Ripples on a Pond (42 page)

Margot led the jack of hearts, fishing for the joker she knew was in Jenny's hand. It would beat the jack, but, still unready to play it, Jenny played her four, holding the queen and joker in reserve. What did Elsie have in reserve? She played a small heart.

Margot led the ace of diamonds. With no diamond in her hand, Jenny played the queen of hearts, breathless until Elsie played a diamond; and for that, Margot threw her remaining cards in Jenny's face.

Georgie retrieved the cards from the floor. ‘Play the game out, Margot.'

‘Thee that on me.'

‘Play the game out, Margot,' Georgie repeated.

‘Thee that on me.'

‘She went nine clubs and you wouldn't let her have the kitty. Pick up your cards and play,' Georgie said while Jenny and Elsie waited, eyes down.

They played it out. Jenny's joker took its one trick. Elsie and Margot got the rest, but they didn't get nine, and Georgie subtracted nine hearts from the opposition's score, which, for the first time that night, put Jenny and Georgie in the lead.

Born with playing cards in their hands, Jenny's kids. Granny had taught them to play five hundred before they'd reached double figures. It was a game of chance, where a winning hand could become a losing hand in the turn of a card. Margot gambled, Georgie never gambled. Sisters – half-sisters – they shared no similar looks or traits.

Another shuffle, another hand dealt, and the hands of Gertrude's mantle clock ticked on.

‘I don't know where Jim's got to,' Jenny said.

‘How was he going to get down here?' Georgie asked.

‘John McPherson drove him out to Monk's. He'll drop him down here.'

To the old brigade, that property would always be Monk's, even though Melbourne retirees might refer to it as the commune, or the youth of Woody Creek might name it the druggies' camp. A few of them swore you could buy anything out there, from a string of love beads and a bunch of flowers to a bag of marijuana and a woman to go with it. While her bikie had been in jail, Raelene had lived out there for a month or two, Jenny hoping her time in jail might have settled her down. But Raelene wasn't the settling type. She hadn't stayed long at the commune.

There were twelve or fifteen assorted groups living along the creek, in caravans, shacks, prefab cottages. Tony Bell and his wife owned the land. They'd built a log cabin well distanced from the creek and the shacks. Jenny had spoken to the wife in town. She was city, but seemed friendly; as were a few of the girls who set up a stall at the station on Sundays, where they sold junk jewellery, hand-painted scarves and flowers. Unwed most of them, but raising families – and who was she to comment on that.

The daily train, once the town's life blood, was no more. Goods trains were rare, other than at harvesting time. Buses and trucks not enslaved by metal rails could do the trip to Melbourne faster, and pick up or offload where they were required to pick up and offload. Life these days was about saving time, cutting down on double and triple handling. Much was written about unemployment. Nothing was ever written about why there was unemployment.

Much was written about the necessity of higher education, too. Jenny had been to school with kids who had never progressed beyond grade three. They'd gone off to fight a war, and those who'd returned had found work loading timber, cutting timber, milling timber. They were the discards of this new, more efficient world, many destined to spend their lives collecting the dole. It was the same for the blacks out at the mission. Twenty years ago, educated or not, the mission girls had found domestic work and the boys had got labouring jobs on farms, at mills, on railway gangs. A few whites had looked down their noses at them; many hadn't. These days, most looked down their noses when they saw them drunk on their dole cheques.

‘The call is against you, Jen. What do you want to do?' Georgie said.

‘What did I go?'

‘Hearts.'

‘Hearts?' Jenny said. ‘It must have been just a call, love. I pass.'

‘Now you thay path. I would have gone heartth if you hadn't gone it firtht,' Margot whined.

‘Pass,' Elsie said.

‘I'll try seven diamonds,' Georgie said.

Some you win. Some you lose. Jenny had lost with her firstborn, won with her second, lost badly with Raelene and won with Trudy. Trudy'd begin her nurse's training in the new year.

Jimmy had been dealt a good hand – if good could be measured in dollars and cents. He'd inherited Vern Hooper's all, then, according to Lorna, had inherited her uncle's estate in England. That must have rankled – Lorna losing out to the boy she'd kidnapped. Maybe life worked out fair in the end – in its own twisted way.

‘Wake up, Jen,' Georgie said.

She'd led a small diamond, fishing for the large cards she didn't have. Margot had played her left bower. Jenny tossed down a small diamond, then started sorting her cards. She hadn't been dealt much of a hand.

Another car approaching. Heads lifted, listening for it to go by. It didn't. It was coming down Granny's track.

‘That'll be Jim,' Jenny said.

Through the window, she watched the headlights approach. It didn't look like John McPherson's Morris.

Georgie placed her cards face down on the table and joined Jenny at the window, watching the car pull in behind Jenny's Ford. Little light in the yard, insufficient to identify the model. Then the motor stilled, the lights were turned off and the driver opened the door to step out and stand a while, supporting herself on the car.

And Georgie was gone, the card game forgotten, Jenny behind her. They'd recognised the hair.

‘We're not finithed,' Margot whinged after them. ‘Jutht becauth we were beating you, you throw down your cardth.'

‘Pack them up, lovey. Somebody is here,' Elsie said.

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F
or miles Cara had killed her scream. Just get there, she told herself. Just get to where Tracy is and then you can do something. She was here, and here wasn't close enough. Hens disturbed by the action in their yard clucked and jostled on their perches as Georgie and Jenny came through the chicken wire to question the new arrival. Or for Cara to question them.

‘Where's the druggies' camp, Georgie?'

‘What are you doing up here?'

‘Is Raelene up here?'

‘Every cop in Melbourne is,' Georgie said. ‘What do you want with Raelene?'

‘She took my little girl,' Cara said. ‘She killed my dog. She'll kill Tracy. Is the camp out this road?'

‘No, and you won't get near the place for cops,' Georgie said. ‘Come inside.'

‘The police aren't doing anything.'

‘They're pulling the commune apart,' Jenny said. ‘Jim's out there helping them pull it apart.'

‘Come inside, have a coffee, then we'll drive out there with you and you can see what they're doing,' Georgie said.

Cara, lost twice already tonight, and with insufficient fuel left in the wagon's tank, couldn't afford to take another wrong road. She was trembling with exhaustion, from lack of food, and that black-ice dread that had lodged at her core when she'd found Tracy's empty bed. Hadn't stepped out of the car since she'd left Melbourne; hadn't bought coffee or petrol. A big vehicle, the HJ Holden, it had a big petrol tank, but well under the quarter full when she'd made her last wrong turn. It was running on empty now, as was she.

She followed them to the house, through the house. Georgie offered her cigarette packet. Jenny filled the jug, had the lid off the coffee jar.

‘How do you drink it, love?'

Wordless, Cara stared at that woman who had made the decisions about her life before she'd had a life.

Georgie replied for her. ‘Strong with two sugars, and plenty of milk.'

Wanted to tell Georgie she wasn't up here to drink coffee with them, but wanted that coffee. Wanted that cigarette. Had left her bag and cigarettes in the car. Her keys – Robert's keys – still in her hand. His brand new pride and joy yesterday. Had she locked it?

She took the mug Jenny offered; she looked at biscuits Georgie poured from a packet to a plate, then looked past the plate to the table beneath it. A hundred years of wear in that wood, gaps opening between its solid boards. Playing cards face down on it, one bunch retaining their fan shape. A full ashtray.

Her stomach wanted a biscuit more than a cigarette. And how could she think of eating? She did, Georgie standing watching her eat. Cigarette burnt down to the butt in the ashtray. Georgie killed it as Cara's hand reached for a second biscuit. A shaking hand. Her fingers had been gripping that wheel too long. They dropped the biscuit, but retrieved it.

‘She's four years old. She hasn't lived,' she said.

‘They'll find her,' Georgie said. ‘Drink your coffee. You're as white as a ghost.'

Cara lifted the mug, sipped the sweet, strong brew. Her eyes scanned the watching faces: the lined, grey-headed woman clutching a basin of eggs; Margot, seated; Jenny, leaning against the sink; Georgie, standing at the table, close. Couldn't meet their eyes so looked at the eggs. White, brown, speckled seeds of life. Some doomed to go rotten, some destined to grow into sturdy chickens, some broken into frying pans, some carrying their birthmark of dung that refused to wash off.

Who makes the decisions? Who had decided that Georgie should grow tall, straight; that Margot should grow wide?

She reached for another biscuit and dared a glance at the face of the woman who had given her life – standing, cigarette in one hand, coffee mug in the other – and knew she'd had no say in her fate. Born to become a bright-eyed golden songbird, she became entangled too early in the great net of life. Couldn't break free to fly free and sing her songs, so she'd found another way to fly.

And Tracy's fate. Had she been born to die before she'd lived?

She looked at her hands, at his rings, at Mrs Grenville's rings. Couldn't take them off if she'd wanted to. Had never wanted to take them off. Wanted biscuits, needed something solid inside her, needed that coffee and strength to find her baby.

She reached for another biscuit. ‘How far is the camp from town?'

‘Eight miles,' Georgie said.

*

It was ten miles via road from Gertrude's land – or it used to be ten miles. Schoolkids nowadays would quote the distance in kilometres. Gertrude's fifteen acres of reclaimed bushland had always been two miles north-east of the post office, Monk's eight miles north-west, and only one way to get from one to the other: take Forest Road to the fork, then make a right turn onto Three Pines Road then over the bridge.

If you owned a boat and were prepared to row it for many miles, the creek would offer an alternative route, but it snaked its way through the forest like a boa constrictor with a nest of fire ants in its belly.

There was a shorter route from Gertrude's land to the post office for those on foot. As kids, Georgie and the younger bunch of Elsie's kids had worn a path through Gertrude's orchard to her rear boundary fence, where a climb between stretched wires, a diagonal walk through Joe Flanagan's wood paddock, then corner to corner across his front paddock, brought them out on Stock Route Road, less than a mile from the post office.

Joe Flanagan had done what he could to stop the flow of traffic. For months on end, his bull had roamed the wood paddock. He'd set his dogs onto the trespassers, but the dogs learned to like trespassers who tossed them bones and sausages, oatmeal biscuits and even walnuts. Given the right whistle, Joe's dogs would play their doggie games around the mad bull while Georgie and the Hall kids scrambled, laughing, between fencing wires.

Joe's house, always screened by trees, was not visible from Gertrude's land, or from the road. Back in the fifties, he'd fought for months against turning the old stock route into the main thoroughfare to Willama, claiming that he and his wife would be at risk from passing riffraff. You can't fight progress. He'd lost. The new road had opened to traffic in '52, and, to pacify Joe, the council had planted trees in the space between the road and his fence line.

Once they get their roots down, trees have a habit of growing, and a few don't know when to stop. Blue gums and red, wattle, melaleuca and whatever else the wind had blown in during the past twenty-odd years had become a scrubby forest. Minutes before Cara had driven by Flanagan's property, a two-toned Holden with its riffraff driver and passenger had nosed into a space between a melaleuca and a wattle, where its motor died.

They'd driven through to the commune at dawn. They had needs that kept bringing them back. Could get what they needed in Woody Creek and no questions asked. They had a bed in the rear room of a cabin built deep in Monk's wood paddock. Two women and their five kids called the front rooms of that cabin home.

Tony Bell's more substantial cabin had been built fifty feet from Monk's front gate. Bell owned two dogs: well-fed, well-groomed Alsatians. Well trained too. They could sniff out a copper at fifty paces. Around nine they'd started barking.

Raelene hadn't heard them. Dino slept with one eye open. He heard them.

There'd always been an alternative route out of Monk's property – just a track between tall timber leading to the railway line, at the place once known as Three Pines siding, near the site of Monk's first timber mill. Little left of that mill now, just a partial shed grown in by trees, a dent in the earth where the saw pit had once been.

Collins knew that shed well. He'd driven there, backed the car into it, turned off the motor and left Raelene while he'd walked back to sweep away their tyre tracks with a small leafy branch, and to toss a handful or two of forest mulch around. He'd done it before.

There was a dirt track running beside the lines, used by the railway gangers who, from time to time, made repairs to the train line. At intervals, the track led back to the main road and to a good-sized inland town fifty miles west. He'd go west if he had to, but that morning he hadn't believed he'd have to.

‘They'll find nothing,' he'd said to Raelene. ‘They'll have their usual sniff around and leave.'

That's what they always did. With nothing better to do until then, Raelene had curled up on the front seat, he'd made himself comfortable in the rear, and they'd caught up on a bit more sleep.

It was well after midday when Raelene crept to the outskirts of the commune. She came back faster. ‘There's three cop cars there now.'

‘It's your doing, you useless bitch,' he said. They shared a bottle of beer – no longer cold, but thirst quenching; they rolled smokes and sat on in the shade, drinking, smoking, hunting flies and waiting for nightfall.

By nightfall, the property was crawling with cops. Collins had been dodging the bastards for years; he knew their habits. He knew their jails, too, and he wasn't going back.

‘We're rats in a bloody trap sitting here,' he said, shoving Raelene across the seat and sliding in behind the wheel.

The fuel gauge had been brushing empty when they'd driven into Woody Creek. It hadn't been a problem then. Plenty of fuel to be had at the commune, drums of it.

She blamed him now for not filling the tank. He blamed her for getting him into this shit. She hit him. He hit her. Then they rolled another smoke, opened another bottle of warm beer, and sat staring towards the commune, towards those forty-four-gallon drums of fuel.

Rats have survived for thousands of years by hiding by day and foraging at night; by fighting tooth and claw when cornered. Night was approaching. They had that on their side, and familiarity with this land. He'd been riding his bike around Woody Creek since the fifties. He knew most of what there was to know about the town, and what he didn't know, she did. A well-matched pair, Raelene King and Dino Collins.

Full dark when they heard the roar of a goods train in the distance. Watched it come out of the night like a one-eyed monster, roaring down on them. It passed within a stone's throw of the shed, shaking it, rattling the few sheets of iron remaining on the roof, vibrating the few palings and the earth beneath their feet. Then he started the motor.

‘Where do you think you're going?' she said. ‘There'll be cops on that fucking bridge.'

‘Get out or don't,' he said.

They bush-bashed through scrub, between trees, to Three Pines siding. He'd ridden those train lines before, on the bike, done it as a dare then, bumping along the wooden sleepers and over a narrow railway bridge, playing chicken that day with a passenger train. Not so easy to straddle the lines with four wheels, but he did it; then, with no lights showing, he tracked the goods train back towards Woody Creek, close enough for its racket to disguise the noise of his motor and Raelene's laughter, though not too close.

The train rocked the narrow wooden bridge spanning the creek, but the ancient structure didn't crumble that day, and train and car made it to the other side, the train howling its triumph as it continued on towards Woody Creek.

Not Collins. He got off the railway lines, drove through a paddock, heading south, scattering sheep unaccustomed to sharing their land with vehicles. Had to use the lights intermittently, his eyes searching for a back route out of the paddock. And found what he was looking for – a split-rail fence. They went through it, timber flying.

He found a dirt track he knew. It led to Cemetery Road, out behind the sewage farm, the Duffys' place not too far away.

‘I'll walk down to the Duffys. They'll have petrol,' she said.

‘The cops will be watching their joint. The red dyke keeps her tank full.'

He'd labelled Georgie ‘dyke' a lot of years ago. He'd taken pleasure in draining her petrol tank while she'd slept – and others'. Carried a length of hose in his boot for such pastimes.

He turned south onto Cemetery Road, followed it for half a mile, then swung left onto a dirt track. The fuel gauge now showed empty, but the motor was still sucking juice from somewhere. It kept sucking to Stock Route Road, where it hiccupped and died, but the downward slope offered sufficient momentum for him to nose the car into the scrub out front of Flanagan's.

They pushed it in deeper. First part, easy.

Screened by trees from the road and from Joe's house, they rolled up their sleeves to self-medicate. They deserved it.

He opened the boot. She opened another bottle and they drank it while emptying the boot of the miscellaneous, searching for that length of hose and a jerry can.

A dog's hearing is acute. Joe's dogs started barking. Collins, never fond of dogs, armed himself with a heavy adjustable spanner, then, Raelene leading the way, they followed Joe's fence down to his wood paddock, and cut through to Gertrude's orchard fence. Didn't climb the wire, not there. They followed it west until well past the house.

And they'd hit the jackpot. There were three cars parked in the yard.

‘That's the old bitch's Ford,' Raelene hissed. ‘Gimpy used to tape a spare key behind his bumper bar.'

‘Get it,' Collins said.

Easy for shadows to creep across that yard; plenty of cover to the chook pen. Not so easy to cross the open yard between the pen and the cars. A bare slice of moon had risen over Gertrude's land. Light from the kitchen window lit the cars. Raelene, casting a smaller shadow, ran in a crouch towards them. Collins remained beside the chook pen.

Getting the key was simple. It was taped where it had always been taped. Getting the Ford out wouldn't be. A modern station wagon was parked behind it, boxing it in against the fence.

She ran back to him.