Ripples on a Pond (29 page)

Watched Margot's back until it disappeared inside, via the eastern door, her private entrance. Georgie never set foot in the sitting room; never lit a fire in its hearth. Those two rooms smelled of Margot: stale, closed up, detached.

She'd take a pill, have a two-hour nap and be fresh for tonight's leftover curry and bread pudding. She was an invalid; received a pension to prove it. Invalids saw their doctor once a month, had their blood pressure checked, brought home bottles of pills for their nerves, their blood pressure, and more pills so they might sleep. They brought home laxative pills too, indigestion pills, even allergy pills. Margot had a fine collection of them, lined up on the kitchen bench. She was allergic to life, or life was allergic to Margot.

Georgie blew three more smoke rings as she turned her eyes to Harry, who had no trouble with his blood pressure or nerves. He released his spleen on the wood heap. Wished she could release a little of her own in explaining the hard facts of life to Elsie. A waste of breath; she'd tried it before, many times. As had Harry. As had Jenny.

Elsie, having found her place in life too early, was scared to let go of what she'd found – motherhood. Or that was Jenny's diagnosis. Elsie had bred younger than Jenny, had been twelve or thirteen when she'd given birth to Joey. He'd flown the coop early. Now the rest of them had gone, but not Margot.

Elsie wasn't responsible for Margot's pills. Georgie blamed Maisy, Margot's grandmother, for them. It was Maisy who had got Margot signed up for the invalid pension; Maisy who, once a month, drove her down to see her doctor. She'd driven her backwards and forwards to the dentist too, while he'd attempted to adjust Margot's partial dentures. Fixing what isn't broken will unfix it. The only thing wrong with Margot's dentures was their slowing down of her consumption of food – and the caramel toffees that stuck to them. She liked caramel toffees – Columbines, wrapped in pretty purple paper.

Georgie pitched her butt into Harry's back-door ashtray, a cut-down oil drum, and returned to the kitchen to watch the large curry pot emptied into containers, to watch leftover rice emptied into another, to watch little Elsie making space for those containers in her vibrating third-hand fridge.

‘You haven't lost your touch, Else.'

‘The trick's in the apricot jam,' Elsie said.

Maybe she knew why her kids never came home. Maybe she didn't. What you live with daily you no longer see – as with that battered old fridge, the kitchen floor that ran downhill, the front door you had to fight to open, then fight again to close.

Harry noticed the door, the floor, the fridge; did nothing about it.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack-thwack. There was a rhythm to his axe, in his setting up of the next foot block. He'd split blocks all afternoon, then stack what he'd cut alongside the rear of the house. Granny used to warn Georgie, warn everyone, not to stack wood beside the house. White ants need little encouragement, she used to say.

‘He works too hard,' Elsie said.

‘Winter is coming, Else.'

A long winter. A muddy winter. And, for Harry, a miserable, whingeing Margot winter.

The dishes washed, dried and away, the soggy tea towel hung over the back of a chair, and Georgie returned to the back steps to watch Harry's back.

He'd never altered, or not in Georgie's eyes. An easy man to sketch – a stick man, topped with a mop of carrot-red hair, who conserved his energy five days a week in the cabin of a massive logging truck. Not at weekends. His limbs rarely stilled at weekends. If not for Harry, Gertrude's land would have been swallowed up by the ever-encroaching forest. He cut fenceposts, dug holes, stretched wires, mowed grass when there was rain to make grass grow; he bought water to fill the tanks when the rains refused to come. If Georgie loved any man, she loved Harry Hall – and he didn't deserve another winter of Margot.

She glanced at the stove-sized wood stacked three foot high beside the steps, and smiled, knowing why he'd chosen that place to build his convenient wood stack, why he'd used the house stumps as support for it. He was encouraging the white ants. If the roof fell in, he'd move Elsie into town.

‘I'm off then, Else,' Georgie called.

‘See you later, lovey.'

Walked back across the goat paddock – a goat paddock with no goats; only two-legged goats walked that track now, a well-worn track, trodden down to hard-packed clay. The forest to the south was winning the war. The fence line separating Gertrude's acres from Joe Flanagan's larger property was no longer visible. A clump of saplings left to offer shelter behind the chook pen had taken the opportunity to grow into trees. For months Georgie had been promising a few the chop. The new plague of tree-huggers wouldn't approve. They didn't approve of the unbridled logging of forests either.

Timber had built this town and, according to Jim and John's book, the red gum forest and the bunnies breeding in it had kept Woody Creek alive through the Great Depression. Take the mills away from Woody Creek and lack of employment would kill the town.

It was dying anyway. If not for the Duffy mob, the grass-smokers' commune and Melbourne retirees, Woody Creek's population would have been decreasing. Every year, families left; school leavers left to earn their daily bread. Duffys, grass-smokers and retirees weren't concerned about earning their daily bread. The taxpayer fed and clothed them.

Raelene had been living out at the commune for the past month. Her bikie had a cabin there, though he wouldn't be back for a while. They'd sentenced him to three years. Raelene hadn't been back to Jen's. They'd invested in security doors and security screens for the windows, which had cost a fortune but made that house impregnable.

No security doors on
The Abortion.
Nothing to steal there either. No spare bed; or not since the morning Georgie had found Raelene in it and washed her out of it with a bucket of water. The bed and wet bedding had gone to the tip. Only two beds in
The Abortion
now.

As Georgie walked through the once spare bedroom to the kitchen, she looked at the space where that bed had been. Maybe buy a couple of bookshelves. She'd bought a heap of textbooks this year. Should have been reading them. Not in the right mood today. As Jenny used to say when she couldn't sit down, someone had turned the key in her back to breaking point, and if she didn't keep moving, her spring would snap. Georgie's spring felt ready to snap. Blame Elsie's curry for heating up her blood. Blame Harry's thwack-thwack-thwacking. Blame her red hair – redheads were genetically programmed for anger, so they said. She wasn't angry – just wound up.

She spun around on her heel and walked back the way she'd come, then out to the old shed. Those saplings along the south fence line needed to come down before they turned into trees and her chainsaw would make light work of getting them down. Two years ago she'd bought it; hadn't used it more than twice. It made a hell of a noise. Harry and Lenny used it when they went out to the bush to get wood. Today she was in the right mood to start it up.

Twenty minutes later, after uncountable pulls on its cord and a spark plug cleaned and filed, the chainsaw started singing vocals to Harry's thwacking rhythm. Five minutes later, saplings falling, Harry came with his axe to behead and strip what fell. Then Elsie came, fingers in her ears, with cottonwool for theirs. The machine put-putted while the two tall redheads did as they were told by diminutive Elsie.

They'd cleared a view of Joe's wood paddock, his twin red kelpies standing off at a distance barking their brains out. They, or the chainsaw, woke Margot early from her nap. She came waddling down through the orchard to bark with the kelpies.

‘You know I can't thtand that noithe!'

No one heard her. They saw her foot-stamping dance but allowed her to bark and dance until the chainsaw ran out of petrol. Plenty more where that came from. Harry stored three four-gallon drums of petrol in the shed since some thieving swine had started helping himself to the contents of their petrol tanks in the night.

The dogs, believing they'd won the war, went home. Margot, sharing their belief, went back to bed, but all returned when the chainsaw roared back into life.

‘You're only uthing that thing to upthet me,' Margot screamed.

‘Put your teeth in,' Georgie yelled.

Until sundown the chainsaw roared and saplings fell. By sundown, old Joe Flanagan and his dogs were barking from his side of the now visible fence. He thought he'd won the war too when the chainsaw silenced and was returned to the shed.

Harry had a bench saw. Once stripped of branches, they dragged the decent-sized saplings across the goat paddock to the bench saw, and for two hours it screamed merrily while the saplings became firebox-length. They'd dry over winter.

It was after eight when Harry, Elsie and Georgie sat down to a meal of leftover rabbit curry and rice. Margot, worn out by her dance, was catching up on missed sleep.

‘Her doc said that she needs to get a bit of exercise, Else,' Harry said.

‘And to cut down her food intake,' Georgie said. For some reason the curry tasted even better tonight.

T
HE
T
AXI

L
eaving Robin every month hurt. A year went too fast when it was broken down into months, and after the two weeks of the September holidays spent with him, the leaving hurt more. He didn't like Mummy's case; knew exactly what it meant when it came out and she started packing. She allowed him to close it and to turn the tiny key in the locks. That day, he didn't want to turn the key. He ran away with it. She chased him, tickled him until his hand opened.

He knew about taxis too. They brought Mummy home, then took her away again. He lived a different life when Mummy was home; she let him do things. She let him put the numbers in the phone to make her taxi come, because he was a big boy now and he knew all of the numbers. But he wasn't really big. He cried when the taxi came.

‘That was fast,' Myrtle said.

‘I have to go now, Robbie. Give Mummy a big kiss to last till she comes back.'

He didn't want to kiss her. Kissing was final.

While Cara cajoled, Myrtle opened the front door.

‘It's not your taxi,' she said. ‘He's dropping off a passenger.'

Two families lived upstairs. Visitors called, and their cars blocked the driveway. Taxis arrived, too, and the passengers clattered upstairs. Not this passenger. Cara recognised him before he'd paid his fare.

A chill washing down her spine, she pushed Robin into Myrtle's arms, picked up her case and was out the front door before Morrie opened the gate.

‘I'm on my way to the airport,' she said, waving to the taxi driver, who failed to look her way.

‘He'll be back for me in half an hour,' Morrie said.

Robin escaped Myrtle's arms to run to Mummy.

‘Go inside, Robbie.'

‘I'm here to see him,' Morrie said.

‘Why didn't you let me know you were coming?'

‘You hid him for three years. I didn't trust you not to do it again.'

She'd known him as lover, as a sometimes jester, had known him younger. She'd never met this gaunt, unsmiling older man, his eyes hidden from her behind dark glasses.

Robin didn't know him and didn't want to. He hid himself behind Mummy, his arms wrapping her jean-clad leg so she couldn't go. She unwound his arms and picked him up, carried him back to Myrtle, then closed the door on his protest.

‘How could you do it to me?' Morrie asked.

‘He belongs to Mum and Dad. If not for them, I wouldn't have known him.'

She picked up her case, her handbag, and walked to the gate. He followed her.

‘How dare you do it to me!'

‘You're my brother! And if you're not, then how dare you abandon me in a hotel room on my wedding night? Don't lay all of the blame at my door, Morrie.'

‘You were with me over there for three months and you never said a word.'

‘I thought I could stay away from him. I didn't see him until he was eight months old; had only seen him twice after that.'

‘You didn't even tell Cathy.'

‘But no doubt you did,' she said.

‘I consider her a friend. She considers you her best friend.'

‘She'd be the last person in the world I would have told, and you know why. I didn't tell anyone I was having him. Mum and Dad wouldn't have known if they hadn't driven down to Melbourne that time you flew over. And if you'd stayed on your side of the ocean as I'd begged you to, they wouldn't have driven down to meet you and Robin would have been signed away at birth.'

He stood staring back at the house, at the face of that little boy, crying at the parlour window. Cara blew him a kiss, then walked down to the cypress hedge, out of his sight. Wanted that taxi. Willed it to turn the corner.

Two cars turned the corner. Went by. A truck drove by, the wind from its passing blowing their hair.

‘Mum and Dad took out a court order to stop me signing him away,' she said. ‘I didn't speak to them for months.'

‘I wrote to you, week after week, begging you to come to me.'

‘The night you found out what we were, you were disgusted by what we'd done. You couldn't even touch me when I was on my knees vomiting my heart out.'

‘I was out of my head. They'd been dead for twenty years and suddenly they were alive.'

‘Do you think I wasn't out of my head? I was finally married to the man I'd loved for five years and he turned out to be my brother. Did you give one second of thought to that, Morrie? What do think it did to my head when I found out that I was carrying my brother's baby?'

She was howling, and had promised herself she wasn't going to howl any more. Shook her tears away and snatched for a cigarette, got it lit.

‘It wasn't even a baby I was carrying – it was some mindless, limbless blob of incest. I was half-crazy, blown up like a toad over here, while you were over there working out your problem on Phyllis bloody Willis.'

A taxi rounded the corner, and whether it was his or hers, she waved to the driver, sucked one last lungful of smoke, pitched the butt to the gutter and was in the rear seat with her case before the taxi's wheels halted. Morrie opened the front passenger door and got in.

‘Airport,' they said in unison.

They rode there in silence. He paid the fare.

She took his car keys from her handbag. ‘It's parked behind the flat. Take it out of my life, and you stay out of it too – and out of Robin's.'

‘I want to know him.'

‘If you know him, you'll want him – like your grandfather wanted you.'

‘He's my son.'

‘Just try to claim him, Morrie. You'll find out that I'm no Jenny. I fight like a cat when I'm cornered.'

He was booked on the same flight south, and allocated a seat close by. He swapped seats with a woman of sixty-odd who couldn't resist his charm, or his looks. The last of the boy had been chiselled from his face and a fine-looking man was left behind. They were a fine-looking couple seated side by side. An angry couple. They argued throughout the flight, but quietly. They continued their argument while the other passengers queued in the aisle, pressing to disembark.

She took a taxi home, knowing she had to get there before him, afraid he'd buy a ticket back to Sydney and take Robin. Inside the flat, the case at her feet, she dialled Myrtle's number.

‘Take Robin to John and Beth's, Mum.'

‘We can't do that, pet.'

‘Morrie could be back there in two hours. Please God, do as I ask you.'

‘I'll talk to your father.'

‘Then I'll call John and Beth to come and get him!'

‘Don't do that!'

‘Then do as I ask and stop arguing with me!'

*

Cara didn't hear from Morrie. He hadn't taken his car. Robin was with John and Beth, having a ball with Natalie and Steve's kids. Myrtle, suffering his loss, hadn't heard from Morrie either.

On Sunday morning, before nine, Cara was awakened by a demanding knock. Didn't need to peer through the peephole; knew it was him. Saw Cathy through the peephole. Far better it had been him.

Cathy didn't come inside. She said what she had to say at the door. With no defence, Cara stood and took her punishment.

‘I considered you my best friend. I thought I knew you. You're a secretive, unforgiving bitch, and you can consider yourself dropped,' Cathy said.

She'd left her sons and driven a hundred kilometres to have her say, face to face. Having said what she'd come to say, she drove home again.

Friends took sides in adulthood as they had in the schoolyard. Cathy had taken Morrie's side.

That's life, Cara thought. What can you do with it other than to keep on living it?

*

October, and Cara was twenty-nine. Myrtle phoned early; Cathy didn't. No invitation to dinner from Helen, but the office woman handed Cara a fat, card-sized envelope as she was leaving school for the day. She recognised Georgie's familiar block print.

There was more than a card in that envelope. It felt spongy. Opened it at the tram stop.

With no keys to drive the MG, she was riding the trams again. It was a humorous birthday card: one drunk pushing another in a wheelbarrow. Inside it there must have been two dozen pages of docket book, their rears filled with Georgie's margin-to-margin script.

Hi stranger. I rang your school office and they told me a Miss Norris was still teaching there. Hope you're the right Miss Norris. Do excuse my writing pad. I found an unopened carton chock full of Charlie's docket books. They must have been cheaper to buy by the thousand. We are now using them as scribble paper. Note the royal ‘we'!!! (I'll let you think on that.) Having not heard from you since I don't know when, I thought you might have married your pom while you were in England and stayed over there – or that your plane got hijacked on the way home and you were now the twenty-fourth wife of some oil sheik.

As to the royal ‘we', according to a percentage of Woody Creek's population, I've moved my toy boy into Charlie's storeroom. He's only eighteen, but I suppose if you get 'em young enough you can train them.

I'm currently attempting to do three matric subjects with him. I dunno if a correspondence-college education counts for anything in the real world, but if it does, and given another half a century of life, I've decided to go into politics and sort out the mess they're making of my country.

Jenny told me to pass on her regards. She also came up with what I consider to be a brilliant idea. I can't get away from the shop except on Sundays, and she suggested we meet up one day in Bendigo, the three of us, which would be about the halfway mark between Melbourne and Woody Creek . . .

There was more, but Cara was at her stop. She placed the envelope into her bag and walked the ten minutes to her secluded street – a longer walk than to her dogbox, but worth it. Once inside, she finished reading the docket book letter, smiling, even laughing, at a few of Georgie's descriptions. She'd missed her letters, missed her.

Sometime during the night, Morrie must have hand-delivered a card to her mailbox; a card and his car keys.

Dear Cara,

I'm not into disrupting the lives of little boys. Been there, done that, and, as I recall, didn't like it much at the time. I'm flying home this morning. In future, I'll stay on my side of the ocean. My accountant is looking into shipping the car over home. I gave him your phone number. Feel free to drive it until you hear from him.

As ever, love, Morrie

Two cards from two people she loved. Knew she couldn't have both, so had been attempting to untangle her life by cutting herself off from both.

Meet them in Bendigo and tell them how you ran into their Jimmy in a pub in England.

She wrote to Georgie that night, a long letter, a grand tale about going to a pub with her cousin Pete and how this other Aussie had recognised their accents and they'd got talking about Australia. A totally believable tale that she read one too many times and ended up shredding. And if Georgie was to become a part of her life again, then she'd need to be told about Robin – all too complicated.

She had to reply. Wanted to reply. So she wrote again, about England, about her months as a copy typist, her brief career as a checkout chick. Didn't mention those jobs had been in Sydney.

Dear Georgie,

I've moved into a flat in Windsor, larger, older, but a big improvement on the dogbox–

What else was there to write about? She didn't reply to Georgie's letter until late October, when she flew home to spend two nights with Robin. Sent her a postcard.

Georgie wrote again in November. She mentioned the Bendigo trip again; and in mid-December, Cara agreed to meet them there. She was pleased when Georgie arrived alone.

It was a good day. It continued late. They spoke of Gough, and of universities, of toy boys and Georgie's mouse money, and laughed as they had on the day they'd gone to the racetrack to cash five-pound notes to place fifty-cent bets.

Georgie laughed at the old MG, so Cara took her for a spin around the block; didn't admit that she wasn't its owner. Didn't mention Morrie's name, but Georgie's memory was too good.

‘Didn't that Morrie bloke you used to write about own an MG?' she said.

‘I'm babysitting it for him.'

‘Is he still in the picture?'

‘No,' Cara said.

‘Do you ever think about being single thirty years from now? You've got property, money, but no one to leave it to when you die.'

‘I'll have no property or money to worry about, Georgie.'

‘What about kids? Do you ever wonder what sort of a mother you might have made?'

Cara, unable to look Georgie in the eye, looked at her watch. ‘The traffic is going to be bumper to bumper into the city. I should go.'

‘Let it settle down for an hour or two. I'll shout you dinner somewhere. I've got money coming out of my ears and no one to spend it on,' Georgie said.

‘Except your toy boy,' Cara said and they laughed again, locked Morrie's car and went off to find a place to eat.

*

The following morning, Cara had her class seated, writing out what they knew about the platypus, when the office woman knocked on her glass door.

‘Phone call, Miss Norris.'

Cathy used to phone her at school. Knew it wouldn't be Cathy.
Unforgiving, selfish, secretive bitch. There's something drastically wrong with your head, and there always has been.

Something had happened to Robin. Or Georgie'd had an accident on her way home.

Her class left unsupervised, she took the call from a woman who identified herself as Linda Watson. ‘I'm calling for Raelene King,' the woman said.

‘Raelene King? I have no interest in discussing Raelene King.'

‘If we have any hope of rehabilitating these women, Miss Norris, they require the support of family–'