Wind in the Wires (15 page)

A T
RAIN THROUGH THE
N
IGHT

T
ime out from life, that cramped dog-box compartment, travelling through dark lands. Nothing now to see from the window, only their own reflected faces. They stopped at the occasional station, took on or offloaded one or two, then on again into the dark.

The chap who would turn their couch into bunk beds had already knocked and asked if they wanted their beds made up. Myrtle had been ready for bed at eight. Cara delayed the inevitable, but he knocked again at nine and Myrtle invited him in.

Lights out then and the bunks narrow, hard, and how was anyone supposed to sleep on them?

‘How could a woman give birth to a baby then get on this train and forget that baby had ever been born? She must have been a slut.’

‘I was almost asleep, and that’s a terrible word for a young lady to use.’

‘Was she morally corrupt, Mummy?’

‘I’ve already told you she wasn’t.’

Myrtle wasn’t wishing yet that she’d flown, but perhaps wishing Robert had booked individual cabins. Cara had her trapped below, had her railed in by the ladder and clad in a skin-tight petticoat, her night attire, her dressing-gown and her jewellery box in the luggage compartment, and Myrtle convinced it wasn’t in the luggage compartment.

Cara leaned overboard, her face almost in Myrtle’s. ‘It’s dark. You can answer me honestly.’

‘She sang at a serviceman’s club for the two years I knew her, and after her soldier was killed, she worked at a clothing factory. The only friend she brought to the house was a girl she worked with at the factory, Lila.’

‘Was she a good singer?’

‘I only heard her once. I’d turned the radio volume up to silence her, and to annoy me, she sang over it. She had a beautiful voice.’

‘Was she educated?’

‘She told me once she’d won a scholarship but for some reason was unable to accept it.’

‘You don’t know why?’

‘Family reasons, I believe,’ Myrtle said.

Silence then, though a train racing through the night is never silent. There is a rhythm to the metal wheels on metal rail, the howl of warning as the night beast crosses over busy roads. A train will glide on smooth lines, lull its passenger to the very edge of sleep, then shake her awake with that rocking clack-clack, clack-clack.

‘She worked at a factory and sang at night while you looked after Jimmy?’

‘Yes.’ Myrtle yawned. ‘She sewed beautifully. She told me once that the only time her mother had sat still was when she was at her embroidery.’

‘Did she ever mention her mother’s name?’

‘I don’t recall her doing so. She told me her mother had once embroidered a rose that looked as if it must have had a perfume, that she’d tried her own hand at embroidery but hadn’t been able to give a rose perfume, so had given it up. She made all of her own clothing while she was with me, and Jimmy’s; she stitched pretty frocks for her girls. She made your first baby gowns, and all by hand.’

‘She actually knew me?’

‘She remained with us for three weeks.’

‘Did she touch me?’

‘I was inexperienced. She taught me how to bathe you, to pin on a napkin.’

‘She would have been around my age when you first knew her.’

‘She was two months away from her twenty-first birthday when you were born.’

‘What did she do when she left me?’

‘Boarded this train.’

‘I mean, did she cry? Was she pleased to be rid of me?’

‘We went with her to the station, you and I. She took your hand and said you were shaking hands with her, thanking her for Amberley and a fairytale life. She asked me to write and to send her a photograph.’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I was afraid she’d return to claim you. For many years I was afraid.’

‘You never heard from her?’

‘Never, though on one occasion, when you were quite young, an unpleasant-looking fellow came to our door asking questions. Initially I was petrified she wanted to claim you, but our inquisitor’s only interest was in learning how Jenny had supported herself and Jimmy while she was with me.’

‘Was he or Sarah North responsible for us leaving Sydney?’

‘Moving was a mistake – for all of us, pet, which we very quickly became aware of. At the time, we thought it was for the best. We can never know what the future will hold. I’d taken you illegally. At the time your father and I were determined to hide the truth of what I’d done from you.’

‘Which brings us back to my first question. Where did you find the nerve to do something illegal?’

‘I’d waited too long to hold my own baby, and there you were, hidden away from me but growing daily. I loved you long before I knew if you were to be my daughter or my son – and I did what I had to do to make you mine. Now go to sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.’

*

Gran Norris died on a Wednesday. She was buried on a Friday. Robert couldn’t get sleepers on the Saturday train so they rode the Sunday bus home, and with every seat filled, the trip was long. Myrtle and Robert sat side by side. Cara was jammed in against the window by a grossly overweight woman who should have paid for both seats. She wanted to use both. Then a hundred or so miles out of Sydney, she took her shoes off.

Hell is sharing a seat with a fat dame and her smelly feet. Cara opened the window wide. The woman complained, so Cara complained of her companion’s feet. The dame put her shoes half on so Cara half-closed the window.

Pete had loaned her a book for the journey. It was one of those novels that promise much in the first chapter then fail to live up to expectation. She learned something from it – that a novel needed a good opening chapter. She didn’t have a good opening chapter. That’s what she’d do when she got home.

Home? Where was home? Sydney hadn’t felt like home this time. Blame the funeral. Blame the crowd at Uncle John’s, the screaming kids. Pete knew how to handle kids. He would have made a good teacher.

She screwed her neck around to look for Robert. He had the aisle seat, two rows behind her own, his leg stretched out. His bad knee had been playing up since the funeral. His chin was down. He was probably sleeping; the pills he took for his knee made him sleepy. She couldn’t see Myrtle. Her chin had probably dropped as they’d driven down George Street.

They woke up when the bus stopped at Albury, and by then Cara was mentally cursing Myrtle for refusing to fly. They would have been home hours ago.

Home?

Myrtle and Robert wouldn’t be going home tonight. They’d booked a room at a hotel, had wanted to book one for Cara. She wanted her own bed. Maybe that bed was home. Maybe the college – or Melbourne.

She knew the central city like she knew the back of her hand. She’d been a stranger in Sydney. Robert had given her money to buy a black suit she’d never wear again. She’d bought a pair of shoes Cathy would approve of. Wore them with Marion’s skirt and Michelle’s sweater and for the first time in her life, at her first funeral, felt smart. Natalie, a cousin-in-law, said she’d looked smart.

She’d met her twice, at Christmas dinners, the only time she saw her cousins now. Grown apart by distance and age and interests – though not from Pete.

He’d made the funeral bearable. She’d sat beside him at the church service and he’d whispered: ‘I thought you would have worn your purple,’ and she’d damn near cracked her face in her effort not to smile.

Then at the graveside he’d taken two sprigs of artificial purple flowers from his pocket and handed her one. ‘Double dare you. On the count of three.’ He’d counted three with his fingers, and they’d tossed their sprigs together. That time, Cara had to run.

He’d found her hiding behind a tombstone and they’d shared a smoke. They’d shared a few more in the shrubbery behind John and Beth’s house.

He’d grown as tall as Uncle John but not as broad, not yet. Still the same cheeky-faced lovable ratbag kid he’d always been.

She sighed and stared out the window, the breeze in her face. An interminable journey, those five hundred miles between cities. She knew this road too well, had travelled it too many times.

And the fat dame’s shoes were off again. Cara slammed the window wide, then lifted Pete’s book to shelter her face from the wind. As a good read, it stunk; as a wind shield and air deodoriser, it worked to a degree.

T
HE
R
ED
D
RESS

W
hile Cara was in Sydney, Cathy and Marion had been sharing her phone calls, determined to find out who her lovesick swain was. Marion could do a serviceable Cara. All it took was a mild adjustment to her Queen Lizzie voice and a more major alteration to sentence structure. She tested it on the Friday night.

‘Where are you calling from?’

‘The street out front of your place. Have a look out the window,’ he said.

‘Did you remember my birthday?’

‘Make the most of it, you cock-teasing moll, it could be your last,’ the caller said.

Marion tried to hang up the phone. Cathy snatched it. ‘Her grandmother just died and you should have more thought for people’s feelings.’

She heard just how much thought he had for people’s feelings until Marion gathered her wits sufficiently for Humphrey Bogart to snarl, ‘Get off this line, slimeball, or you won’t have the necessary parts to play with in phone boxes.’

That night they went over and over their conversation with the Cara’s caller and were still at it the following day, wondering what they’d said to make him turn nasty.

‘He knew I wasn’t her,’ Marion said. They settled for that.

He rang on Sunday night. Cathy told him Cara was in the shower, that she’d tell her he’d called.

‘Tell her I’ll call back,’ he said.

‘She shouldn’t be too long. I’m Cathy, her roommate. She probably mentioned me to you – the one who talks too much,’ she said.

He asked where they lived, and Marion, listening in, elbowed her and mouthed, ‘Don’t you tell him.’

‘Brighton,’ Cathy said. ‘She changed her job. She’s working with me at Myer’s now. I know she’s niggly with you about something, but if you wanted to see her, you could come into Myer’s. We’re on the second floor.’

He told her he might drop by tomorrow. She told him she was dying to meet him, that Cara talked about him all the time. ‘I am talking to Robbie, aren’t I?’

He wanted to know who Robbie was.

‘I thought he was you. Which one are you?’

‘Dino,’ he said.

‘Oh. She’s mentioned you too – Dino, like Dean Martin, she said. Can you sing like him?’

He said he could do a lot of things, then he hung up.

‘He sounded pretty normal to me,’ Cathy reported. ‘Do Cara when he calls back and try being nice to him.’

‘I’m not playing around with him, Cath.’

‘He doesn’t know where we are. Just say, “Stop calling me, Dino. We had a good time, but now it’s over.”’

She did. She said it nicely, too, and released the devil. Cathy called her cousin, Dave, the cop.

*

It had gone eleven before a taxi dropped Cara back to the college, desperate for a shower then her bed. Cathy and Marion were waiting to pounce. They followed her to the bathroom, speaking over the rush of water.

‘I’ve been sitting on a bus for twelve hours. Go to bed.’

‘But Dave knows him.’

‘So do I. Butt out, Cathy!’ Cara emerged, dressing-gown clad, a towel wrapping her hair. She walked to her private toilet cubicle.

‘Shoving your head down the lav won’t stop his phone calls, but Dave will. He’s coming out to talk to you in the morning.’

She used the toilet, while they stood in the next cubicle, relaying their phone calls. She washed her hands, brushed her teeth, pitched the towel at Cathy then led the way to her room where she made a major production of plugging wet ears with cottonwool.

‘Him and his friends did something so bad in Traralgon that his friends are in jail, Dave said. They’ve been looking for him,’ Cathy said.

‘Turn the light off when you leave.’

‘Talk to her in the morning,’ Marion said.

Cathy picked up a Myer bag and tossed it at Cara’s head. ‘Happy birthday, ostrich.’

Something red spilled to the bed. You can’t ignore red, not when the head of the establishment where you spend your life frowns on anything red. Young college ladies did not clothe themselves as women of the night, though a few may have been as available. Cara rose up on her elbow to identify the red.

‘You can’t do that.’ It was a frock she and Cathy had looked at weeks ago: straight skirt, empire line, pintucked bodice, small sleeves; absolutely gorgeous and expensive as hell. ‘You can’t do that, Cathy!’

‘I’ve already done it.’

Tears in Cara’s eyes, tears of weariness and something else she couldn’t explain. She was home, this room, this bed, and those girls were home. They’d joked about buying that dress, of wearing it into class one morning.

‘You can’t spend that sort of money on me.’

‘It’s spent – and I didn’t spend it for you anyway. I had a dream the night you left that they were having a huge ball here and I went with Gerry, who had come home for his father’s funeral, so I had to wear black, then you turned up in that dress . . .’

‘You’re mad, Cathy Bryant.’

‘. . . and you had long red bobble earrings and ultra-high-heeled black sandals. And anyway, it was marked down to thirty per cent off because someone had split the seam under the armpit.’

Cara was searching for the split under the armpit. Not a long split, but hand-stitched. She knew its original price, and even with thirty per cent off, Cathy had spent too much. ‘You can’t spend that sort of money on me, Cath.’

‘I can’t take it back with my sewing in it. Do you still like it?’

‘You know I love it.’

‘All right then, now shut up and listen. He told me his name was Dino so I told Dave, and you just should have heard him go off about Dino Collins. I don’t know what he and his mates did, but Dave said he also broke into your parents’ house and peed and pooped all over everything, which is how he got this phone number.’

‘He didn’t say what they did in Traralgon?’

‘No, only that the other two with him were arrested for it.’

‘Did he say their names?’

‘No. It happened three weeks ago. They’ve been looking for Dino since. Now go to sleep.’

Go to sleep after that, after that bus trip. She could still see the road when the lights were out. Cathy went to sleep to dream of Gerry; Cara wandered into a place where Dino Collins and the bus became confused. She was going to Sydney with him, and she knew she had to get away, but he had her jammed in against the window.

Woke with a splitting headache and for an instant had no memory of the previous night – until she saw that splash of red and the Myer bag. Remembered then. Looked at her watch, at Cathy’s empty bed, and already late for class, she sprang from her blankets to dress. Then saw her hair in the mirror. Wet when it hit the pillow last night, it had dried flat on one side and corkscrewed on the other.

Swallowed two aspros in the bathroom before running her head under the tap and doing what she could with her hair.

Cathy found her there. Dave had arrived with a female colleague.

Police cars and uniforms not being familiar sights on college grounds, the two constables raised more than their fair share of interest and supposition that morning. Cara spoke to them on campus. Cathy and Marion also missed the morning class. They learned that Tony Bell and Henry Cooper had been arrested for the carnal knowledge of a high-school girl, abducted by the trio then driven out of town.

‘She was taken home after the attack, where she swallowed every pill in the house then got into the bath and locked the door. Her sisters got in through the bathroom window. The girl is in hospital.’

A Traralgon schoolgirl, Robert would have known. He and Myrtle would have recognised the girl’s name – and Cara had spent four days with them and they hadn’t said a word about it. ‘Rape’ wasn’t in their prewar vocabulary.

‘Cathy said he’s been calling you at the college for some time,’ Dave said.

‘Since the break-in at Mum and Dad’s place.’

‘You knew him well?’

‘We went to the same school when I first moved to Traralgon. He’s three years older than me. I’d seen him, but didn’t know him until the end of the year when my girlfriend started going out with Henry Cooper. I stopped seeing them and he’s been doing what he can to drive me crazy ever since.’

Then Dave asked if she’d agree to meet with him somewhere. She shook her head adamantly, and the aspros hadn’t shifted her headache. It pounded so hard, she thought she was having a stroke. As if she’d willingly go within a hundred miles of Dino Collins. As if he’d believe she’d go within a hundred miles of him.

‘He’d know it was a set-up.’

‘I got his name out of him,’ Cathy said. ‘I bet I could set it up.’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to be scared of him for the rest of your life?’

‘The courts will let him off. They always do. I’m not getting involved.’

‘You’re already involved, Cara,’ the policewoman said.

‘He was the town hero when he was a kid. He gets out of everything. I’m not getting
further
involved.’

‘For the rape of a minor, I can guarantee that he won’t be let off,’ Dave said.

‘No.’

‘How long could he get?’ Cathy asked.

‘Ten or fifteen years.’

That got Cara’s attention. She looked at Cathy’s cousin, seeking the truth in his eyes. She feared Dino Collins. Wanted him locked up, still flinched every time she heard a motorbike. Even in Sydney she’d flinched when Pete rode his bike into the yard. Hated the sound of the telephone ringing.

He’d lie. People would lie for him. ‘How old was the girl?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Cathy and Marion can set up a meeting. You don’t need me.’

‘He has the ability to blend into the surroundings,’ Dave said. ‘You’ll recognise him, Cara.’

She’d recognise him anywhere. Known him first as a Jimmy Dean lookalike, then he’d become a bearded bikie, skull and crossbones painted in white on his black leather riding jacket. He could be the boy next door too. For months, he’d bleached his hair white, then, when his dark roots had started growing through, he’d had his hair clipped to the bone. He could cover his eyes with dark glasses, but couldn’t change them or the
HATE
on his knuckles or his voice. She’d recognise his voice.

‘If you meet him somewhere, in broad daylight, with cops all around you, he wouldn’t be able to do anything,’ Cathy said.

‘He’s probably parked out the front now.’

‘Prowling the streets of Brighton, or in the dress department at Myer’s. He’s got your number but he hasn’t got a clue where he’s calling you,’ Cathy said.

It may have been possible to keep on saying no to two police constables; it would never have been possible to keep on saying no to Cathy. Before Dave and the policewoman left, Cara agreed to go with Cathy to Flinders Street Station – if she and Marion could set it up; if Dave could guarantee that Dino would stay locked up if they got him.

*

Cathy haunted the common-room phone that week, but when he finally called and she told him Cara wasn’t available but that she was, he hung up.

‘You’ll have to take the next one, Marion.’

He didn’t call back.

Myrtle called on Tuesday night, and midway through their conversation Cara handed the telephone to Marion.

‘Have you heard anything about Dino Collins?’ she asked.

‘Has he been calling you again?’

‘No.’

‘Call the police if he does.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘He was involved in some dreadful thing with the youngest Hunter girl. Her mother is out of her mind with worry.’

‘The youngest Hunter girl,’ Marion reported when the phone was down. ‘Do you know any Hunters?’

Mrs Hunter, the high-school History teacher, had four daughters. Dino Collins hadn’t liked schoolteachers.

He didn’t call again, not that week, or that month. They heard, via Dave, that Tony Bell had been refused bail, but Henry Cooper, father of one, had been granted bail because his wife was expecting a second baby in February.

Marion had her twentieth birthday in November. Her boyfriend couldn’t come down and she wanted to dance, so they took her to St Kilda, Cathy, Michelle and Cara, Cara in red, though until the girls were well away from the college the frock was hidden beneath a skirt and blouse, which spent the evening rolled up and stuffed into Cathy’s large handbag. It was a good night, a brilliant band, partners lined up four deep, drawn in by Cara’s red frock – only to suffer freezer burn, according to Cathy.

‘They’re not all like him, you know,’ she said.

‘You wanted me to dance, I danced, Cath.’

And went home in crumpled skirt and blouse, in a taxi, happy, laughing. It was so good to be a part of a laughing group again. So good to dance again too, and to wear something Myrtle hadn’t chosen.

Mid-November, Dino Collins almost forgotten, the Christmas holidays still a few weeks away but Cathy, Marion and Michelle already working out their holiday plans and including Cara in them. She told them she had to go home, to Sydney.

‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd, four is just right. You’re coming.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Try finding “can’t” in the dictionary,’ Cathy said.

Then Myrtle called. There had been a change of plans. Uncle John and his family were driving down to spend Christmas in the Traralgon backyard again.

‘I’ve been invited up to Ballarat, then we’re going down to Marion’s place near the beach,’ Cara said.

‘John’s family is making such an effort for us to be together. We won’t have Gran with us this year.’

‘You knew what I’d say when you rang, Mummy. We’ll be home in Sydney next year. I promise faithfully that I’ll be there, but I’m not setting foot in Traralgon.’

She got away, Myrtle unhappy, Robert more so. Two minutes later she was called back to the phone. Expecting further argument from one or both, she sighed.

‘I await my execution,’ she said.

Not a sound on the line. Knew it wasn’t them. The hairs on the back of her neck knew who it was. Instructed, under threat of death, by Cathy not to hang up on him, she didn’t, but signalled wildly to Marion – and if she didn’t hang up or say something, he’d smell a rat.

‘I haven’t seen you in Myer’s,’ she said.

And Marion came. She was wasting her talent at a teaching college. She was Cara, her tone, even her sigh.