Ripples on a Pond (41 page)

Granny's old table still commanded its space here. There were all manner of tables about these days – laminated, easy-to-clean; polished tables that weren't easy to care for – but a kitchen table had to feel right, and Granny's had always felt right. It had known a few generations of chairs. Jenny pulled one out and sat while Georgie removed the rubber band from her hair and allowed the copper mass to fall free.

‘Where have you been to this hour?' Jenny asked.

‘Monk's. Half the cops in Melbourne must be out there.'

‘Jim's out there too. John told them he'd know where to find the entrance to the old root cellar.'

‘That's why you're skulking.' Georgie scratched her scalp, easing hair roots after their long day of confinement. ‘They've set up a roadblock on the bridge. They're stopping everything, coming and going. Maisy was in before I closed the shop. She reckons that Raelene and her bikie kidnapped a three- or four-year-old girl from her bed, that they got in by cutting a hole in the window.'

Maisy would know. Maureen, her daughter, had a son and daughter in the police force and two brothers-in-law who were higher up in the cop world.

‘I hope she told them that they did the same to my back window,' Jenny said.

‘Do you doubt it, Jen?' Georgie asked.

The water running, she filled the jug, plugged it in, and was measuring coffee into two mugs when they heard Harry's ute start up.

‘Where's he off to?'

‘He's moving Elsie's dressing table into town. Granny bought it for her. He knows Elsie will follow it.'

‘They're not going to fit much into those rooms.'

‘Two people don't need a lot of space,' Jenny said, speaking from experience. She and Jim rarely entered most of their rooms.

The coffee made, two cigarettes were burning when they heard footsteps approaching. Two heads lifted, then Elsie called at the old front door to announce herself, and Georgie rose to find more coffee mugs.

‘Harry said he could be an hour or so,' Elsie explained as she entered, Margot panting behind her. ‘He said to stay together until he gets back.'

Plenty of space around the table. More chairs materialised, one from the bathroom, one from the junk room, then the four sat, Georgie and Jenny with their backs to the window, Elsie and Margot opposite, their backs to the junk-room door.

Warm in that room; a sauna when the sun beat on the western windows. The sun now gone down behind the trees, the windows open, the suggestion of a breeze stirred the air. No stove burning. It never burned in summer. An electric hotplate lived on it during the summer months, its electrical cord snaking across the floor from the one lone power point and a double adaptor. It cooked what Georgie needed it to cook, which was little.

She opened a packet of dry biscuits. Margot, who had trouble with her digestive system, suffered if she didn't eat a biscuit with her coffee. The women sat sipping coffee, crunching biscuits, discussing Lenny's new water bed. They didn't mention Teddy's bungalow. No one mentioned Teddy's name if Margot was in earshot. ‘The new place', they said, or ‘the place in town'.

‘They put the lino down yesterday,' Elsie said. She hadn't had new lino for thirty years. ‘It's plain green. Vonnie said a pattern would make the rooms look smaller.'

‘You won't know yourself,' Georgie said.

They sat until eight, their ears more alert tonight. Every car on the road turned their heads, until Georgie took a pack of old playing cards from the dresser drawer. The night had to be filled, and was there a better night filler than a game of canasta? They'd played canasta at that old kitchen table the night Ray had died, Georgie and Jenny against Harry and Elsie. A cold night that one, and wet, the old stove stoked up to the hilt, the chimney dripping. A different night, but somehow the same.

The women swapped chairs. There was no question as to partners. Georgie refused to partner Margot. Margot rarely spoke to Jenny, though she'd condescend to sit opposite her for a game of cards.

They played then, Jenny and Elsie on the western side, Margot and Georgie on the east, and Margot whingeing about every hand she was dealt.

‘That'th the third time I could have picked up the pack if I had any wild cardth.'

Her lisp had been bad when she'd had teeth. It was worse without them, a spitting wet lisp. Jenny glanced at her – and caught her with her lower lip sucked in, attempting to grind on it with her gums. The habit had caused a permanent rash between her lower lip and chin.

Mine, Jenny thought. She slid out of my body.

She felt confronted by her bulk, only feet between them. Their feet, sharing the space beneath the table, touched once. Jenny tucked her feet beneath her chair and tried not to look at Margot. Looked past her, over her, at the fan of her cards, at the stubby hands. Watched them shuffling the pack, spilling cards that were faded by use, thickened by play. Hard to shuffle a pack like that without spilling.

‘Is this your best pack, Georgie?'

‘It's the only pack of canasta cards. I bought a new five hundred pack a while ago.'

Margot wanted to play canasta. They overruled her. She whinged, but she'd whinge anyway, so Georgie took the new pack from the dresser drawer where the playing cards had always lived, and together Jenny and Georgie sorted through them, removing the excess cards, the twos, threes, the black fours, the elevens, twelves and thirteens, necessary when six played but only four tonight. Georgie dealt four piles of ten cards and the three central ‘kitty' cards, the prize for the highest bidder.

Margot made the first bid. ‘Thixth no trumpth,' she said.

‘Pass,' Jenny said.

‘Give me a call of something,' Georgie pleaded.

‘Six clubs then, but I warn you, they're not worth calling.'

‘Clubs?' Elsie asked. ‘I'll have to go seven over you, lovey.'

‘Pass,' Georgie said.

‘Eight diamondth,' Margot said.

One of the doctors Maisy had taken her to see had said Margot could improve when she hit menopause. Another had said she could become worse. How much worse? She swallowed Valium to slow her down, Mogadon to put her to sleep, high blood pressure pills because she was too fat, allergy pills because she was allergic to life. She'd been told to exercise, to lose weight. Invalid pensioners couldn't exercise. She sat on her bum all day and put on weight – and the taxpayer paid her to sit on her bum.

I should pity her, Jenny thought. I used to.

Pity erodes. Guilt doesn't. Guilt gets a grip on your psyche and it worms its way in deep. She blamed herself for what Margot had become, aware that every cell in Margot's body, back when they'd started multiplying, had been aware they were not wanted.

She glanced at Georgie, so unwanted she'd almost aborted her. Georgie's cells hadn't given a damn whether they'd been wanted or not. Maybe they'd known that the finished item would have time to force love when the project was completed and out. At birth, she hadn't looked lovable: more squashed-faced little orang-utan than human, her tiny hands clutching for what they could grab onto. They'd grabbed a piece of Jenny's sixteen-year-old heart and that was that.

She watched Margot's hands rake in the three-card kitty, select two from it, add them to her fan of cards, then discard three. Her hands may have grabbed at Elsie's heart and Maisy's. If not for their interference, Margot would have been signed away at birth. Should have done it. As the only child of strangers, with no competition, Margot may have been a different girl.

She led a small club; Jenny played her king; Elsie beat it with her ace. Georgie played the six of clubs and Margot scooped the trick to her side while Elsie led a small diamond. Georgie hit it with her ace; Margot took it with the joker. She and Elsie played too often. They knew each other's game, and took every trick.

Cards shuffled again, dealt. Twice Georgie left the table to walk to the window and peer into the dark. She knew every sound in that creaking house, could identify the rattle of a vine on her bedroom window, the loose spouting on the veranda, scraping tonight in a breeze grown stronger.

Less than twelve months younger than Margot, Georgie looked twenty years younger – or Margot looked ten years older than her years. Hard to relate those two to the kids they'd been. Impossible to think of Jimmy as anything other than a six year old. He would have had his thirty-sixth birthday on the third of December. He was a man, and she couldn't visualise the man. He'd had her eyes and brow, his father's smile, his hands. They knew he'd married a few days before Margaret Hooper's death, that he'd lived in England since he'd turned seventeen. The day Lorna had come to their door she'd told them, or told Jim; not out of the kindness of her heart – she didn't have one – but to prevent the sale of her father's land, which Jim had no interest in saving.

No pan of greasy water required to remove Lorna from their house that day. Maisy had moved her. She'd called in on her way home from Willama, convinced she'd seen Amber in Woolworths. The mention of Amber's name – or of Woolworths – had got rid of Lorna.

Twice now, Jenny had posted letters to Jimmy's address. Jim hadn't written a second letter. He'd known his family, had known what it was like growing up in that family. He knew why Jimmy hadn't replied.

‘You need to give up on him, Jen,' he'd said.

If she'd known how to give up, she may have. Didn't know how to let go of the image she'd carried with her for thirty years.

His cells had known they'd been conceived in love, and he'd grown big on that love, had almost crippled her. May have, had he not decided to come out a month early, and too big even then for her to get out. Doctor Frazer had put her to sleep with chloroform and dragged Jimmy into life with forceps. She hadn't seen him for days, and when they'd let her see him, he'd been a scratched, bruised, egg-headed little wretch of a baby, and she'd loved him on sight.

‘I called six clubs, Jen,' Georgie said.

‘Sorry. My mind's wandering tonight.'

‘Margot called six hearts.'

Jenny studied her hand. She had good clubs and, for the first time tonight, the joker. She upped Georgie's bid to seven clubs.

‘Pass,' Elsie said.

‘I'll leave it to you, Jen,' Georgie said.

‘Seven heartth,' Margot said, her hand reaching for the kitty.

‘Not so fast. I'll try eight clubs,' Jenny said.

‘Eight heartth then,' Margot said, determined to win the kitty.

‘Nine clubs.' If Georgie had good clubs, they might get nine.

‘You jutht thaid that to nark me,' Margot said. She sucked in her lower lip and ground on it a while.

‘What are you doing, Margot?'

‘Nine heartth. And jutht you try to go ten.'

‘I would if I thought I could get them,' Jenny said. ‘Get your nine hearts – if you can.'

She adjusted her cards, placing the joker beside the queen of hearts. She had two small hearts, the four and the seven. The joker was one definite trick. If the cards fell the right way, her queen might take another.

Margot gave her a look that might shrivel an elephant down to rat size when she saw what the kitty contained. A gambler, she'd gambled on those three cards to provide her with something other than rubbish. Her expression told them it hadn't, and her reaction. She pitched the three cards to the table and again sorted her hand, hoping to expose something that wasn't there. Swapped one of the kitty cards for one of her own, looked at Elsie, at Georgie, then eyed Jenny as she may have eyed a blood-sucking tick.

Not a fast decision-maker, Margot, but more often than not on the winning side when they played. There was nothing wrong with her mind and never had been. Too much like the Macdonald twins, that's all, but with only one of her, she was unable to dominate – or to dominate anyone other than Elsie. Georgie lived with her, tolerated her, never argued, never complained, never said a bad word against her, but stood for no nonsense from her either. So much like Granny in so many ways. Still sounded like her at times.

‘Harry was saying there's wall-to-wall vans out at the caravan park,' Elsie said as four heads lifted and eyes turned again to the road as a car sped by. The bush had always funnelled its sound down to Granny's house.

‘We were run off our feet at the shop today,' Georgie said. ‘Fifty per cent of them were strangers.'

‘There's been traffic on that road all day,' Elsie said. ‘Half of them had boats.'

‘The creek's too low for boats,' Jenny said.

‘There's rain coming, so they say.'

‘The farmers won't be happy,' Jenny said.

Around the district there were acres of wheat ready for harvesting. Rain and ripe wheat didn't mix.

‘It was damn near dark when I drove back from Monk's and the Jenners were still out on the harvester,' Georgie said.

‘They'll go all night, working shifts,' Jenny said. ‘They've always been workers. Their father was the same back in the days of the horse-drawn harvester. He had two teams of horses but only one of him.'

‘He's done well for himself,' Elsie said.

‘Some people deserve to do well.'

Margot, bored with the conversation, led a small heart.

Jenny's queen would beat it, her joker would take the trick, but she played her seven, then watched the fall of cards, counting the hearts. Elsie took the trick with the jack of diamonds, the third best trump in the pack – and she had no need to waste it. Georgie tossed a small club to the table. She had no hearts.

Elsie led the ace of spades. Georgie played the ten of spades. Margot eyed Jenny, then tossed down a small diamond, gambling on Jenny having a spade. She had three.

Two tricks down, seven to go, and Elsie leading spades again, the queen. Georgie played the jack, Margot the king, her lower lip sucked into her chin until Jenny played the five of spades. This was desperation play for Margot, who rarely left anything to chance. She was scratching for hearts and now Jenny knew it. Three tricks against her, she sat poised to pounce.