Wind in the Wires (34 page)

I thought I was an only child until I turned fifteen. That’s when Mum and Dad told me about Jenny, that she’d had three other children. Sometime later I found photos of Jimmy in Mum’s album. He became very real to me. I used to tell myself that if I’d grown up with my big brother, he would have looked after me. She had no photograph of Jenny’s girls and no memory of their names. You and Margot were never quite real to me. Mum told me I looked like Jenny, but I could never raise an image of her in my mind, other than a shadow sighted from the corner of my eye.

Mum and Dad were in their forties when they adopted me. They’ve been wonderful parents, but they have families they can trace back to England. I always felt like an alien who landed on their doorstep.

There has always been a blank wall behind me. I know now who lives behind that wall, that you live there, that behind you there are grandparents, a horseriding midwife, and Archie Foote.

I’d like to see you again, but on neutral ground. If you ever find yourself in Melbourne, give me a call at the above number, during school hours, and we’ll have dinner somewhere and get to know each other.

How did I know the date of your birthday? That comes under the heading of coincidence. One of the teachers is having a retirement party in June. We had the old records out attempting to trace a few of her ex-students. And there you all were, Georgie, Margot and James Morrison-King, with your dates of birth.

Best wishes,

Cara

T
HE
V
ISITOR

G
roups of mothers congregated at the school gate at three-thirty, their kids cluttering the footpath. Cara walked around them, dodging a few missile kids, her interest on a tram she was intent on catching. Had she been looking at the mothers she may have noticed a tall one with long copper hair.

‘The old school hasn’t changed much,’ Georgie said, falling into step beside her.

Now look what you’ve done, was Cara’s first thought. Her second, I could have at least combed my hair. No time for a third. A response was necessary.

‘You’re about the last person I expected to see today.’

‘Charlie died. I’m out of a job – out of wheels too. I came down to buy a new ute –and buy you dinner if you’re doing nothing better.’

Was she pleased to see her? Yes. No. More yes than no – except she looked like a frumpy schoolmarm shaking hands with Miss Universe, and she was going to miss her tram. Except nothing. There’d be another tram.

Could she bear to go out to dinner with her, looking like a frump? Did she dare take her to the flat?

Plenty more flats too.

‘My flat’s only a couple of stops away. I need a shower. Schoolkids shed germs like dogs shed fleas.’

‘If you tell me you only use white towels, the deal’s off,’ Georgie said.

Loading schoolkids onto a tram took time. They caught it then, Miss Norris and Miss Universe sitting side by side, schoolkids and their mothers staring, Cara asked what was wrong with white towels.

‘I just saw Margot,’ Georgie said. ‘She’s . . .’ She shrugged. ‘She likes white towels and white uniforms. They’ve got her in blue – she’s in a psychiatric place down here.’

Nothing to say to that. Wished she’d worn something decent to school this morning. Wished she’d washed her dishes before she’d gone to school.

‘The old trams haven’t changed much,’ Georgie said.

‘Melbourne’s bone-shakers. I couldn’t live without them. Sydney got rid of theirs.’

‘I’m not used to riding in anything I’m not controlling.’

Talk of trams, utes and car yards carried them to Cara’s stop and as they walked the last block to the flat Cara apologised in advance for the mess she’d walked away from this morning.

‘You’re talking to the wrong person about housework. I eat out of a saucepan to save washing up. I fried bread and eggs in a cast-iron frying pan this morning, ate out of it and left it on the hob. Blame our fathers for that. We didn’t get it from Jenny,’ Georgie said.

‘How is she?’ Just something to say.

‘She went to England a while back.’

‘My boyfriend lives in England.’

‘A long-distance romance. Probably the way to go.’

They climbed the stairs side by side, Georgie looking around as Cara unlocked her door. ‘It was all I could afford when I moved in, now I can’t be bothered moving.’

‘I could take to living alone, though not down here. The traffic seems worse when you’re not driving in it.’

‘It gets worse every year. Make yourself a coffee while I shower, Georgie. Open the window if you want to smoke – oh, and my towels are ex-Amberley, white with green stripes.’

‘Green’s good,’ Georgie said.

*

It was easier later, her hair washed, a little makeup applied, clad like Georgie, in jeans and a pretty top.

She made coffee, discussed the school, spoke of the teachers. Only one name was familiar to Georgie, Miss Hadley.

‘She’s the one retiring in June,’ Cara said.

‘I thought she was ancient when I knew her. She taught me for a few months. She taught Margot for the best part of two years. I’ll guarantee she hasn’t forgotten her.’

‘Would you be interested in coming down for her party?’

‘I could be anywhere by June.’

They didn’t go out for dinner. But at six Cara, now asking her questions, learned that Jenny had been adopted by Granny Foote’s daughter, and that Archie Foote, the philandering doctor, had been Jenny’s father – Itchy-foot, Georgie called him. Granny’s itchy-footed quack.

They ate salad sandwiches at seven, and at eight Cara admitted to owning a fold-up bed.

‘It’s as hard as the hobs. I sleep on it when Mum and Dad come down.’

‘Are you shockproofed yet?’

‘Against what?’

‘You probably ought to know what will be under your fold-up bed before you go offering it.’ Georgie had left her zip-up sports bag beside the door. She retrieved it, slid the zip and dug deep to remove a shoe box. ‘I need to tell someone anyway. It’s screwing up my sleep. Blame the hereditary factor,’ she said, lifting the lid.

The mind does a double-take when it’s expecting new shoes and it sees a plastic bag full of banknotes. Cara’s chair tipped over as she sprang to her feet and stepped back.

‘Charlie had been sleeping on it for years.’ No reply from Cara. She was having second, third and fifth thoughts. ‘The health inspector made me clean out the storeroom,’ Georgie explained.

Cara had backed to the stove and could go no further.

‘I wish I had a camera,’ Georgie said.

‘Put it away.’

‘Charlie stole it first, then the mice stole it from Charlie. I baited the mice. I suppose that makes it robbery with violence,’ she said and lit a cigarette, amused by Cara’s reaction.

‘How much?’

‘A hell of a lot. Fourteen thousand, if I can change it into dollars. ‘It’s Charlie’s black money, his stash – all old money. Want me to get a hotel room?’

‘What do you mean by black money?’

‘He’d been filching the big notes from the cash drawer since I started working for him. He didn’t rob a bank – just the tax department. Some of it would be rent. He owned half-a-dozen properties. At least one of his tenants paid him in cash.’ She blew three perfect smoke rings and Cara stood shaking her head and watching them grow.

‘He used to buy shares with it, when he could use the phone. He’d reached the stage where he couldn’t understand what they said and ended up with shares in some goldmine.’ She blew three more rings. ‘You’re thinking, what the hell have I got myself mixed up with? How the hell do I get myself out of this?’

‘I’m thinking, what if someone walked in?’

‘Anyone likely to?’

‘Put it away.’

‘It will still be here,’ Georgie said, but she placed the lid on the shoe box, placed the shoe box into her zip-up bag and zipped it. ‘All gone,’ she said.

‘Whose . . . Who does it belong to?’

‘Me.’

‘You know what I mean, Georgie.’

‘Everything he owned will go to his daughter, who he hadn’t seen since I was thirteen, when she took off in his car with anything he had of value. Since ’58 he’s spent weeks in hospital. He was in a coma for a week before he died, and she didn’t even come down to kiss him goodbye. She got down soon enough to bury him, though.’

Georgie drew on her smoke and puffed out two more smoke rings.

‘How do you do that?’

‘Practise. I only started smoking so I could learn how,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to go?’

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Change it to dollars. I’m doing Charlie’s estate a favour by not allowing it to turn up. If I handed it in, the tax mob would go through him to get their due, and I’d probably get the blame for it. I’ve been fiddling his books for years, covering up for his filching, and I’ve got a ton of share certificates at the bank that he bought for me with his ill-gotten gains.

‘His daughter would go after my blood. I kidnapped Charlie twice from an old folks’ home where she’d had him incarcerated. I know he would have wanted me to find it and to be doing what I’m doing. He would have preferred the bloke at the town tip to get it than for it to fall into Hilda’s hands. That’s my defence anyway and I’m sticking to it. And tomorrow I plan to spend some of it on a brand-new set of wheels. Am I going or staying?’

‘I need a coffee.’

‘Sit down and I’ll make one.’

Near midnight, they dragged the folding bed from its space between wardrobe and window and they set it up between the easy chair and the television.

‘I’m not promising you a comfortable night.’

‘You get what you pay for, kiddo,’ Georgie said.

They drank more coffee, smoked more cigarettes and Cara spoke of Amberley, and the life she’d lived as a kid, then of Traralgon and how she’d loathed that town.

‘Raelene’s mother lives at Moe. That’s on the way to Traralgon, isn’t it?’

‘I thought her mother must have been dead.’

‘It’s a long story. Raelene didn’t know she wasn’t Jenny’s until Ray died and Florence turned up, claiming that Ray had stolen both kids.’

‘Did he?’

‘Probably. He introduced me to electricity and porcelain lavs, and according to Jenny gave me an aversion to marriage. She could be right. Jenny left him in ’47, then a few days after we got home, I lost my brother.’

‘How?’

‘Kidnapped by Lorna Hooper, picked him up from the kitchen while Jenny was getting dressed to take him down to the hospital. Lorna was Jimmy’s aunty.’

‘Isn’t Jenny married to a Hooper?’

‘Jim. He’s Jimmy’s father.’

‘Jimmy’s father was killed in the war.’

‘His family let Jenny think he was dead. He was a prisoner of war for two years. And I’ve got a date at a car yard in the morning.’

L
AUNDERING
M
ONEY

G
eorgie fried bread and eggs for breakfast. Cara had never eaten fried bread. ‘Eat it,’ Georgie said. ‘It sticks to the ribs.’

No time to draw back from their easy friendship of last night, Cara sat down and ate.

‘I had nightmares about your money. It was spread everywhere and two men and a woman came in.’

‘Tax collectors?’

‘I don’t know who they were but the woman had a huge pair of scissors and she was cutting it up. I got Mum’s cake tin down and was trying to stuff the uncut notes into it. I don’t know where you were, but I was trying to save some of your money for you.’

‘The night after I found it, I dreamed I was planting rolls of it in Granny’s vegie patch, maybe expecting them to multiply like spuds. We grew buckets of spuds down here one year, all along our fence line.’

‘I can’t keep a pot plant alive,’ Cara admitted.

‘Jenny and Jim spend half of their lives in the garden. I like growing things. Granny had half an acre of vegetable garden when we were kids.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Like Jesus maybe, or him and God rolled into one – or she was to me. She wasn’t our blood. Jenny’s mother came up to Woody Creek looking for Itchy-foot and ended up dying in childbirth.’

‘What were Jenny’s parents’ names?’

‘Norman and Amber Morrison –’

‘Amber? Not the Amber Morrison who murdered her husband?’

‘Adopted mother. She’s our blood though, through Itchy-foot – and I’ve got to buy my wheels.’

Cara had no interest in utes, but Georgie was orating the book of who she was and Cara wasn’t letting her get away. ‘I’ll come with you.’

The tale of Archie Foote and Juliana Conti was condensed on a tram up to Toorak Road. Georgie had half-a-dozen car yard advertisements she’d cut from newspapers. Dustings was in Toorak Road.

‘Granny married Itchy-foot when she was nineteen and left him when she was twenty-seven. I’ve got his diaries at home. A whole bunch of them were posted up to Jenny when he died, then we found the rest in one of Granny’s trunks. I never met him, but I’ve read his diaries.’

Public transport is not the most convenient means of travel when you’re car hunting. They rode half-a-dozen trams that Saturday morning. They found a brand-new red ute in Toorak Road, a ’67 HR Holden, hot off the factory floor, but Georgie wanted a white ute.

They found one at a car yard on the Maroondah Highway, a demonstration model with very few miles on the clock, and a quoted price no less than the brand-new red in Toorak Road.

Two pretty girls in a predominantly male environment are considered putty in a good-looking salesman’s hands. He charmed them, offered cigarettes, Georgie didn’t refuse. She charmed him too, told him to drop his price by a hundred and they’d have a deal. He wouldn’t budge on price but offered her new floor mats.

‘Where that ute is going, new mats will wear out as fast as old,’ Georgie said.

He knew she wanted the ute and went off to talk to his boss, who joined him to seal the deal. With two to deal with, Georgie stopped smiling.

‘I’ve made my offer. Take it or leave it.’

They wouldn’t take it, but they had a ute in the workshop, traded in yesterday. They could do her a good deal on that one.

‘Same model?’

‘Less than twelve months old.’

‘Kingpins,’ Georgie said. ‘I need ball joints.’ And she started walking, Cara at her side.

Like a pair of sharks tracking a tasty meal, the men followed, Cara learning that the models to 1966 had kingpins, which weren’t a patch on ball joints; she learned too that her half-sister was a hard-headed businesswoman.

They offered a fifty-dollar discount on the white ute. Georgie told them call it pounds and they had a deal. They told her they were giving the ute away at that price.

‘I’d hate you to lose money on it,’ she said, and this time when she walked she continued on to the tram stop.

The morning was gone before they got back to the Toorak Road showroom where Cara watched wads of red notes taken from Georgie’s handbag and counted out to the salesman’s desk. She couldn’t drive the ute away until Monday so they took the tram back to the city and caught a train out to Flemington.

Never in her life had Cara watched a horserace. Nor had Georgie, but she’d read somewhere that racetracks were the best places to go if you had money to launder.

She was so honestly dishonest. Ask her a question and she replied, and you knew it was the truth. She had a handbag full of money but was no gambler. She cashed a five-pound note to place a fifty-cent bet on a jockey wearing emerald green, and received nine dollars fifty in change.

‘Can you keep the new stuff in your bag? It will save sorting it out later.’

A crazy day. The jockey came home in second place, and an elderly punter with flirty eyes told them that if they’d put their money on for a win or a place, they would have got a few bob back. Georgie cashed another fiver and this time backed the jockey for a win or a place. He got lost in the field, but Cara added more new notes to her handbag.

In race three, they backed two jockeys, one wearing royal blue and one wearing black and green. Still no luck, so they split up for race four, Cara armed with her own mouse money. Between them they had four horses running for a win or a place, four chances in a ten-horse race saw one of Cara’s come in third.

Georgie’s bulk of mouse money didn’t appear to shrink, but the wad of plastic in Cara’s exploded, and the coinage grew weighty.

It was a day like no other to Cara. She had friends, went out to clubs with Marion, had smoked pot with her twice. She ate fancy meals at Helen’s unit, met Cathy in town, though less often these days – but this was different. This was time out from the reality of her life, this was the sort of day when you’re glad to be alive.

They started laughing when, in race six, their mouse money on six jockeys and they got a first and a second place and one of the bookies handed back one of their own twice-laundered notes. They were still chuckling when they lined up to again get rid of that note.

They backed the field in the final race, got a first, second and third and walked to the train laughing at stupid jokes, which on a less imbecilic day wouldn’t have been funny at all. They laughed on the tram back to the flat, conjuring up an image of the many bookies smelling something mousy when they opened their money bags tonight.

And once off the tram, Georgie smelled a fish and chip shop and made a beeline for it. The proprietor changed a ten-pound note. They bought cigarettes and milk at a café and changed another tenner. Walked home then, stealing scalding chips through a hole finger-poked in the paper. Is there a better way to eat hot chips?

‘The first time I ate shop chips was the night Jenny played Snow White in a pantomime,’ Georgie said. ‘The next time was the night she left Ray.’

‘She was in a pantomime?’

‘She used to sing. We got free tickets. Ray wouldn’t take us but a neighbour did – twice. Wilma Fogarty. She had umpteen kids. Jenny paid for them to go.’

‘I knew she used to sing at a club in Sydney.’

‘She sang at some sort of club down here every Friday night.’

‘Does she sing now?’

‘At funerals – which doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation, does it? She’s good. The McPhersons organise a concert every year or two. She can still do it. Jimmy and Margot took after her – or a bit. I must have inherited my father’s voice. My teachers used to ask me not to sing.’

‘What’s wrong with Margot?’

‘Other than a desire to get her own way in all things, not much. She was the runt of the litter. As a kid, everyone gave in to her. She grew up expecting it to continue. Granny stopped, Jenny stopped, Elsie didn’t.’

‘I thought she must have been . . . slow.’

‘Watch her playing cards and you’ll change your mind.’

‘Do you know anything about my father, Georgie?’

‘What do you know about him?’

‘Mum said his name was Billy-Bob, that he was an American sailor and that he probably died in the war.’

‘We didn’t know she’d had you.’

‘You don’t blame her, do you?’

‘What for?’

‘For being . . . what she was.’

‘A survivor?’

‘For having four babies to four different men.’

‘I suppose I should. It wasn’t a lot of fun having kids call you a bastard before you knew what a bastard was, though I probably blame her more for selling herself to give us a stepfather. She ended up selling his wedding ring to feed us.’

Cara had her key in the door when Georgie told her that Margot had been forced onto Jenny by twin apes when she was a fourteen-year-old schoolkid.

‘And they let her keep the baby?’

‘She didn’t want to keep her. She cleared out and found me. She told me once that she had the name of a doctor who did abortions, that I almost wasn’t.’

Jug boiling, shoes off, they sat down, unwrapped the fish and chips and ate with their fingers.

‘What’s Jim Hooper like?’

‘Six foot four, nothing special to look at, but a good bloke.’

‘Are they happy?’

‘He thinks the sun, moon and stars rise and set in her eyes, and she’s the same about him.’

That night, no longer able to keep track of her convoluted family, Cara started taking notes. She had a page for Harry, Elsie and their pile of kids. Lenny the eldest; Teddy, Margot’s boyfriend for eight years, now engaged to Vonnie. She had a page for Florence Keating.
Mother of Raelene and Donny. Impregnated at seventeen by Ray King during the years Jenny and Ray were separated
.

‘Why did she take him back, Georgie?’

‘He turned up in Woody Creek on his motorbike, the Christmas of 1951, Donny zipped in beneath his leather riding jacket, Raelene stuffed into his saddlebag. Donny was around twelve months old, Raelene was three weeks, and both of them filthy and half-starved. I thought he’d murdered their mother.

‘After the Hoopers took Jimmy, Jenny had some sort of a breakdown. She functioned but she wasn’t Jenny. Elsie and Granny took charge of Ray and his kids, then a few days later Jenny started taking an interest in Raelene, and Granny and Elsie encouraged it. I was about twelve, old enough to know what’s what. Jenny slept in Granny’s room, Ray slept on a bedroll in the shed. She slept in his bed in Armadale. She dodged him in Woody Creek.

‘When he and Harry and his boys built on the two back rooms and Ray moved into one of them, I thought Jenny would move in with him. She didn’t. We moved Donny’s cot in with him. Until he died Jenny slept in Granny’s bedroom.’

They saw Donny on Sunday. Cara tagged along, expecting to see a retarded kid. She saw a man – a boy-man Georgie fed with chocolate buddies. He couldn’t speak but he knew what to do with chocolate and he liked Georgie’s hair.

‘Jenny reckons he can remember my hair.’ Gentle Georgie, allowing him to touch her hair, and when he pulled too hard, taking his giant hand and blowing on his palm, making a rude noise and raising a gaping chocolatey smile.

‘Swallow it, Donny. You’re drooling.’

An odd mixture, that half-sister, gentle as a mother with that boy-man, hard-headed as a lawyer with the car salesman, a laughing girl at the race meeting, and loyal to Jenny.

Cara told her about Morrie, about his sick mother. She told her about Chris, the solicitor.

‘I went out with him one night, and the following Monday he sent me a huge bunch of flowers to the school. It was so embarrassing, but sort of nice too. His colleague’s wife reckons he’s on the hunt for a wife. I’m not on the hunt for a husband – or not him.’

She didn’t want the weekend to end, but it did, and on Monday they said goodbye at the tram stop.

*

Georgie found her own way back to Toorak; with brand-new wheels beneath her, she didn’t head for home but into the city, to a car park she and Jenny had used when they’d brought Raelene down for her appointments.

She did the rounds of city banks, opening accounts, for Georgie Morrison, and Gina Morrison King, and for Georgina Morgan-Morrison, and into each account she deposited five ten-pound notes which the teller’s pen changed into a hundred dollars. She placed a wad of fives and tens into a five-year term investment, with accumulative interest, and as she watched, that two hundred and fifty pound became five hundred dollars. Banks never known for their speedy service, she lost too much of the afternoon, and when Cara returned from school, she found that red ute parked out the front and her visitor sitting in Morrie’s place on the concrete steps.

‘You’re cheaper than the Hilton,’ Georgie greeted her.

Later, the tiny kitchen table swamped by bankbooks, seven of them, the small refrigerator crowded with vegetables, fruit, two slabs of scotch fillet steak, Cara considered a larger flat, a two-bedroom flat, she might share with this sister. Knew she could. Her bones knew it.

‘I got four per cent on one of my investments. I should have put more into it. Jim’s mother’s money was invested with a solicitor when he was six years old. It ballooned. I considered spending a bit on shares but I don’t know what to buy or how to buy them. I had a peep in at the share-market place, but hotfooted it out. Charlie knew what to buy.’

She’d bought a small leather-covered book, and into it began copying bank names and addresses, the version of her name used there with the amount, a page for each bankbook.

‘Have you thought any more about Miss Hadley’s party in June?’

‘I still don’t know where I’ll be. Every time I mentioned taking a holiday, Charlie would present me with a batch of shares. I’ve been nowhere. I might go to England – except I’ve got no real desire to go there. I’ll probably drive off into the sunset and just keep on going.’

‘He didn’t look rich,’ Cara said.

‘He wasn’t, or not on the books. He had a cheque account for the shop but there was never much in it.’ She closed her book and placed it into a zip compartment of a new and larger handbag. ‘A few years ago, he had my name added as a signatory to his shop account. I’ve signed his cheques since someone ran him down and he had no arm to sign with.’ Bits and pieces being transferred now from her old handbag to the new. A plastic bag of plastic notes, placed into the shoe box with the mouse money.