Melbourne GPO. She emptied one, locked it, then crossed over the street and walked up to her bank, where she deposited three pension cheques into Amber Morrison's account.

Elderly joints, jarred by a fall, ache, they stiffen. Amber had promised herself a day of rest, but on the Tuesday morning when a second early phone call informed her that Miss Hooper would be released on Christmas morning, Amber's plans altered.

She removed the Christmas wreath from the front door, removed a string of pretty lights from the front window, then walked out to the kitchen to toss together a plum pudding. Lorna enjoyed the festive meal. No leg of lamb to roast, no piece of pork, and today, the final shopping day before Christmas. The pudding boiling in a large steamer, Amber dressed carefully then walked down to the tram stop.

A crowd in the supermarket, long queues at the checkouts, and she lucky to snatch up one of the last frozen chickens. Back on the pavement she stood a while deciding if her shaken bones were up to taking advantage of her last day of freedom. The weight of the chicken in her string bag told her she should take it home, but a city tram was pulling in.

Melbourne clad in its festive gown was a swarm of humanity – as it had been the first Christmas of Amber's freedom, that Christmas of her aimless wandering through a city of no locks and no bars. Children had pointed at her then. Crowds had parted for her. One of Melbourne's rejects, the crowd milling out the front of Myer's windows had parted to allow that long-haired, black-clad wretch to see what had drawn the crowd.

She'd witnessed magic.

Every year since, she'd found excuse to escaped Lorna and to stand a while before Myer's windows, and each Christmas there had been a different display of clockwork animals scuttling, nursery rhyme characters waving, elves hammering toys. No matter our age, in each of us, segments of the child lingers – of the good and the bad child, the loved and the unloved.

Children no longer pointed their small fingers at her. Their parents gave her no second glance, and the crowd no longer separated to allow her through. She had insufficient height to see above the heads, so pressed forward until she found space behind an empty stroller.

Saw the baby in her mother's arms. Watched her tiny hands trying to get at the pretty scenes behind the glass. Saw a small boy at the mother's elbow, his eyes avid. Amber eased around the stroller until she was elbow to elbow with that boy who had the stray's hair, Archie Foote's hair. And jammed in by the crowd, she could smell Archie Foote's hair.

It stole her breathing. It sucked the blood from her brain and sprayed it in a red mist before her eyes. Her mouth open, she swayed as a weight rolled to the right of her skull.

Grasped the handle of the stroller, and an elderly man, already grasping it, looked at her then tapped the boy on the shoulder.

‘Move away, Robin, and give someone else a turn.'

Small children have never seen enough magic. The boy lingered.

‘How do they make them move like they're real, Mummy?'

‘With batteries I imagine, Robbie. Take Papa's hand.'

Amber had carried three sons, Clarence, Simon and Reginald. They may have had Archie Foote's hair. She'd carried two daughters, Leonora April and Cecelia Louise. Buried them all, other than Cecelia, Sissy.

‘They're like real,' the boy said as the mother settled her babe into the stroller.

The window now before her, but Amber stared at the family group until her eyes met those of the male.

He looked away. Men hadn't looked away in Amber's youth. They'd all wanted her. Just a white-headed old grandmother now, clad in a muted floral frock of blues and pinks and lilac, a harmless old soul made dizzy by the pressing crowd, the too-large frozen chicken grown heavy in its string bag. She swapped it from her left hand to her right, and as the family moved on she followed in the wake of the stroller.