Ripples on a Pond (37 page)

Christmas melodies playing. She'd known them all back then. Glanced to her right towards a Salvation Army band, and was swept away again to that lonely wretch who had wandered these streets by day and by night. The streets had altered. The Salvos had never altered. Same woman, holding that same tin, rattling it for the crowd's donation.

Same crowd walking on by.

Not the boy with Archie Foote's hair. He ran to drop a coin into the tin, and Amber stilled her feet to reach into her handbag for her own coin. Plenty of coins. She liked to feel the weight of all of those coins she'd never owned. Found Lorna's keys first – or the identical set she'd had cut from the originals yesterday. She liked keys.

She'd dropped her coin into the tin. The woman was wishing her a happy Christmas when a red-clad whirlwind swept in from behind, almost knocking Amber again from her feet. The Salvation Army woman's hand saved her.

Then too fast for her mind to follow, the street scene altered. And the sounds.

Loud. The whirlwind turning the air in that city street to blue. Elderly man attempting to wrestle the whirlwind. Mother fighting for possession of the stroller. Boy with Archie Foote's hair, running on the spot as the stroller tilted, fell, the infant strapped into it.

Salvation Army band's instruments down. Woman with the donation tin moving forward as the whirlwind attempted to drag that babe free by its arm.

Then a blank page rose to shield Amber's mind. White. Flat. Wordless.

She was unaware of what she'd done until she'd done it, until she'd swung her string bag in an arc, the arc ending with a connection.

Like before. Somewhere.

String bag and chicken jarred from her hand by the impact, the chicken flew one final time as the whirlwind settled gracefully down to become a pool of red dust on the pavement.

Short flight for that featherless chicken. It made a skidding landing at the feet of the Salvation Army woman.

Photographs developing too fast now on that blank white page. Helpers surrounding the mother. Stroller lifted back to its wheels. Screaming baby released from its buckles and held to the mother's breast.

And the mother's eyes seeking, finding Amber's, thanking her with her eyes while the infant screamed.

Strength flowing again in Amber's legs, she turned from the scene and walked fast away, hoping the foul-mouthed slut wasn't dead – not because she deserved life, but because Elizabeth Duckworth did. She'd put the past behind her. She'd found a good and useful life and her benefactor was coming home in the morning and would need her Duckworth.

Walked on, unable to kill the tight smile now stretching her lips as her mind replayed the scene. A classic, that sag to the pavement. Theatrical.

‘Excuse me.'

Amber glanced over her shoulder. The elderly man was offering the string bag and Lorna's Christmas chicken dinner, the little boy at his side.

‘You made her stop,' the boy said.

Amber took her bag, then as a grandmother should, she patted his curly hair.

‘Didn't I just,' she said.

L
EGAL
A
DVICE

H
ours later, home where they were safe, Tracy was still screaming and Robin still wanting answers.

‘Who was that bad lady?'

‘A sick-in-the-head stranger, Robbie.'

‘She said bad words.'

Raelene had said a lot of bad words.

‘Why did she hurt Tracy, Mummy?'

‘Because she thinks she can take what she wants from life and no one will stop her, Robbie.'

‘That lady did.'

She'd stopped Raelene in her tracks. Flattened the feral bitch.

Cara had thanked the little grandmother, as had Robert. They'd walked with her to the tram stop, had waited with her until she boarded her tram – the Kew tram. She'd told Cara her name.

‘Merry Christmas,' she'd said.

Duckworth; no wedding ring. A Miss Duckworth who lived somewhere along the Kew tramline. Easy enough to find, Cara thought.

Tracy refused her dinner, refused her bottle. Robert got Robin into bed. By nine, he was sleeping, waiting for Father Christmas to fly in from the North Pole. Tracy, too young to know about the man in red, refused to sleep, and when Cara lifted her from her cot, she screamed. She never screamed.

At three o'clock, while Santa and his reindeer flew the skies, Cara drove along deserted streets to the Box Hill hospital. Tracy's arm was broken, the bruises from her natural mother's grip turning blue.

At dawn Cara spoke to a police constable.

‘We were attacked out the front of Myer's. A Salvation Army band was playing carols there. They saw the attack – and the elderly woman who stopped it. Someone from Myer's called the ambulance. We left the scene before it arrived, but the attacker would have been taken to a hospital.'

She didn't mention the elderly woman's name, or the tram she'd caught. If Raelene was dead, that old lady could be arrested for her murder. She deserved a medal for bravery, not arrest.

*

At breakfast time, Robin and Robert learned about the cyclone that had blown Darwin away. Cyclone Tracy, they'd named it. Robin wanted to know why they'd used Tracy's name, and why were Mummy and Tracy taking so long?

Should have named that cyclone Raelene: she'd blown their Doncaster Christmas away. Sago soaking in milk in the fridge for Myrtle's sago plum pudding; Myrtle's recipe book open on the bench. Chicken thawed on the sink, its plastic bag oozing blood.

One o'clock and still no sign of Cara. Cheese sandwiches for lunch at Doncaster. Robert and Robin could manage to make a cheese sandwich.

In Kew, Lorna tucked into roast chicken, unaware that she may be eating a murder weapon.

Cara sat beside a hospital bed far too large for her baby, as was the plaster cast on Tracy's tiny arm.

*

For several years Chris Marino had pursued Cara. On a Friday night in late January of 1975, Cara pursued him to his front door, and was invited into the house that could have been her own. She walked a large Italian marble-tiled hallway, passed a marble pedestal on which a barely clad marble lady guarded a large pot plant, and was introduced to a girl who looked Italian but didn't sound it. A pretty girl, big with his baby.

There for Chris's legal advice, she admired his house and his swimming pool before mentioning her foster daughter's proposed visit with the natural mother.

‘I want you to tell me that they can't force me to take her in there, Chris.'

He couldn't tell her that, so she told him about the plaster on Tracy's tiny arm, about the day at Myer's and Miss Duckworth and the Salvation Army band.

In late January, Chris stood at her side while she told her story to a magistrate, described in detail the natural mother's attack, offered X-rays and documents obtained from the Box Hill hospital, from the police.

If Cara learned one thing that day, it was that you can't buck the system. Robert wrote a cheque to pay for her attempt to buck it. Chris had never been cheap. He had managed to delay that first supervised visit, but only until March, until Tracy's plaster had been removed. Then, like the foster parent she was, Cara drove to a city office, where Tracy, screaming, was taken from her mummy's arms. And when returned, sobbing, she clung for half an hour.

‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.'

In April, Cara drove twice to that city office. On the second occasion, the natural mother failed to keep her date with her daughter. Raelene wanted custody, not supervised visits. Cara looked for her as she buckled Tracy into her seat. Knew they were out there, watching her. Felt him out there. Felt him on a motorbike that drove by; in a car with darkened windows; in the taxi, the truck, that blocked her escape from the city. Afraid to drive directly home with him tailing her, she deviated to the Forest Hill shopping centre. Walked around it, seeking him, searching for Raelene, while Tracy napped in her stroller. It was late when she left to drive home – and saw Collins in every car on Springvale Road.

‘I know they were there, Daddy. I know they were watching from somewhere when we left the office. I know.'

Be it paranoia or instinct, Robert, having now met the natural mother, placed Amberley on the market. That house was just money, gathering dust in the bank. Cara and the children needed money.

Tracy's next visit with her mother was terminated after ten minutes. Raelene didn't like the supervisor. The supervisor found Raelene's behaviour towards her screaming daughter unacceptable.

Tracy screamed all the way home. Commuters eyed her, eyed her useless mother who couldn't shut her screaming kid up.

That was the day the war began; a war of letters and phone calls.

Dear Madam,

I refuse to subject Tracy to the ongoing abuse of her natural mother. I have accrued documentation from several sources, which I am prepared to present to the courts.

Chris had located Miss Elizabeth Duckworth with one phone call. Only one Duckworth listed at a Kew address, and Mrs Alma Duckworth knew a Miss Elizabeth. She gave Chris Lorna's address. He wrote a fine letter to Amber, praising her heroic actions and asking if she'd be prepared to stand beside the young mother she'd assisted by telling her story to a judge.

Amber had no desire to go anywhere near a courtroom, a judge or policemen. She replied to his letter, claiming age as her reason for refusing.

Chris wrote again, asking if she'd be prepared tell him and his secretary her story, then to sign the document so it might be read in a court of law. He offered to send a taxi to collect and deliver her home.

A trip into the city meant a day of freedom. Amber had pension cheques to collect. She replied by return mail; told him she'd take the tram into town and make her own way to his office at two.
It would be appreciated if I could be met on the ground floor
.

They met her. They gave her tea and fancy biscuits, treated her like royalty. When the tale was told and typed up, she read and signed two pages,
Elizabeth Duckworth
, then watched, smiling, while two witnesses signed beneath her name. Pleasant people. They thought they knew who she was.

The solicitor walked her down the stairs and out to the street. He waited with her until the ordered taxi pulled in. He gave the driver Lorna's address, gave Amber a ten-pound note to pay the fare, then shook her hand.

Once out of the city, Amber offered the driver a new destination. She paid him in coins, then caught the tram home.

*

Amberley was sold to a cashed-up retired Queensland businessman who made no attempt to beat them down on price. Pete had advised them to set it high. ‘You can always drop your price if you need to,' he'd said. They could have built a mansion with the money from the sale. Cara wanted a house that didn't stand out, on a quiet street well away from the city, with a high front fence and a gate. They found what she wanted in Ferntree Gully.

Chris did the paperwork. He put Cara's married name on the title. Few knew she had a married name; only Chris, only Cathy and Gerry. And Morrie.

His MG refused to move with them. Cara's fault. She hadn't driven it in months; hadn't started its motor since April.

It needed a new battery, Robert said. They bought a battery, and when the motor refused to catch, they called in the local mechanic, who spent two hours fiddling beneath the bonnet, achieving nothing. He'd brought a small compressor in his van. He put air into the tyres, told them the car needed four new tyres, then offered his bill for free air and his opinion on old relics.

‘They're a specialist's job,' he said.

Cara knew an MG specialist, but there'd been no contact with Barry in years, and he'd been an old man when she'd met him. She'd had no contact with Morrie since that day in Sydney, but one way or another they needed to move that car. She dialled Barry's number, afraid that the man with the magic hands might have moved on to poke around the big wrecking yard in the sky.

Mary picked up the phone. ‘Is that Cara? Well, fancy hearing from you,' she said. ‘We were only talking about you last night. I'll swear that Barry has got a telepathic link to that car. Hang on for a minute, dear, and I'll fetch him in for you.'

An RACV truck carried the MG to Ashburton, Cara and Robin driving behind it. Robin was more concerned for his unknown daddy's car than she.

‘Can the magic man make it go again, Mummy?'

‘If anyone can, Barry can,' she said.

Barry and Mary kissed her; Barry shook Robin's hand. Cara drank a cup of tea in Mary's kitchen while discussing the car's recent years with Barry. Robin turned the pages of a picture book.

‘Mummy, it's like our
Lady's Garden
book,' he said.

She glanced at the book.
The Lost Letter House
. It was like
The Lady's Garden.
Same names on the cover: J.C. Hooper and J. McPherson
.
She knew the author; didn't mention the fact.

‘I saw it out the front of a bookshop one day and it brought back memories of a little penfriend I used to write to,' Mary said, ‘way back before the war. She was a Cara too.'

Two inches of tea in the cup. Cara emptied it, her throat suddenly dry.

‘I've never written to an author in my life,' Mary said. ‘But I was so sure it was my Cara Jeanette that I wrote to her care of the publisher. And would you believe it, after near on forty years I found my little penfriend. Her name was Paris back then, Cara Jeanette Paris. She's married now, of course, and has got three daughters. One of them goes to school down here. She said that the next time she and her husband come down to see their daughter, they'll pop in for a cup of tea. Isn't it a wonderful world?'

‘It's a small world,' Cara said. Too small.

She looked at the picture on the cover. Someone had spent a lot of time building a tiny house of stamped, addressed envelopes, then had somehow managed to photograph a little man with long white hair and beard sitting on a mushroom in its open doorway.

‘A clever photographer,' she said.

‘Isn't he just. My friend told me that the gnome on the mushroom was her grandfather. The illustrator had been looking for his perfect gnome everywhere, then he came across a photograph he'd taken back during the depression.'

Cara left soon after, aware that she had to get rid of Morrie's car. How could it be possible that his car could lead her to a penfriend of the Jenny child? That elderly couple she almost loved had attached themselves to Woody Creek, and anything to do with that town was now a threat. Had to call Chris when she got home, ask him to write to Morrie and tell him his car could be collected from Barry's address.

Thank God it had died in Doncaster and not Ferntree Gully. Next Thursday week, Cara Norris would disappear off the planet and Mrs Cara Grenville would land with her father and two children in that quiet court in Ferntree Gully. So quiet that the three times she'd driven out there, she'd got lost.

She'd lost Georgie when they'd moved to Doncaster. No more late-night conversations. No more wads of pages from Charlie's docket books. Cara missed the sister she'd got to know so well, but couldn't chance further contact with her. Georgie had exposed her once to Raelene and Collins. It wouldn't happen a second time.

Forewarned is forearmed
,Georgie had once said.

Cara would be armed in Ferntree Gully – with a gate she could lock at night, with security doors front and rear. She'd get a watchdog too. Had plenty of garden for a dog.

*

Tracy's case worker was given the Ferntree Gully address. Two weeks after they'd moved in, a letter arrived introducing Anna. Cara called her. For half an hour she attempted to instruct Anna in the hard facts of life, but gentle Anna, another Linda, had been handed a folder containing many sheets of paper, and on paper a relationship between the natural mother and her child was considered to be vital to the said child's psychological development. Little things like broken and bruised arms, like little girls terrified of trains and lifts, didn't count for much in the greater scheme of paper.

She hadn't expected to fall in love with that tiny girl; hadn't expected Robin and Robert to fall in love with her. Brainless fool.

Wanting to scream her frustration, but unable to scream at Anna, unable to refuse to present Tracy at a certain office on a certain day at a certain hour, whether Raelene decided to present herself or not, Cara turned to her typewriter.

She wrote
The Addict's Child
in anger. It poured from her fingers, page after page of it, fact barely blurred by fiction. It gathered in her head by day while she went about the tasks of motherhood, then once her two were in bed, the pages began rolling again from that rattling typewriter. Night after night of it, page after page, each page leading irrevocably to only one conclusion.

Robert went to bed each night to the song of that pile of pages growing. Like others before him, he asked how much longer that infernal racket might continue.