The Tying of Threads (25 page)

‘The only person you’ve ever been in love with is yourself, now get out of my kitchen before I say worse.’

‘Can you lend me enough money to get my case – and for a bit of petrol?’

‘Go.’

‘I’ll pay you back every penny I owe you when I get Macka’s money.’

‘Let me know when and I’ll post you an account for the last twenty years.’

Lila hadn’t moved from her chair. She was eating toast, drinking tea, and when she placed her cup down, Jenny snatched it and poured it down the sink.

‘Take your toast or it goes in the rubbish bin.’

‘We’ve been friends for thirty years.’

‘You’ve got a nerve to pull that after what you did!’ Jenny said, but Jim was back. She snatched her cigarettes from the table and walked out as he attempted to walk in. ‘You knew I was in the shower. Why didn’t you lock that door?’

He followed her out to the east-side veranda where she lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke towards the yellow car blocking him out of the drive.

‘Have you got any money on you?’

‘Not much,’ he said.

‘Is the chequebook still in the glove box?’

‘I didn’t take it out.’

‘Drive out and pay the caravan bloke what she owes him, and get her case. It’s the only way I’ll get rid of her.’

For the half-hour it took him to drive out to the park, pay the man and drive back, Jenny stood on the veranda smoking, her hair drying wild. She took the case from his hand at the gate, tossed it onto Lila’s passenger seat, then told him to drive around to Teddy’s garage and buy her a packet of smokes. He didn’t approve of her smoking but he was scared of Lila. He went, and Jenny returned to the kitchen to rid herself of the ‘friend’ who had plagued her life for thirty years.

‘The case is in your car. Go.’

‘It’s out of petrol,’ Lila said.

Jenny opened her handbag, found two dollars eighty in coins and threw them on the table. Coins roll. Lila rose to retrieve then count them.

‘That won’t get me far, and who helped you out when you got yourself up the duff in Sydney?’

‘Get out of my house and my life, and stay out of it,’ Jenny said.

‘I came up here for my husband’s funeral, expecting to get a bit of sympathy, and everyone is treating me like poison.’

‘If they’d been able to find you when he died, you might have got a bit of sympathy. If you’d let his mother know he was dying she might have got up there to say goodbye.’

‘How was I to know he was dying?’

Jenny was a pacifist at heart. Blame Norman for that. She walked away from confrontations, most confrontations. She’d doused Lorna Hooper with a dish of pan fat and water one night. She’d smashed Vern Hooper’s windscreen one day. There was fire in her belly when she allowed it to burn. It took a lot of bad words to move Lila Jones/Roberts/Freeman/Macdonald from her kitchen, and more to get her into her two-seater car, and before it roared out of town, Jenny was shaking.

By midday, she had a migraine, which might have been the reason why she walked away from confrontations. She swallowed a handful of aspros, and when they refused to hit the spot, she tried to walk it off. Walked out Forest Road, walked on towards Granny’s land, needing the peace of that land today, and Granny. Still caught glimpses of her moving around in the orchard. Still heard her voice in the call of a bird. But not that day. She wandered those fifteen acres cursing the fool of a girl she’d once been.

But she hadn’t been a fool in Sydney. She’d been Jenny Hooper, the young mother of a beautiful boy with a husband away fighting a war. When he’d been listed as missing she’d found work, doing the only thing she’d known how to do, sewing at a clothing factory while Myrtle, her landlady, had looked after Jimmy.

She’d worked hard, had saved her money so she and Jimmy could stay safe with Myrtle until Jim was found and brought home. Didn’t know how she’d become involved with Lila, but there’d been no real harm in her, not in those days. She’d been a beautiful, brainless kid with twin sons, a mother-in-law in Newcastle and a nineteen year old husband in the army. Then everything turned bad.

Jenny had been six months pregnant with Cara when she’d been forced to leave the factory, then a week or so later she’d cut her ties with Lila and hidden for three months in Myrtle’s private rooms. Three weeks after that Yankee baby was out of her, she’d gone home to Granny.

Had never told her about Cara. Had never told Jim, and she was scared stiff of Lila’s mouth. She didn’t know there’d been a baby. Years ago Jenny had lied to her about having a late abortion, but she still knew too much.

‘I have to get out of this town, Granny.’

*

On the following Tuesday afternoon Jenny learned from Maisy how far her two dollars eighty had taken Lila.

‘That Scott solicitor rang me up yesterday demanding that I give Lila access to her husband’s money,’ Maisy said. ‘Macka had nothing left to give her access to. They’d been living high on the pig’s back, renting a fancy apartment, where they haven’t paid their rent for the last month – and they owe two payments on that car she’s driving around in. The finance company tried to repossess it up there, a bloke told Bernie, which I told Scott. If you’re looking after the widow’s affairs, I said, then we’ll post down their bills to you. You should see their credit card bills.’

Jenny had no interest in Lila’s bills, only her whereabouts. ‘Is she living in Willama?’

‘She’s working at the big restaurant in the centre of town and living with one of the waitresses, five houses down from Rebecca. I won’t be eating there again,’ Maisy said.

‘She won’t be there long. She’s never liked work.’

‘Sissy was saying last Sunday that your mother hasn’t changed.’

‘Still murdering, you mean?’

‘She can’t remember anything about Norman, Sissy said, and I meant her cleaning. By the sound of things, they’re getting on better. She was telling me too that your mother can’t even remember my name,’ Maisy said.

‘She’s not my mother. If you have to talk about her, call her Amber,’ Jenny said.

‘Anyway, she reckons that Amber’s brain injuries from the accident wiped out everything that happened to her before the accident, that her memories start from when she woke up in hospital, which is why she didn’t know her own name and why she didn’t recognise Lorna,’ Maisy said. ‘I saw a movie once about a woman who lost her memory after an accident, then she got another hit on the head and it all came back to her.’

‘If they’re looking for a volunteer to swing the hammer, I’ll put my hand up,’ Jenny said.

‘You’re all talk and no action,’ Maisy said. ‘Anyway, she’s still writing to Lorna, who keeps posting her letters back. She even posted back her Christmas card, Sissy said. She’s got it into her head lately that your mother and Lorna must have been on together.’

Jenny hadn’t laughed in weeks, but the visual image of Amber and Lorna ‘on together’ broke her up. She laughed until she coughed, coughed until she choked, until Maisy told her that she’d need to give up smoking.

At four, Jenny started chopping onions for a stew, and Maisy took the hint and left. The stew boiling, Jenny moved it to the hob to simmer then went to her sewing room where a half-finished ballgown lay across the cutting table. It was supposed to be ready for a final fitting tomorrow morning at eleven. She’d have to work tonight, and her sight was no longer good enough for night sewing. It might have been if she’d given in to reading glasses. Jim lived in glasses. He reached for them before he reached for his leg in the mornings. She didn’t want to become dependent on glasses and swore she’d give up sewing before she did.

Age was in her head lately, the big SIXTY out there on the horizon, flashing its neon sign. The older she grew the faster the years flew.

Trudy would turn twenty-one in April and she’d said the last time she rang that she didn’t want a Woody Creek party. And who could blame her for that? She had a lot of friends, Melbourne friends, and other than hiring one of the reception places down there and having the party catered, there was no way and no place Jenny could organise a twenty-first party. Leave it to her to organise it. Give her a limit and tell her to do whatever she liked within that limit.

The big machine humming, Jenny sat before it, feeding a pretty green crepe beneath its foot while her mind travelled. Sewing was therapy for the hands, not the mind. She thought of Lila’s fancy car, which Jim said would have cost a fortune. She thought of the mill, of the money Maisy had paid Macka for his half-share of it. How long ago? Not long after Margot’s funeral.

Living high on the pig’s back –
Lila must have revelled in that. When she’d moved to Woody Creek as Mrs Billy Roberts, she’d lived in an old house and driven an old car. She’d lived well with the Freeman chap, the semi invalid son of rich parents, and Lila closer to his mother’s age than to his. Of her four husbands, two had divorced her. The Freeman chap had suffered a heart attack fourteen months after the wedding. Macka hadn’t lasted much longer. Who would the next fool be?

Jenny shook her mind back to Trudy. She was a gem of a kid, a gem Jenny had failed to recognise twenty-one years ago. Back in ’59 she’d seen Margot’s underdone infant as another problem to overcome. It wasn’t until she and Vroni Andrews had picked up that tiny baby from the hospital, until Jenny had smelt the familiar Georgie and Jimmy scent of new life, that she’d recognised Trudy as her own – her own granddaughter – and Trudy didn’t know it. Wished she knew it.

What would you say if I said I wanted to raise her, Jim?

That you were giving me a second chance to do something worthwhile.

Trudy had given him his one chance at fatherhood and he’d jumped into it feet first. She’d offered Jenny motherhood at an age when she’d been ready for it. They’d had three perfect years before Raelene had come into their perfect lives to shake them up. Dead. Margot dead. Jimmy gone. Only Georgie and Trudy now. Georgie would turn forty on 26 March. Trudy’s birthday was on 11 April.

She didn’t look twenty-one, or not to Jenny. She’d grown into her face and height as a thirteen year old and had altered little since. Same slightly turned-up nose, same wide innocent eyes, though not so innocent. Living with Raelene had opened them – and nursing had done the rest. A fine mixture, Trudy Juliana Hooper. She had Teddy’s mouth, his teeth. She had a smidgen of Harry around the nose. Her hands and eyes were Elsie’s. There wasn’t a smidgen of Jenny in her and there should have been. There was more of Jim – she had his calm good sense, his logic, his attitude to cigarettes, too – but not one drop of his blood.

She hadn’t inherited his hang-up about eating out at hotels. On 11 April, she booked a table for fourteen at the White Horse Hotel, not too far from Ringwood or Box Hill, where she and Sophie lived and worked. Only one of Trudy’s mates being a smoker, there were no ashtrays on the table. Georgie and Jenny and the young male smoking friend made frequent trips out to a large ashtray in the foyer.

Jim drank two glasses of wine. He sat until nine, yawned until nine thirty, then handed the chequebook to Jenny and drove alone to Ringwood. It was after midnight when the waiter refused Jenny’s cheque. Georgie handed over her bank card and Jenny ripped up one cheque and wrote another, payable to Georgie, who taxied her out to Ringwood.

Three days later they drove home to Woody Creek to an uproar. Old Joe Flanagan had bought a brand new Toyota, a Jap car, and in Woody Creek, Jap was still a dirty word – and this two weeks before Anzac Day! It was sufficient to convince many that old Joe Flanagan had lost his marbles along with his missus.

He was missing her. He’d been advertising in the
Willama Gazette
for months for a cleaner/cook but got no takers in Woody Creek. And he wouldn’t only be missing Rosie in his kitchen. She’d spent half her life working like a slave in his milking shed.

A hated man, Joe Flanagan, but he had pups for sale, a litter of seven, and he bred the best dogs in the district, dogs the farmers wanted. John and Amy McPherson looked at Joe’s pups but changed their minds when he told them his price.

His nature was imprinted on his face, a mean, miserable ferret of a face – like his sons, with an added greasy grey goatee beard and moustache. He had a full head of greasy grey hair which hadn’t seen a pair of scissors since poor Rosie had died. He dressed like a pensioner down on his luck and the mean old coot had money coming out of his ears.

Jenny wasn’t concerned about Joe Flanagan, his Toyota, his advertisement or his pups. Since the night of the party, since Trudy had kissed her and told her it was like kissing an ashtray, she’d given up smoking. Yes, the Olympic Games were being held in Russia this year and, yes, their troops were causing havoc in Afghanistan and, yes, half a dozen countries were boycotting the Games in protest. And who cared? Jenny wanted a smoke.

Then it was Anzac Day and Jim sat as he always sat on Anzac Day, and if she turned the television on to watch the march, he turned it off. She walked off in a huff to watch the meagre Woody Creek parade, stood alone watching men form up on Charlie’s corner, then march down to the town hall for the service. Every Anzac Day since ’59 she’d stood alone while Jim withdrew to his silent place. She’d asked him years ago why he denied that day. He’d told her it was a public holiday in celebration of massacre.

Giving up smoking was supposed to be easier if you got through the first week. She’d got through two weeks and this past week had been harder than the first. It wasn’t as if there was a time limit on weeks. It was for life, and when Jim was in one of his withdrawn moods, smoking saved her sanity.

All things pass, as did Anzac Day, and by May, seven farmers forgave Joe Flanagan and his Toyota long enough to buy a pup.

In May, Malcolm Fraser, Australia’s prime minister, appealed to Australian athletes to boycott the Moscow games, but the Olympic Committee decided to send half of the team. They’d probably end up in gulags, but they probably issued cigarettes in gulags. Jenny had never smoked a Russian cigarette. Someone had given her a Turkish cigarette once. If a Russian offered her one today, she’d smoke it. If Joe Flanagan offered her his pipe, she’d smoke it.