Wind in the Wires (3 page)

Cara eyed her father, mentally betting every penny of pocket money for a month that he hadn’t brought them down here so he could be a vice principal, which he’d said was the reason.

She’d asked Monica, her second oldest cousin, if she knew anything about Robert and Myrtle adopting her. Monica was plenty old enough to know the family history. If she knew, she was in on the conspiracy. Pete would have told her if he’d known. All he’d said when she’d asked him was that he wished someone would adopt him. Since Monica had married and moved out, Gran Norris had sold her house and moved into Monica’s room.

‘Be thankful for small mercies,’ Pete said.

In a way she was. Had they still been living at Amberley, they would have copped Gran. John was too much like his father for Gran’s liking.

He must have been. He looked nothing like Gran, or Robert. John was taller, broader, bald, which made him look older. Robert’s hair was thinning on top, though not obviously – unless you were looking down on him. He had a male version of Gran’s features, back when she’d had features. John’s features were heavier. Everything about him was heavier – except his wife. Aunty Beth was skinny. Having all of those kids, running around after two grandkids, and now Gran Norris, had worn her down to skin and bone.

‘Dragging your family miles away from home to this,’ Gran said, back on her hobbyhorse and determined to ride it to death.

‘You’re in a purple old mood today, Gran,’ Pete said, and Cara, her mouth full, slid from her chair and ran for the house, where she spat meat and potato into the bathroom washbasin, then stood attempting to gain control of her giggle. Her giggling reflection didn’t help.

Rosie said she was good-looking. Dino Collins said she was the best looking sort in town. She looked heaps better when she sneaked on a bit of Rosie’s lipstick and eyeliner. Since Rosie, life down here had been okay. And Dino wanted to be her boyfriend. ‘Hands off. She’s mine,’ he said if any of the other boys started mucking around with her.

His name was James, but they all called him Dino because he looked a bit like James Dean. Most of the boys had nicknames. They called Tony Bell ‘Ding-dong’.

‘Cara!’ Myrtle called from the kitchen.

‘Coming.’ She was supposed to be the hostess – or waitress. She washed her hands, raked a comb through her curls, then went outside with a tray of Christmas pudding, Myrtle behind her, carrying a second tray.

Pete got the largest serve, and Steve, four years Pete’s senior, complained.

‘He needs it to grow on,’ Uncle John said.

‘If that girl keeps growing, she’ll be looking down on the lot of you before she’s much older,’ Gran said.

Always ‘that girl’ to Gran, never Cara – and in the real world, she wouldn’t even be considered tall. The Traralgon backyard wasn’t the real world. Myrtle and Beth might have measured five foot three. Uncle John’s two girls were no taller, unless they wore high heels. Gran might have stretched to five foot before she started shrinking. There was no more room for shrinkage. She’d become a hobbling, carping Egyptian mummy.

‘It must be this good healthy country air, Mum,’ Uncle John said.

‘Why don’t you stay down here for a month or two, Gran,’ Pete said. ‘You’ll probably grow six inches.’

‘Where’s my cup of tea,’ Gran carped.

Cara made a pot. She took it with cups to the table. Myrtle poured, then Cara had to carry Gran’s cup inside. She’d had enough of the filthy flies. There were no flies in Sydney – so she said.

‘Put it in me bedroom,’ Gran said. ‘And get me me pills and some water.’

Never a please, never a thank you polluted Gran Norris’s mouth. How she’d produced her father and Uncle John, Cara didn’t know.

Laughter growing in the backyard, Cara wanting to be a part of it, and here she was, fetching and carrying for Gran. She untied Gran’s shoelaces, placed her shoes against the wall. She opened her shoe box of pills, then stood waiting, just in case a bottle top required a stronger hand than Gran’s. It wouldn’t, or not until Cara tried to walk away.

A major production, Gran’s pill popping. Lids removed one at a time, a pill or two poured from each bottle to be placed in a row on the bedside table, then the lids replaced, the pills counted, the bottles returned to the shoe box.

Robert took pills when his war-injured knee played up. He went to the bathroom, tossed a couple into his mouth and washed them down with a mouthful of water – and was rarely seen doing it. Gran took hers one at a time, the glass placed down between sips. And she talked, about her various pills, her variety of ills, forcing Cara to wait, just in case she needed more water.

She’d lived in Sydney all her life, had wed a fool of a man, then taken in lodgers when he’d left her to raise his two sons alone – which was probably where Robert had got the idea to turn Amberley into a boarding house. Cara didn’t know how Robert’s father had died, if he’d died or just run for the hills. Knowing Gran, he’d probably run for the hills.

Today she asked, between the laxative and the tiny pill that was supposed to keep her tranquil and didn’t.

‘When did Dad’s father die, Gran?’

‘Your father was fourteen year old when I was left on me own.’ Two pills went down, and Cara still didn’t know if he’d died or run. ‘Another woman would have taken him out of school and put him to work, and for all the thanks I get for educating him, that’s what I should have done. I worked my fingers to the bone to keep that boy in school, and what does he do to me? He joins up before he’s old enough to be in that filthy war, that’s what he does.’

Probably saw it as the lesser of two evils, Cara thought. ‘What did he die of – my grandfather?’

Gran humphed before replying. ‘The Norrises were all weak in the chest. I told your father he wouldn’t last a week in the trenches, then his fool of a brother tries to go with him. Fifteen year old, John was. I put a stop to his games. I went down there and dragged him home by the ear.’

‘He was in the second war.’

‘In the home guard,’ Gran scoffed. ‘He never went further than Newcastle. Your father was overseas for years.’

‘How long was he overseas before I was born?’ Cara asked, just a fishing sort of question. She wasn’t expecting it to hook a soul-swallowing shark.

It was weird how you could question people until you were blue in the face and end up learning nothing, then, when you were least expecting it, out it came. The shoe box was in Cara’s hands. She’d been on her way out the door when Gran put her cup down.

‘They sent him over there in ’42 and he didn’t set foot back on Australian soil until 1945,’ she said. ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather the day she walked in with you. And she was too old to be taking you on, and I told her so. I said to your mother the day I first set eyes on you. What a damn fool thing to go and do with Robert thousands of miles away dodging bullets. Not that she ever listened to me.’

‘Where did she get me?’ Cara’s heartbeat thundering in her ears, muffled her own words.

Gran flicked a bird-claw hand towards the heavens. ‘God sent you. All the churches had those homes for the unwed, and by God there were plenty of them around during the war.’ She lifted her cup, sipped and spoke over the rim. ‘We all knew they’d been talking about adopting before the war, but she never said one word about doing it while your father was away. Mind you, not that I saw her from one year’s end to the next. While Robert was over there, I saw your mother at Christmas and Easter if I was lucky. And she only lived half an hour away from my house. Too busy with her lodgers to worry about how an old lady was getting along.’

The cup was down again, and empty this time. Cara’s stomach threatening to get rid of Christmas dinner, she picked up the cup and walked fast to the kitchen where she stood over the sink, swallowing her need to vomit while staring through the window at the crowded table. Her mother – not her mother – laughing at something Uncle John had said – not her Uncle John. Not her cousins either, not even Pete.

And she was going to howl because Pete wasn’t her cousin, howl and vomit at the same time. She’d asked her parents. They’d looked her in the eye and said no, they hadn’t adopted her.

‘Liars.’

Every nerve in her body wanted to run out there and call them liars in front of everyone.

Knew she couldn’t. Knew she’d have to hold it inside her until those tents came down. And they wouldn’t be coming down until after New Year.

She poured a glass of water, drank it down. Washed her face, wiped it on a tea towel, remembering so clearly the day she’d asked them if she was adopted.

‘Liars.’

A D
IFFERENT
C
HRISTMAS

T
here was something about Molliston, something about its air. The more of it Georgie breathed, the more relaxed she became. By midafternoon she was calling Jack’s mother Katie and walking with her around the veranda, admiring her pot plants while Jack and his father sprawled on chair and couch, sleeping off Christmas dinner.

Their home was a hotel. It sold beer but didn’t smell of beer. If you walked within ten yards of Woody Creek’s hotel veranda, the smell of stale beer was enough to give you a hangover. Jack’s parents’ hotel smelled of wet soil and greenery. She’d never been here before, but she felt she’d known that veranda and those pot plants a hundred years ago.

And the bar room. In Woody Creek, women weren’t allowed in the bar and few would want to go in there. Georgie had tasted her first glass of wine in Jack’s parents’ bar room, at a rough-cut bar where a hundred years of people had leant and she’d known that she’d sat there in some past life, which was totally weird when she didn’t believe in past lives.

Granny had. Maybe she’d been here, or maybe the aged smell of the rooms reminded her of Granny’s house – before the renovations. The west side of the hotel veranda was vine-covered like Granny’s hut’s west wall had been, and the dark hotel kitchen with its tiny high window smelled like Granny’s old kitchen.

The day a scorcher, they delayed their return trip until after nightfall. The sun long gone down had forgotten to take its heat with it. Every window of the car was open, but not a breath of breathable air entered.

‘What are you thinking?’ Jack asked.

‘That you must have had a normal life.’

‘What’s normal?’

‘Molliston is, and your parents. Everything is normal.’

‘Woody Creek isn’t?’

‘Is it?’

They sighted half-a-dozen kangaroos, missed one by inches. They smelled half-a-dozen who hadn’t been as lucky. Kangaroos were a rare sight around Woody Creek and, if sighted, usually ended up on a dinner plate or as dog’s meat. Woody Creek farmers didn’t tolerate the roos.

The town was sleeping when they drove in, the streetlights glowing over empty streets. As Jack pulled into the police station’s drive, Georgie opened the door and was out of the car before the motor died. She’d left Charlie’s ute parked in front of the shop, and while he locked the sedan, she walked over the road, smelling Woody Creek air and feeling lonely, or jealous, or something.

He followed her. And the ute’s driver-side door refused to open.

‘What’s wrong, Gina?’ he said. Jack had introduced her to his parents as Georgie. His father, a little deaf, had called her Georgina. This morning Katie had shortened it to Gina – but Georgie wasn’t tolerating it in Woody Creek.

‘This door is, and don’t call me Gina.’ She walked around to the passenger door. It opened. He followed her, but she slid in, slid across the bench seat and behind the wheel.

‘I had a good time,’ he said.

‘Me too. Thanks.’

She got the motor going, but he hadn’t closed the door. She turned to him, waiting for him to close it. Knew he probably wanted to kiss her. His was a kissing sort of family. Katie had kissed her when they were leaving, his father had kissed her and told her he’d always had a soft spot for good-looking redheads.

They thought she was Jack’s girlfriend. And she wasn’t. Maybe that was what was wrong with her, maybe tonight she wanted to be his girlfriend. Maybe she wanted to be Gina – or someone other than Georgie Morrison.

‘See you,’ she said. He closed the door, which took two slams to click it. She backed out, whacked the gear stick into first and drove towards home.

Home? It wasn’t, not any more. Charlie’s shop was about as close as it got to home these days. She slept in Granny’s old bedroom. The working bee had ruined it with windows but she’d tacked old blankets over them to bring back the dark to that room.

Had to admit she liked electricity. Would have liked to see a bit of it shining as she drove down the track. No light left on to greet her.

The lights had been on at Jack’s hotel when they’d driven in and his parents sitting on their front veranda waiting for them. They came out to the drive to greet Jack. And he was so beautiful with them. Men didn’t kiss men, or not where she came from they didn’t. He’d hugged and kissed his father, swung Katie off the ground, and while Georgie had watched the two of them, his father had kissed her.

Granny had been free with her hugs and kisses. Jenny hadn’t been a natural hugger, but she’d been a smiler, a handholder. One of them would have heard her ute, would have come out with a lantern. Snarly bugger Margot couldn’t even leave the front light on.

I’m going to Frankston. I’ll tell Charlie to find himself a junior to train, then I’m going – and his daughter will have him back in the old folks’ home the following week.

She’d sent a couple up to assess him before Christmas. He was antique but still one step ahead of the crowd. He’d asked them to drive him home.

He lived in his storeroom but owned a house. He owned three side-by-side identical houses. During the floods, when Granny’s land had been a lake, Georgie had moved into Charlie’s house – Jeany’s house, he called it. He’d had a wife once. He’d lived in his house with his daughter until five years ago. Mrs Fulton, Charlie’s long-term tenant and neighbour, now kept an eye on Jeany’s house. That city couple’s assessment wouldn’t have been what Charlie’s daughter was hoping for.

Georgie pulled on her handbrake and turned off her headlights, and in the instant before the light died she caught a flash of running man. Again her twin beams sprayed their light, but whoever she’d seen had gone, or gone to ground. She slid across the seat and was out running across the paddock towards the road. She knew this land better than any prowler, and if he was heading back to town, she’d cut him off.

No movement on the road. No sound of movement. She stood amid the trees, waiting for him to creep out from behind one. He’d been heading towards the goat paddock, towards Elsie’s house. He could have gone east towards the bush, or cut back south towards Flanagan’s land. Or gone to ground beneath Elsie’s house. There was three feet of space beneath it and plenty of stored junk to hide behind.

She walked down Elsie’s gravelled drive where she felt for the rake, always leaning against the fence. Armed then, she circled the house, expecting movement from every shadow. No movement, except for Teddy, standing in the dark of the back steps.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked.

‘I saw someone running this way. Have you got a torch handy? He’s probably under your house.’

Teddy brought two torches. They checked beneath the house, checked the road again, checked the trees on the far side of the road and Granny’s shed – then Teddy turned off her ute’s headlights. He had a better relationship with motors than with people.

She stood in the yard when he left, watching him disappear into the dark. That was when her mind started asking questions. How long had he been standing on the back steps? If he’d been standing there when she’d driven in, he would have seen the prowler as he ran towards him. She squinted, attempting to visualise the running man. Light shirt and movement, that was all she’d seen.

Teddy’s shirt was grey. Had he been taking a short cut home?

Then why hadn’t he said so?

Because he’d been up to something he shouldn’t have been up to. Drinking or raiding Joe Flanagan’s orchard, no doubt.

*

Myrtle told Cara she could invite two friends to their New Year’s Eve party. She invited five: Rosie, Henry Cooper, who everyone called Coop, Ding-dong Bell and his girl, and Dino Collins. Myrtle invited three neighbours and their families. Robert invited two teachers and their kids. With Aunty Beth, Uncle John, the cousins and in-law cousins, the house was packed solid, as was the veranda.

It was almost midnight before Robert noticed her talking to Dino Collins. When he did, he took her arm and led her inside, into his bedroom, where he closed the door.

‘I don’t want you to have any more to do with that Collins boy, poppet.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll need to trust me on this,’ he said.

‘What’s he done?’

‘He’s not fit company for a fourteen-year-old girl,’ Robert said.

She knew Dino had been expelled from school, way back near the start of the year. All the kids knew. No one knew why, or if they did, they wouldn’t say.

‘Your Uncle John is asking the boys to leave. Remain in here until they’ve gone.’

‘Rosie will go with them!’

‘The Hunter girls are here, and more fit companions.’

Mrs Hunter taught history at the high school and her daughters were bigger pains in the bum than their mother.

‘If I had a bed, I’d go to it,’ Cara snapped.

‘Hop into ours,’ he said.

The tents were pulled down the following morning, the cars and trailer loaded, then at nine they all left in convoy for the return trip to Sydney. Gran got the last word. She always got the last word.

‘You get your family back home where you belong, my boy.’

Cara stood with her parents waving them out of sight around the corner, and as the caravan disappeared from view, her heartbeat quickened. Now she’d tell them that they were a pair of liars.

Now. Tell them what Gran had said.

Except Robert put his arm around her and kissed her nose. ‘Always nice to see visitors arrive, poppet, but maybe nicer to see them go, eh.’

That was honest. They went inside and the house looked, felt larger. The backyard looked huge, and a mess, the lawn a checkerboard of flattened, sickly yellow-green where the tents had been, of grass worn down to dirt and too-long grass elsewhere.

They worked that morning, Robert mowing, Cara and Myrtle stripping beds, tossing sheets into the washing machine, sweeping, washing floors while the machine laboured. Two or three times Cara almost told her mother what Gran had said. When she helped make up her bed with clean sheets, she tried to say something. Didn’t, just wiped Gran methodically from every surface of her bedroom.

Then at one-thirty Rosie came around.

‘Coop and Dino want to meet us at the milk bar,’ she whispered.

‘I can’t, Rosie. Dad said I’m not allowed to go near Dino.’

‘Chicken.’

No one wanted to be called chicken, and if she didn’t have Rosie to hang around with, she’d have no one. She went to the milk bar, and the boys weren’t even there, so they shared a chocolate milkshake and she told Rosie what Gran Norris had said.

‘Promise not to tell anyone.’

‘Spit my death and hope to die,’ Rosie said.

At fourteen, secrets are easily shared, promises easily given. They have as much substance as the froth sucked noisily from the bottom of a milkshake container. At fourteen, her father’s warning was treated like so much froth and bubble, sucked down and forgotten by the time Dino and Henry Cooper came in. Coop a panel-beater apprentice and always broke, Dino fed the jukebox and they practised rock-and-roll steps.