Ripples on a Pond (47 page)

T
HE
L
EAVING

M
argot's remains were released to the family on Boxing Day. Two days later, the second victim was officially identified as Raelene Florence King. It was on the news at midday.

The newsreader gave an update on Dino Collins's condition – and who cared.

The phone rang when the news ended, and when Jenny heard the beep, beep, beep of long distance, she knew it would be something to do with Raelene. She wasn't wrong.

‘Is that you, Jenny?'

Hadn't heard that voice in eight years, but recognised its apologetic tone.

‘Florence,' Jenny said, that one word exhausting her, or knowledge of what was to come, that old litany of guilt, exhausting her. She had enough of her own.

Leaned against the wall of Vern Hooper's entrance hall, closed her eyes and allowed Florence's nasal tones to play out.

‘. . . the terrible things they're saying about her up here on the television . . . that Raelene did it, that she lit that fire. I feel so terrible.'

‘Me too,' Jenny said. ‘We're on our way to Willama to organise Margot's funeral, Florence.'

Leaned there, phone to her ear, wondering who Raelene had been trying to burn and how she'd got by the police to do it.

Three explosions Harry had heard, one after the other, and by that time he'd already been halfway across the goat paddock, the two cops stationed down there running behind him.

The front rooms already an inferno, he'd known it was too late for Margot, but he'd got into the old kitchen, got a few feet into it before being driven back by flames. Raelene must have been lying there then. How she'd trapped herself no one would ever know. Tripped on the laundry step? Stubbed her toe on uneven cement, on the splaying legs of Granny's old sewing machine? God alone knew.

There'd been no official decision yet on the cause of the fire. It would come out at the inquest. No date yet set for that.

Harry required no official explanation. He'd had three full drums of petrol stored in Granny's shed. One had been emptied, and not by Georgie. Four gallons of petrol will soak a lot of books, newspapers and tinder-dry timber. A bottle of metho and a bottle of kerosene stored in the shed were no longer in the shed. Exploding bottles might account for the explosions.

‘Like Dante's inferno,' Harry had said. ‘If we hadn't known where Georgie slept, we wouldn't have got her out. If that fence hadn't been down, we wouldn't have got her out.'

God, or fate, had wanted Georgie alive. Jenny thanked God, or fate.

And that fool of a woman on the phone expected sympathy? Jenny wanted to accuse her.

‘I need to go, Florence. Jim is waiting out at the car.'

‘I blame Ray for the way she became, Jenny–'

‘If blaming him helps, then blame him, Florence, but as far as I see it, we each make ourselves out of whatever we've got to work with. We sweep up what's left over after each holocaust and glue the bits of us back into something that resembles what we might have been. And we go on, doing the best that we can – or most of us do.'

Georgie would too – when she was ready.

She'd turned the television off, and was offering Jenny a cigarette. They could say what they liked about nicotine, it made the intolerable slightly more tolerable.

*

Georgie was going to Willama with them, to have her stitches removed. Jenny had pressed her old black suit skirt, polished a pair of Trudy's black flatties and fitted two inner soles into each. They'd do the job. The skirt was barely knee-length on Georgie, but, given the fashions of the day, and her legs, it looked fine. She'd washed her hair, and altered her usual style to cover some of the bruising. Jenny's owl-eyed sunnies would cover the rest.

‘I dare say that you and Clarrie will handle Raelene's funeral arrangements,' Jenny said to Florence.

‘We're up in Brisbane, Jenny. Clarrie will have to fly down. I can't leave the children.'

‘It might be easier to fly her up there,' Jenny suggested.

‘If you and Jim could arrange things from down there, we'd pay for it.'

Paying for it wasn't the problem. Organising it would be; putting in an appearance at it. Which she was not going to do. Couldn't and wouldn't.

‘Ray's insurance money will pay for it. Now I've got to go.'

‘I'll give you our phone number–'

‘Write me a letter, Florence.'

And I'll burn the bloody thing unread.

‘I will. It's been so good talking to someone who understands.'

Understands? Jenny would never understand, but she got that phone down and walked out to the veranda, where the air smelled of burning forest. By the look of the sky, that fire was closer than it had been an hour ago.

Jim was studying the Ford's raked paintwork, its sprung boot lid. The car was old in car years and, according to the insurance company, would cost more than it was worth to put back the way it was. It didn't have a lot of miles on the clock, didn't have a thing wrong with its motor, or its interior – other than Georgie's blood staining the rear carpet and upholstery.

‘It might be time to let it go,' he said.

‘It fits your legs.'

‘Ted was saying that Holden's automatic models are decent cars. One foot handles the accelerator and the brake – which sounds good to a one-footed man.'

Loved his smile. Loved him, hang-ups and all.

‘It's your money,' she said.

‘Will you feel up to looking at cars after we . . . ?'

‘If Georgie is,' she said.

They were about to lock the front door when Georgie changed her mind about going.

‘I'd like you with me today, love . . . you'd know better than me what would be right for her.'

‘I can't bury her, Jen,' Georgie said, and she returned inside.

*

Jenny and Jim had done what they'd had to do. Then they'd test-driven and ordered a new car. It was late when they left Willama to drive home, to drive west into a setting sun. Those who didn't know this land and what the sun could do to a smoke-filled sky would swear that the earth was burning. And it may well have been. With every mile, the smell of smoke grew stronger.

Woody Creek was as they'd left it, sprawled out beneath a pall of smoke.

The red ute wasn't where they'd left it.

*

Georgie had been standing on the western veranda, still dressed up in her borrowed skirt and her green top, when a city retiree had driven by. Not yet familiar with who was who in town, or how the redhead who ran the grocery shop was connected to the house fire, she pulled her car off to the side of the road and walked across to the fence.

‘If you're not going to run that shop, then sell it to someone who will,' she said.

‘Want to buy it?' Georgie asked.

‘There's plenty in town saying the same thing I'm saying, and don't you think that they're not.'

‘I'd be the last person in town to doubt you,' Georgie said.

She knew the woman's face; she owned a bull terrier that looked like her. Today, that face was out of patience with the unrelenting heat, out of love with country living, maybe out of tea, and needing a focus for her disillusionment.

Georgie turned to watch two modern fire trucks go by, their sirens drowning out the woman's yapping complaints. When they'd gone from sight, she went inside for her keys.

She hadn't driven the ute since she'd brought it home from Teddy's garage, but now, all dressed up and no place to go, she backed it out and drove around to Charlie's.

The old key was eager to slide into the padlock, to turn. Green doors were delighted to open, the cowbell clanging its pleasure that she was back.

The yapping retiree had followed Georgie's ute to South Street. Two locals followed the retiree to the counter. Georgie turned the lights on for them, but, instead of stepping in behind the counter, she walked out to the veranda.

‘Well?' the determined retiree yapped, pursuing her heels.

‘Self-service is all the rage in the city. Go for your life,' Georgie said.

Then, turning her back on the city terrier, she stepped away – kept on stepping, over the gutter. She was on the road before she turned to face the place where she'd wasted her life. Had to take a few more steps backwards to get a full overview of Charlie's.

Just a low-slung barn with a sagging veranda, cringing on the corner like a whipped cur, its roof warped, veranda posts leaning, weatherboards cracked and grey. And, like all cringing things, its teeth were exposed, ready to crunch her bones if she took one step towards it.

She covered her bruised eye and the stitches in her eyebrow, wondering if Raelene had opened up a third eye in her head, if the shifting spanner had made some permanent maladjustment to her brain, or maybe shocked a buried optic nerve into life. Something had dramatically altered her perspective.

‘What do you think you're doing out there?' the disgruntled retiree barked, backed up now by three women and a youth.

‘Seeing,' Georgie told her.

‘Get off that road or you'll get run over.'

A car was coming. It dodged Georgie, or she dodged it as she walked back to her ute. About to get in, she changed her mind. Walked around the women, the youth, two kids who'd joined them, and back into the shop. They all followed her. They watched her walk down to the storeroom, then back to the green doors, an empty carton in her hand.

‘Are you going to serve us or not?'

‘Not,' Georgie said. And she left them there to help themselves, or not.

It took five minutes to toss the contents of her drawer into the carton. She didn't include Itchy-foot's diaries. They belonged to Jenny. She took Jenny's old suit jacket, used it to wrap Jack's nautilus shell. Her collection of bankbooks went in. Laurie Morgan's mug shot went in, along with two pairs of Jenny's knickers and a T-shirt of Jim's that she'd been wearing as a nightgown.

She glanced at the first letter she'd received from Cara, placed for safety between the pages of one of her bankbooks. Hadn't heard a word from her since that night. Not that she blamed her, though she wished it otherwise. She read the letter again, looked at the date, 1967, then folded it and placed it back between the pages of the bankbook.

Not the envelope. She used its rear for notepaper.

Dear Jen,

Ta for the bed, etc. I'm off to get my stitches out. The shop is open. Leave it open if you like. I don't want it.

We sweep up what's left over after each holocaust and glue it back into something that resembles what we might have been, then we go on. You said it, mate. I've done my sweeping up. Now I'm off to do the gluing bit.

Love ya, Georgie

Left the envelope on the kitchen table, weighted down by Jenny's sugar bowl. Locked up Vern Hooper's house, then drove away from Woody Creek.

A
BOUT
J
OY
D
ETTMAN

Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which,
Diamonds in the Mud
, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels
Mallawindy
,
Jacaranda Blue
,
Goose Girl
,
Yesterday's Dust
,
The Seventh Day
,
Henry's Daughter
,
One Sunday
,
Pearl in a Cage
,
Thorn on the Rose
,
Moth to the Flame
and
Wind in the Wires
.
Ripples on a Pond
is Joy's fifth novel in her Woody Creek series.

A
LSO
B
Y
J
OY
D
ETTMAN

Mallawindy

Jacaranda Blue

Goose Girl

Yesterday's Dust

The Seventh Day

Henry's Daughter

One Sunday

Diamonds in the Mud

Woody Creek series

Pearl in a Cage

Thorn on the Rose

Moth to the Flame

Wind in the Wires

T
HE
W
OODY
C
REEK
S
ERIES

Joy Dettman

Pearl in a Cage

The first novel in Joy Dettman's sensational ‘
Woody Creek
' series.

On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman – foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant – is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek.

The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her – but the baby lives.

When no relatives come forth to claim the infant, Gertrude's daughter Amber – who has recently lost a son in childbirth – and her husband Norman take the child in. In the ensuing weeks, Norman becomes convinced that God has sent the baby to their door, and in an act of reckless compassion, he names the baby Jennifer and registers her in place of his son.

Loved by some but scorned by more – including her stepmother and stepsister who resent the interloper – Jenny survives her childhood and grows into an exquisite and talented young woman. But who were her parents? Why does she so strongly resemble an old photograph of Gertrude's philandering husband? And will she one day fulfil her potential?

Spanning two momentous decades and capturing rural Australia's complex and mysterious heart,
Pearl in a Cage
is an unputdownable novel by one of our most talented storytellers.

Joy Dettman

Thorn on the Rose

It is 1939 and Jenny Morrison, distraught and just fifteen years of age, has fled the tiny logging community of Woody Creek for a new life in the big smoke.

But four months later she is back – wiser, with an expensive new wardrobe, and bearing another dark secret . . .

She takes refuge with Gertrude, her dependable granny and Woody Creek's indomitable midwife, and settles into a routine in the ever-expanding and chaotic household.

But can she ever put the trauma of her past behind her and realise her dream of becoming a famous singer? Or is she doomed to follow in the footsteps of her tragic and mysterious mother?

Spanning a momentous wartime decade and filled with the joys and heartaches of life in rural Australia,
Thorn on the Rose
is the spellbinding sequel to
Pearl in
a Cage.