The Tying of Threads (11 page)

New paint, new door, new freezer cabinets and glass counter wouldn’t wipe Charlie White’s name from the collective memory of the town, nor could a cash register that spat out curled slips of paper with every purchase.

‘Nick up to Charlie’s for me, love, and get me a packet of Rinso,’ the women said.

Maisy drove to Willama twice each week but never shopped there. She attended the Weight Watchers meeting on Tuesdays, had lunch with Rachael, watched
Days of Our Lives
, then drove back to Woody Creek for afternoon tea with Jenny. On Fridays, she had lunch with Rebecca and watched
Days of Our Lives
there. On the other days, she walked down to Blunt’s crossing, then down North Street to the butcher’s, the newsagent’s, then continued on to White’s Street, over Charlie’s crossing and back to South Street where she picked up a few items from the supermarket, then walked home in time for
Days of Our Lives
.

Or that had been her habit until the B half of the Wallis duo called her an interfering old biddy and told her to mind her own business, and Maisy told her that she’d never darken her door again, and that unless she changed her attitude, no one else would either.

‘All I tried to explain to her was how none of the businesses tried to cut the throats of the other businesses,’ Maisy explained – to everyone.

The altercation didn’t alter her habits, or only one of them. She took great pleasure now in walking by that beeping door, her nose in the air.

There’d never been a skerrick of harm in Maisy Macdonald. She talked too much, but rarely had a bad word to say about anyone. For sixty of her eighty years she’d congregated with the women beneath Charlie’s veranda, catching up with the news, or passing it on.

They congregated now beneath the smaller veranda of the post office where a self-sown tree, growing for years between that veranda and the house Norman and Amber Morrison had once called home, offered an extra pool of shade where the women compared notes and tut-tutted about B. Wallis’s poor attitude. The police station cum residence was on the corner directly opposite that tree, and on the other corner, the town hall, the park, then Maisy’s house.

She loved her house. She’d watched it grow from the ground up – sixty-eight years ago. At the time she’d been sharing a bed with a miserable old bugger of an aunty, and if anyone had ever wondered why a sixteen year old kid had married near forty year old, bald-headed George Macdonald, they need look no further than Maisy’s miserable old bugger of an aunty who had taught her how to dodge a broomstick and not much more. Maisy hadn’t been searching for love when she’d married, only kindness. George had been kind.

He’d been sex starved too. He’d given her ten kids in little more than ten years. He’d also given her the second best house in town in which to raise those kids and, in it, everything that opened and shut. Given space to grow, she’d grown up with her kids, and grown to love their father.

There were better houses being built in town, modern houses, but not in the centre of town. Two lovely homes had gone up recently in Slaughter Yard Lane, a new street built to give access to the Bowling Club. Melbourne retirees liked a game of bowls. Maisy had given their bowling balls a try the day the club opened. They weren’t her cup of tea. There was a cluster of new brick homes where Stock Route Road ran into Blunt’s Street, and fifty per cent of their owners were Melbourne retirees. Maisy and a few of her cronies welcomed each new arrival to town. A few returned the visit. A lot more didn’t. A few shopped locally. A lot more didn’t.

Maisy wasn’t the only woman who kept an eye on the time while she chatted, nor was she the only one who never missed
Days of Our Lives
. She was home with time to spare, time to make a cup of tea and take her pre-prepared salad from the refrigerator. She’d learnt that trick at Weight Watchers, to pre-prepare. If you knew it was waiting for you in the fridge, it stopped you from grabbing something easy.

She’d been watching that show since episode one, and it was like visiting with friends now. The credits were still playing when the phone rang. She’d trained her girls never to phone for the half-hour her show was on, and whichever one it was now had timed her call to the second. Without rising, Maisy reached for the telephone.

The long-distance STD beeps suggested it was Maureen, her only city daughter, though Maureen usually called after seven when phone calls were cheaper.

‘What is it, love?’

‘Is that you, Maisy?’ a stranger’s voice enquired.

A not so strange stranger’s voice. For an instant, Maisy remained silent, her mind sifting stored information for the name that went with that voice. Some eighty year old minds grow dim, even wander off to the fairies. Not Maisy’s. She’d had her finger on the pulse of this town since she’d stopped sucking it.

‘That’s not you, is it, Sissy?’ she asked.

‘How did you pick me?’

‘They tell me I’ve got a good ear for voices,’ Maisy said. All seven of her daughters sounded much the same, but she could pick each one of them on the phone. She could pick the voices of most of her cronies, and how could she ever forget Sissy Morrison’s? For twenty-odd years she’d heard a lot of it. ‘What a lovely surprise,’ she said.

‘You wouldn’t happen to be in touch with my mother, would you?’ Sissy asked.

‘Amber?’ Maisy asked, confused by the question. ‘Why on earth would I be in touch with her?’

‘I couldn’t think of anyone else who might be,’ Sissy admitted.

‘I haven’t heard a word about your mother since she went missing from that place in Brunswick. Someone contacted me about her then, but that was years ago. She’s probably dead, love.’

‘She’s not. I’ll swear that I saw her at church last Sunday with Lorna Hooper,’ Sissy said.

And Maisy laughed. ‘That would be a day I’d like to see. From what I remember, Lorna used to cross over the road if she saw your mother coming, and that was before your father died.’

‘She wouldn’t recognise her. Lorna didn’t recognise me at first.’

Or didn’t want to, Maisy thought, but if you can’t say something nice or helpful, it’s better to keep your mouth shut and listen.

‘Alma Duckworth, one of my cousins, has been going to the Kew church for years. We go with them sometimes, and last Sunday I heard this woman talking to the minister and she sounded exactly the same as Mum used to sound when she was putting on the jam for the Hoopers. And she walks like her too.’

‘Does she look like her?’

‘She’s as old as you are. She looks like Methuselah.’

‘He had whiskers, love,’ Maisy said, wondering what Sissy might look like. As a girl, she’d been the living image of old Cecelia, Norman’s mother.

‘There’s more to it,’ Sissy said. ‘She calls herself Elizabeth Duckworth, and Alma and her daughter have been trying for years to connect her up to the family, and they can’t. She’s the only Duckworth that Alma has come across that she hasn’t been able to connect up to one of their dead relatives.’

‘I still say that if she was with Lorna Hooper it’s not your mother.’

‘Lorna wouldn’t know who she’s living with. Alma reckons she’s as blind as a bat.’

‘Someone is having you on about that,’ Maisy said. ‘Lorna Hooper drove herself up here a few years ago in one of those tiny little Morris Minor cars. When we watched her folding herself into the driver’s seat, Jenny said she—’

‘Don’t mention that little slut’s name to me, Maisy.’

‘—looked like a praying mantis folding its legs into a matchbox,’ Maisy finished, or not quite finished. ‘Lorna was seeing well enough to drive that day.’

‘Why would she be visiting
her
?’

Maisy scratched her neck and eyed the phone, aware that whatever she said would be the wrong thing to say. Sissy had been engaged to Jim Hooper at one time and had damn near gone off her head when he’d broken the engagement six weeks before the wedding.

‘Are you there?’ Sissy asked.

‘Yes, love.’ Then she said it. ‘Lorna was visiting her brother. He and . . . and your sister got married.’ Silence at the other end of the line, a painful silence, until Maisy killed it. ‘They’ve got a daughter, a lovely kid who’s training to be a nurse in Melbourne.’

‘As if I care,’ Sissy snapped. ‘And if you’d seen Amber, you’d know her like I did.’

‘They say that everyone’s got a double.’

‘It’s her, not her double. And there’s more. Alma’s old minister’s wife told Alma that Lorna ran over Elizabeth Duckworth near Brunswick, and that they ended up in the same hospital, and when they let them out, Lorna brought her Miss Duckworth home with her. And,’ Sissy said, ‘and – one of the Duckworth cousins is a journalist, and he found out that Amber Morrison went missing from that place in Brunswick at around the same time that Lorna ran down her Miss Duckworth. He said that the accident was in the newspapers, and that they didn’t know who the other woman was for three days – and if that’s too much of a coincidence for you then it’s not for me, or Alma – and if you heard her talking, you’d know I was right about it being Mum. Do you ever get down to Melbourne?’

‘I used to drive down when George was alive but the traffic is too mad for my liking these days.’

‘Is Maureen still living down here?’

‘She’s still in the same house at Box Hill, love.’

‘Would she recognise Mum?’

‘I doubt it. She left town when you and . . . when you were only a bit of a kid.’

Beeps on the line warned them that Telecom’s allocated three minutes were up.

‘I’ll have to go,’ Sissy said. ‘It costs a fortune ringing the country during the day. If you’ve got a pencil handy I’ll give you my number and you can give me a call if you’re ever down here.’

Maisy had a pencil tied to her telephone pad. She noted Sissy’s number, then the line went dead.

And it wasn’t going to end like that – Maisy had never looked at a phone bill in her life. She dialled the new number.

An hour later, the phone back in its cradle, Maisy picked up her car keys and drove around to Jenny’s.

‘You’ll never guess who I’ve been on the phone with!’

‘Who?’

‘Your sister, and she swears that your mother is living with Lorna Hooper in Kew and calling herself Miss Elizabeth Duckworth.’ It was all out before the front door closed behind her. Her news continuing to spill, she followed Jenny through the entrance hall and into a short passage leading to the kitchen, where she claimed her chair at the western end of the table. Handbag and car keys placed down, she continued with her tale.

‘Remember that day I told you how I almost bumped into Amber in Willama, in Woolworths?’ Jenny nodded and went about making a pot of tea. ‘Well,’ Maisy said.

‘Well what?’

‘Well, who just happened to be in your sitting room talking to Jim when I came running in to tell you I’d seen your mother?’

‘Come off the grass, Maisy. As if Lorna would have Amber within spitting distance.’

‘That’s what I said – at first, that’s what I said, but there’s more to it, and the more I heard the more convinced I was. Sissy swears she recognised your mother’s voice while her back was turned to her. She said that when she turned around and saw who that voice was coming from, she almost fell over. She said she looked old, that her hair was white and curly and that she was dressed like a toff. The woman I saw in Woolworths that day was dressed up to the nines and she had short curly white hair underneath her hat.’

‘Ten thousand people live in and around Willama and a good percentage of them are old – and wear hats,’ Jenny said.

‘Okay, now you tell me why two people who hadn’t sighted some woman for thirty-odd years – and who hadn’t sighted each other either – could come up with the exact same description of a woman they thought was your mother – if it wasn’t?’

Jenny offered a biscuit with the cup of tea. Maisy broke it in half then ate the small half while giving a rundown of its calorie content.

‘You’re looking good,’ Jenny said.

‘I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in ten years. I’m off all but one of my blood pressure pills.’

‘Jim,’ Jenny called. He came from the dining room, his typewriter’s summertime residence – he came as far as the doorway. ‘Maisy just had a phone call from Sissy, and she swears that Amber is housekeeping for your sister.’

‘I can think of no two people who deserve each other more,’ Jim said, then returned to his typewriter.

*

It took a month for Maisy to talk Bernie into making the trip down to Melbourne. He hadn’t been back since Dawny’s death, and had no desire to.

‘I’ll take you down on Saturday night if you’ll ride in the ute.’

‘I’ll ride in the ute if you promise to keep your speed down, but it’s not worth going just for one night. We’ll leave Friday night and come home on Monday.’

‘I need to be at the mill on Monday or another one of the old buggers will go me for compo.’

They left on Saturday morning, in the ute. Maisy phoned Sissy five minutes after they arrived and arranged to meet her out the front of the Kew church at ten thirty on Sunday. Then Bernie refused to drive her to the church.

‘Mandy will drive us,’ Maureen said.

Mandy also refused. ‘If she’s who you think she is, Nan, then she’s not someone to go messing about with. Let sleeping dogs lie.’

Six of Maisy’s girls had their driving licences. Maureen wasn’t one of them. She had no desire to disturb murdering Amber, but she’d known Sissy well as a kid, and she wanted to get a look at her.

‘We’ll get a taxi, and ask him to wait,’ Maureen said.

‘No good will come of it, Mum,’ Mandy warned.

They should have listened to her. The taxi arrived late, and they were late getting to the address. Three women and a male stood at the kerb, one of the women glowering. Maisy recognised that glower, and that’s about all she recognised.

‘Oh my God,’ Maureen said, cowering back low in the rear seat as Maisy opened the door.

‘You’re coming with me?’

‘I’m not,’ Maureen said.

Maisy crossed the road alone to greet a giant of a woman clad in a maroon frock straining to fit and not quite managing it. It hugged her swollen stomach, clutched her broad backside, revealed the backs of bare dimpled knees and legs the size of tree stumps. She was her grandmother, old Cecelia Morrison, on a bad day. Taller though, broader, different hair. Old Cecelia’s had been sparse, grey/white and pinned into a bun. Sissy’s was a shoulder-length salt and pepper, sprayed to hold its bouffant style.