Ripples on a Pond (11 page)

P
ERFECT
F
ICTION

C
ara lay on her back in bed, watching late-night or early-morning television. Robert appreciated her television's bulging belly as little as he appreciated his daughter's. She'd taken both into her bedroom, where they spent most days together. Robert had denied television in Traralgon. When the neighbours had started buying those boxes, he'd considered them a passing fad, like the big old radiograms. The radiograms had fallen by the wayside. Televisions hadn't.

No cigarettes. Myrtle wouldn't buy them. At fifteen Cara had been unable to live with her parents' rules. At eighteen she'd gone off to teachers' college, and had lived away from home since. Stuck with them now, she'd returned to her old Traralgon habits. Stayed out of their way and didn't argue unless it was important. The twenty-eighth of March was important. That was all.

They'd questioned her about Morrie, about her marriage. Every time she sat down to a meal, they questioned her. In mid-February, unable to get the answers they'd wanted, Myrtle wrote to Cathy. And received a reply.

Cara read it.

Dear Mrs Norris,

Like you, I've been trying to find out what went wrong with Cara and Morrie, and Morrie finally told us. It's all about his grandfather's will. There's something in it that says that in the event of his parents' death, a ghoul of an aunty was to become his guardian and guardian of his estate until Morrie turned thirty or got married – which he hadn't known until after his mother died, and which Cara didn't believe when he told her.

Apparently, she accused him of pushing the wedding through before his mother died just to shake off the old ghoul. As far as I can see, it's a storm in a teacup. He loves her and she loves him, and what else matters . . . ?

Morrie should have been the fiction writer: he'd come up with the perfect story. Cara had met the ghoul. She'd heard her threaten to have Bernard declared incompetent, as had Cathy and Gerry.

Morrie told Gerry that the night he drove Cara home from the wake they had a blazing row . . .

He had driven her home from his mother's funeral. He'd stayed that night, had sat with her, cried with her. She'd almost agreed to fly with him and Bernard.

Good fiction needed a basis of truth. That evening, at the dinner table, unable to improve on Morrie's fiction, Cara adopted it and embellished it. Robert nodded; Myrtle tut-tutted. Neither had approved of Cara breaking her engagement with Chris Marino then rushing into marriage with a boy who had taken her for granted for years.

‘I knew at the time that he had some ulterior motive,' Myrtle said.

Robert nodded, and stopped slamming doors. Instead, he resumed his complaints about his knee.

*

On 28 February, in a Vietnam jungle, nine Australian sons were slaughtered and two dozen more were injured in a war no one could win. A war that chose boys to die via a big birth-date lottery. Protesters marched in Sydney streets, demanding that those boys be brought home.

Good fodder for the television news.

Robert, a soldier in two wars, didn't approve of the anti-war protesters. Had Cara been capable of marching, she may have been one of the protesters.

Myrtle shopped for her. She'd bought her two baby-doll maternity frocks. They covered the bulge. Cara asked her to buy a humorous card for Georgie's birthday. She bought flowery, sentimental guff. That was who Myrtle was.

Dear Georgie,

Blame Mum for the card – she's into hearts and flowers. Ignore it – other than the happy birthday. Have a drink and a smoke for me. I'm not allowed to smoke and drink up here. Will be home in a week or three, when I hope to see you on my turf.

Love, Cara

In Melbourne, Cara had circled 28 March on her calendar, the date given to her by her Geelong doctor. She had no expectation of it being over before 28 March. Her belly at bursting point, her navel threatening to blow its cork. Myrtle demanding she see a doctor, and maybe she should.

‘Here. I'm not going out,' Cara said.

He came that evening. Cara remembered his name, but not his face.

He checked her blood pressure, which was within an acceptable range. ‘A large baby,' he said, then, as had the Geelong doctor, asked Cara's birth weight. Myrtle, itching to get at what was inside that swollen belly, remembered. He asked Cara if she knew her husband's birth weight. He should have asked Myrtle, Cara thought – Jenny might have mentioned it.

Hey, Mum, did Jenny ever tell you Jimmy's birth weight? Ought to. But Myrtle would howl, ‘Incest!', and probably have a heart attack.

‘No,' Cara said. ‘He's over six foot. Big hands and feet.'

‘I'll see you at the surgery next week, Cara,' he said. ‘Walking is good exercise.'

She dragged her belly there the following week, Myrtle tracking her like a guided missile. She tracked her into Robert's bank later; a more modern bank than it had been when Cara had been twenty, when she'd signed her life away on Robert's loan. Her signature was registered there; her bank account had originally been opened there. She handed over her bankbook and a withdrawal form. The teller handed her fifty dollars.

Caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window as they left. ‘I look like a whippet pregnant to a Great Dane with a penchant for Laura Ashley.'

‘What?' Myrtle said.

‘Nothing.'

Then home to clicking knitting needles – Myrtle's. ‘The doctor said it could make its entrance any day, Robert.'

Not that day.

*

Queen Elizabeth, the Duke, Charlie and Anne arrived in Australia on 30 March. Cara was watching them on television when Myrtle delivered her lunch. A royalist to her back teeth, Myrtle, who had followed the lives of Elizabeth and her sister, remained to watch the Queen shake hands with dignitaries.

‘Buy yourself a television,' Cara said. ‘You own the house. You've got your own income from the rent.'

‘If not for Robert, I'd have nothing. And there's nothing worth watching.'

‘You're watching Lizzie and her kids.'

Myrtle amended her statement, or Robert's: ‘There's very little worth watching.'

That night Robert and Myrtle drove Cara to the hospital, where, for twenty-eight hours, she attempted to scream that thing out of her. It wouldn't come out because it had no head to find its way out. She screamed at the sisters, at Myrtle's doctor, told them it was abnormal, that it had six legs and it was her fault. Didn't tell them why it was her fault.

On 1 April, the fools' day, they wheeled her away from that screaming place and put her to sleep. She woke in a narrow bed between stiff sheets, woke to calm and silence. When her hand could move, it reached to feel for the bulge and found a dressing. Didn't know if it had no head or two, four legs or eight, was alive or dead. It was out. She was alive. And that's all she knew.

Slept then, and woke to green screens and Myrtle's presence and words that didn't penetrate as far as her conscious mind. Felt Myrtle's kiss, then slept again and woke to the bustle of a four-bed ward and a sister delivering babies to the other beds.

They brought it to her bed and she found energy enough to turn her face to the wall.

‘You've got a beautiful little boy, Mrs Grenville-Langdon.'

‘I asked for a private ward,' Cara said.

They took it away.

Asked later for a private ward, spoke of her hospital insurance. No private wards available, not for two days; long enough to begin to know the Myrtle Norris who had lied, who had walked around with a cushion tucked beneath her pinny so she might pass Jenny's Yankee baby off as her own.

The Myrtle Cara had grown up with had won her battles with tears. Not this one.

‘I'm signing it away,' Cara said.

‘Of course you're not. As if Daddy and I would consider for one second allowing that beautiful little boy to be raised by strangers. Get some rest, pet. You're not thinking rationally.' Kissed her, brushed the hair from her brow, held Cara's face between her hands and kissed her again. ‘We love you so much and we're so proud of you.'

‘I'm signing it away, Mummy!'

‘He's your son and Morrie's. Whatever happened between you, you're still married to him, and we need to tell him he has a son.'

‘Go away.'

Another day spent in that torture chamber of mothers with husbands who came on the dot of seven and remained until the sisters told them to leave; where every time she opened her eyes, the sisters were delivering white, pink, blue-wrapped bawling bundles to those other beds.

Then they moved her to a private room, and there was silence, and a door to keep out the world, but not Myrtle.

‘If it will stop you making the greatest mistake of your life, pet, I'll call Cathy tonight and tell her to let Morrie know that he has a son.'

‘Tell her, and you'll never see me again, Mummy.'

‘If I'd raised the type of woman who would consider signing my grandson over to strangers, then I wouldn't want to see her again,' Myrtle said.

Unwed mothers had been signing their babies away for years, had been signing them away at the hospitals, but no one would supply her with the papers; and the sisters, who had initially smiled at her, now did what they had to without the smile.

And Myrtle came again. ‘Morrie phoned.'

‘You told him!'

Myrtle shook her head. ‘He's flying home today. He wanted to speak to you before he left.'

‘What did you tell him?'

‘That you're not well. He needs to be told, pet.'

‘Call him back and tell him to take it home with him,' Cara said.

Myrtle's eyes, never able to hide what was going on behind them, widened; her lips parted, then closed. She looked down at hands, itching for months to hold her grandson. Plump, youthful hands, iron-strong fingernails, beautifully filed, each one like a perfect almond.

She's a
Rosemary
, Cara thought
.
If that baby had been conceived by Lucifer, born with cloven hooves and horns, Myrtle would have fought to raise it.

No kisses that day. Myrtle turned away, walked away, her sensible rubber-soled shoes whispering out the door and down the polished corridor.

Wouldn't stay away. Came with laundered nightgowns, very pretty, flowery, lacey nightgowns, conveniently buttoned down the front of the bodice. The milk had come; Cara couldn't will it gone. It trickled, oozed, stained her gowns, and smelt of . . . smelt of a place where she didn't want to go. She snatched a pink rosebud-sprigged gown as Myrtle placed it into the bedside drawer. They spoke of nightgowns that day. Myrtle made no mention of Morrie. She had no intention of allowing her grandson to be raised by his deceitful, stranger father on the far side of the ocean.

On the sixth day, she came into the private room, a blue-wrapped bundle in her arms, a flustered sister behind her. Given leave to hold her grandson in the nursery, she'd absconded with him, certain that one glimpse of his newborn perfection would be enough to swing the scales in her favour.

‘Hold him, pet, and you'll never want to let him go,' Myrtle pleaded.

No longer a prisoner of her bed, Cara escaped, Myrtle, relieved of her bundle by the sister, followed Cara.

‘What sort of woman have I raised?'

‘One you were too old to raise,' Cara replied.

At college she'd found privacy in a locked toilet cubicle. Did the same now, and remained locked in until Myrtle gave up.

Her doctor came that night, and he too was on Myrtle's side.

‘I'm in no position to raise a baby,' Cara argued. ‘And I'm old enough to make my own decisions, and my decision was made months ago. Can you please procure for me the necessary documents? I want it done with before I'm released.'

‘Your mother has explained your unfortunate situation, Cara. You know that you have her full support, and your father's. You need to give yourself time to think this through before making a decision that, once made, can't be reversed,' he said.

On the seventh morning, Cara's stitches removed, she was reading a page of instructions as to what she must not do for the next weeks, when they came, Robert and Myrtle, came early, armed with their own papers. They'd obtained a restraining order, denying her the right to give their grandson away to strangers.

She couldn't win against both of them. Never could. She tried that morning and ended up screaming their ages at them. Robert closed her door and they returned to her bed, side by side.

‘Someone should have taken out a court order to prevent her from taking me,' Cara yelled.

No tears from Myrtle, no anger.

‘It's a great pity Gran Norris isn't still alive, pet. I believe you might have got on quite well with her,' she said.

‘I wish I'd never set eyes on either one of you,' Cara yelled.

‘We know you don't mean that.'

‘You'll both be dead before your precious grandson reaches the schoolroom,' she yelled, and when they still refused to leave, she leaned on her buzzer until a sister came.

She got rid of them.

Powerless against them. Always had been. They were the two sides of a brick wall, immovable.

Powerless up here . . .

She had money in her handbag, a baby-doll maternity frock in her wardrobe, the sandals she'd worn to the hospital. She dressed, picked up her handbag and walked out.

There was a taxi near the entrance, delivering a male weighed down by a bunch of flowers. She was in it before the flower bearer was out of it.

‘Bus depot,' she said. ‘And a corner shop if you see one on the way.'

Bought cigarettes, matches; lit one in the taxi. He wound the windows down.

Lit six or eight more while waiting at the bus depot, drinking vile coffee. But the bus pulled in, and she dragged herself on board and rode it through the night.