The Tying of Threads (29 page)

There had been no television cameramen, no flashing box in the corner of sitting rooms during Bob Menzies’ long reign. Filmgoers had seen him on newsreels, the quintessential statesman, standing beside king or queen and appearing to be in his rightful place. While Menzies had been at the helm, Australia had known stability and, without thought, Jenny had cast her vote for him, but she had little respect for the current Liberal Party and not much less for the opposition. By November, she didn’t know if the problem was in Canberra, in Woody Creek or in her own head. There were days when, had a livestock train been passing through town, she might have stowed away with the sheep.

She’d always loved trains, or maybe just their railway lines leading away from Woody Creek. She’d been born beside the railway lines, then lived beside them. For years, Norman had carried her to work with him, and all day she’d played at his station. Loved watching the trains pull in then pull out, taking their lucky passengers down those twin ruled lines to the east, or to the west.

At fifteen she’d stowed away in a goods van, escaping from newborn Margot and marriage to one of her rapists. Four months later those lines and a Salvation Army couple had brought her back to town, pregnant with Georgie. At eighteen, Margot and Georgie left behind, she’d ridden trains for two days with ten month old Jimmy, running that time from Vern Hooper’s threats of court. She’d run to Sydney, to Jim, to a room in a classy boarding house where for the week of his leave, they’d played mummies and daddies and happily ever after.

Jimmy had been a three year old when those lines brought her back, Cara, a three week old baby, left in Sydney with Myrtle, the childless landlady. In ’46, Jenny had caught the train with Ray King and all three of her kids, escaping that time from who she was – or wasn’t. Jimmy had been going on six when she’d come running home again. A week later he was gone, stolen from Granny’s kitchen by Lorna Hooper.

The railway lines were still in reasonable repair. Goods trains used them during the wheat harvest, but Melbourne was no longer the city Jenny had known. There were streets down there today where you could play ‘spot the Aussie’, and have trouble spotting one. Migrants of every race and religious persuasion had swelled Melbourne’s population and the amount of traffic on the roads. Vietnamese had set up their own do-it-yourself migration policy in the late seventies, arriving at Australia’s northern boundaries in leaky boats. Migration wasn’t new to Australia. Whether they’d come on the First Fleet in chains, as free settlers like the first James Hooper, or with gold fever, they’d come on boats from other lands. In the years after the war, countless thousands of immigrants, displaced by that five-year massacre, had been shipped in, sent to camps for a few weeks, given a few words of English, then packed off in manageable batches to work in country towns where they’d been expected to fit into the community. Australia had absorbed them into her mix and match of humanity. They’d intermarried with the locals and thirty years on it was difficult to pick them from the old Aussie – and impossible to pick their kids. No doubt they’d had their own cultures, though back in Bob Menzies’ era, no one had mentioned the word – unless they were discussing the making of cheese. A cheesy word, culture.

Multiculturalism was the parliamentarians’ latest fad. Very cheesy people, today’s politicians, with cheesy smiles and policies, one of which had given immigrants their own multicultural, multilingual television channel. They could tune into it and forget they’d left their homeland. There were days when Jenny tuned into their channel to forget she was in Woody Creek.

In November, she was informed, in Vietnamese, that America had elected a third-rate movie star as their new president. She laughed. In December, when a gun-toting maniac murdered John Lennon, she changed channels fast, distrusting the foreign-speaking announcer, and when an English-speaking reporter offered her the same news, she howled. She was still howling when she set up the Christmas tree, still sniffing while she stuffed chickens, peeled pumpkin and potatoes. Her tears curdled the custard for the Christmas pudding. It went lumpy.

And the girls, supposed to arrive at twelve, didn’t arrive until half past one, by which time the chickens were falling apart, the vegetables were overdone, the pudding boiled dry and the lumpy custard was cold.

‘Still off the smokes?’ Georgie asked.

‘I’m off all round,’ Jenny said.

‘You look ten years younger, Mummy,’ Trudy said.

‘I raised you to be honest, Trudy,’ Jenny said.

They left at three thirty. Trudy was on duty tonight. The dishes washed and put away, Jenny began pulling the plastic tree apart, fitting its plastic pieces back into their box to remain dust free until next Christmas. It looked like plastic, smelled like plastic, felt like plastic – as did the whole bloody world and ninety per cent of those inhabiting it.

Jim gave her an eternity ring for her birthday, a beautiful ring she’d admired the day they picked up her pearl in a cage pendant, and she hadn’t admired it because she’d wanted to own it, but because it was beautiful. And what did a woman of damn near sixty need with a beautiful ring? She had too many already to take off when she stitched expensive fabrics. And why the hell was a woman three years away from sixty still stitching beautiful gowns for others and buying her own clothing from Target?

She dripped tears for most of the day. She dripped on Juliana Conti’s antique brooch, which was worth thousands, which made it too precious to wear, as was that ring. How do you weed a garden with eight hundred dollars wrapped around your finger?

She howled too because if she willed Juliana’s brooch to Georgie, Jim would want to know why she hadn’t willed it to Trudy, and because if she gave Trudy the pearl in a cage pendant and earrings, they’d never see the light of day again. Trudy wasn’t into decoration. She rarely bothered with lipstick.

Imagine that there’d been no Florence Keating. Imagine she’d never hired a solicitor to get Raelene back.
Imagine if I’d been waiting down at Granny’s for Jim when they brought him home from the Jap camp, Jimmy would have been . . .

Would have been. Could have been. Might have been. They were like that Christmas tree, made of non-biodegradable plastic. Bury a could-have-been one year and the next time she started digging in the past, up it came, still in pristine condition. Just give it a rinse off with tears and it was ready again to decorate her psyche.

She didn’t want to see 1981 so went to bed to howl for all of her buried might-have-beens, and he came in to ask why she was howling, and how did she know why she was howling? She was, that’s all.

He kissed her blubbering mouth and his kiss, his touch, had never changed. Up in Sydney, when she’d promised Granny she wouldn’t let him come within a foot of her, he’d only needed to reach out a hand and she’d forgotten her promise.

A
bare week ago Cara had phoned Cathy to ask if she and Gerry might like to be witnesses at a brief marriage service in the city.

‘If you’re going to bother doing it, then you’re not doing it hole in the wall again,’ Cathy had said. ‘And why do it now when I’m eight months pregnant?’

Because the reason why they hadn’t done it sooner was no longer around to disapprove, Cara thought, though didn’t say.

‘You are allowed to say no, Cath.’

‘Of course I’m not. Of course we want to be your witnesses, but you’ll have to do it up here. I can’t travel. We can have a bit of a party afterwards if you do it up here,’ Cathy said.

‘I just buried Dad, Cath. We don’t want a party.’

‘You buried him ten days ago and he’s been dead for two months,’ Cathy said.

He’d died in England, over two months ago, at a time when Cara couldn’t get away. Then it had taken time to arrange the flight and the funeral. They’d opened Myrtle’s grave – ghoulish, but what Robert had wanted – and he no doubt a happier man back with his beloved Myrtle than he’d been in England.

‘You’ll order the celebrant, Cath, or do we bring him with us?’

‘Leave it to me,’ Cathy said.

‘I’m in your hands,’ Cara had said.

Should have known better. They’d been friends since their college days, and back then, if given five minute’s notice, Cathy had been able to raise a party of fifty. In Ballarat she had parents, a mother-in-law, two sets of grandparents, Gerry, her doctor husband, four sons, friends she’d known since kindergarten. If there was anyone in town she didn’t know, Gerry knew them.

There’d been no sign of a party when Cara and Morrie and the children arrived at three, no sign of Cathy’s rowdy boys – no sign of Gerry, Morrie and Robin by the time Cara exited the bathroom.

‘What are you up to, Cath?’

She’d borrowed frocks. Tracy was a froth of pink. ‘It’s like a princess dress, Mummy,’ Tracy said.

It was, and how many seven year old girls won’t melt at the sight of pink frills and ballet shoes? How many can resist a long mirror when a coronet of rosebuds and ribbons is pinned into her hair?

Thank God Cathy had been unable to borrow a frilly bridal gown. The frock she’d chosen for Cara was white, but more Queen Lizzy garden party than bridal. She’d borrowed white sandals, gorgeous sandals, and a white broad-brimmed hat. The bouquets were new.

‘I didn’t go overboard,’ Cathy said.

‘No. You torpedoed the boat, you control freak,’ Cara said.

‘You’re the control freak, now get dressed, or we’ll be late.’

‘What time is he coming?’ He, the marriage celebrant.

‘I told you that you weren’t doing it hole in the corner. Our minster squeezed you in at four, as a favour to me, and he has to be at a dinner in Melbourne by seven, so we can’t keep him waiting.’

‘You . . .’

‘Your daughter is listening. Now get dressed.’

‘Did Morrie know what you were up to?’

‘As if I’d tell him so that you could start blaming him again,’ Cathy said.

Cara had never blamed Morrie for the fiasco of their first marriage. She’d blamed his mother for allowing him to believe that Jenny and his sisters were dead. In ’69, they’d made their first vows beside her bed and three days later, Margaret Hooper Grenville-Langdon had died – never knowing what her lie had done to their lives.

‘I’m sort of adopted,’ Cara had confessed to Morrie on their wedding night.

‘How can you be sort of adopted?’

‘You can if your mother and the biological mother pull a swiftie.’

Their marriage had been eight hours old when they found out that they’d shared that biological mother, Jenny.

Nothing had changed during the years since – or no new laws had been written into the constitution allowing unions between half-brother and -sister. Cara’s profession, her life, her outlook on life had changed, and she could put her finger on the exact instant it had changed.

She’d been standing with Morrie in the hospital corridor, Tracy a wall away and as close to death as she’d been to life. That was the moment. She’d looked at Morrie and known that nothing mattered in this life but living it, and if she’d walked away from him that night, she’d be sentencing both of them to half-lives.

She loved him, had loved him since she’d turned nineteen, when he’d been introduced to her as Gerry’s pommy mate. She’d loved him for five years before that disastrous wedding night.

Blamed him for his carelessness when she’d realised she was pregnant with Robin, but that had been as much her own fault as his.

Robert had never forgiven him for deserting his pregnant daughter. Poor Robert. He’d believed what he’d been told. The truth of why her marriage had failed, the truth of what she’d been carrying would have killed him and Myrtle, so she’d lied, told them about the English cad who’d married her only to get his hands on his grandfather’s estate.

She’d never expected to produce a living baby. Not for one minute had she considered raising it. Her only thought during the months she’d carried Robin had been the getting out of him, the getting rid of him – and the guilt of his conception.

Myrtle and Robert obtained a court order preventing her from signing their grandson away. She’d left them holding the baby in Sydney and had gone home to Melbourne. But babies grow; they become little boys who look at you with big blue trusting eyes. Robin had smiled at her with Morrie’s mouth and she’d fallen in love for the second time.

Robert had loved him. He’d loved Tracy too and done his utmost to talk Cara out of moving to England. He’d had months to work on her. On that nightmare day when Tracy had been taken from her bed, Cara had learnt that
Rusty
, a novel she’d worked on for years, had been accepted for publication. Once upon a time she’d believed that the publisher’s acceptance of a manuscript was the end of the process for the author. It wasn’t. She’d been forced to stay in Australia, to see it through the editing process, then forced to stay longer for Dino Collins’ trial.

Flew away gladly when it was done, she, Robert and the children, Robin looking forward to seeing the little red MG he’d considered his own for seven years which had made the trip across the ocean months before them. Robin and Morrie’s mutual love of that car had given them a foundation on which to build a relationship. They were father and son now and they looked like father and son.

Robert had never built a relationship with the English cad. He’d flown with them for her sake and the children’s, certain that the cad would let his daughter down again.

Morrie would never let her down. Right or wrong, he loved her, and once back behind the stone walls of Langdon Hall where they’d been living as Mr and Mrs Grenville-Langdon since ’78, they’d
be
Mr and Mrs Grenville-Langdon.

The white frock was a firm fit at the waist, but Cathy got the zipper zipped. The sandal heels were ultra high, and shoes worn by another never feel quite right, but Cara walked out to the car in them, and Cathy got them to the church with five minutes to spare.

And it wasn’t empty. And she should have known. Somehow, Cathy had got the entire Sydney mob down here – Uncle John, Beth, the six cousins, their partners and a dozen of the cousin’s kids.