The Tying of Threads (30 page)

‘Cathy!’ Cara moaned.

‘Just walk when the organ starts playing,’ Cathy said. ‘Walk, don’t gallop,’ and she waddled down the aisle to Gerry and her boys, and the rest of her mob.

‘Why are they all here, Mummy?’ Tracy asked.

‘Shush, pet. Cathy’s having a party, and we have to do this bit first,’ Cara whispered.

‘Where’s Robbie?’

‘He’s standing with Daddy right at the front. We have to walk down to them now.’

They walked the long aisle holding hands, down to Morrie, to Robin who stood at his father’s side, a very serious, if undersized, best man, his big eyes agog at the transformation of his pixie sister, but the minister, eager to get this done and get down to Melbourne, got down to business.

‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here . . .’

With little interest in long-winded ministers and no previous knowledge of church, Tracy turned to stare at the silent crowd.

‘Why is the party in this place, Robbie?’ Young voices always sound loud in a church.

‘You have to be quiet,’ Robin warned.

Cara had expected trauma, nightmares, when Tracy was released from hospital, but she had no memory of her twenty-four hour ordeal in that carton. The police and their psychologist had spoken to her. She’d told them that she went to sleep in her bed with Bunny Long Ears and when she woke up she was in the sick children’s place and Bunny Long Ears was there too, and who brought him and her there?

Cara had told them more – told them everything. She’d relived her fifteenth year when she’d broken handsome Dino Collins’ nose and knocked out one of his teeth out with the spine of
Mansfield Park.
That’s when his harassment had begun.

She’d stood in the witness box at his trial, willing the jury to believe her, to find him guilty and lock him away forever, and when they hadn’t, she’d howled and wished him dead.

Hated him and, in a wheelchair or not, hospitalised or not, she feared him and wanted those oceans back between her children and him. Only four more days and they’d fly home. Only four more sleeps.

And this was her wedding day and she shouldn’t have been thinking about Dino Collins.

She glanced up as Tracy pointed to where the afternoon sun hit claret glass and shot a ray of red light towards the altar – just as the minister reached the bit about impediments, of anyone knowing just cause as to why this union should not take place, to speak now.

If Myrtle and Robert had found their way to paradise where all questions were answered, they knew of just cause. Were they aiming that shaft of red?

Stop!

Their aim was too high, and it was done and their daughter’s sinful union blessed by God.

*

By seven, Tracy, worn out by her day, was ready for bed. They’d booked a room at a motel, but Robin was watching a television movie with Cathy’s boys and he didn’t want to leave.

Cara took a copy of
Angel at My Door
from her case and placed it on Cathy’s pillow. It had been published in England six weeks ago and was not yet available in Australia. Cathy had been there at its beginning; she’d read a very early draft of it.
Balancing Act
would be ready for its final edit when they got home. There’d be more. With Morrie at her side, all things were possible.

Not all things. They could never have another baby – but they could adopt, and would, very soon. Morrie could never meet the sister he remembered – Georgie, the big girl with hair the colour of new-minted pennies. Cara could have no more contact with Georgie.

Morrie remembered his father, the man with one leg he’d visited in a hospital ward, the man who’d held a six year old boy too tightly and cried. Years ago he’d spoken about meeting his father. He could never meet him now.

Cara had met him, first in the dark of that awful night, then again in Georgie’s kitchen. An excessively tall man, he was a little like his son, but there was more of Jenny in Morrie’s face and personality.

He remembered her too, but had no desire to meet the woman who’d sold him like so much livestock. The aging paper he referred to as his bill of sale was still in his wallet.

But all else was possible.

Cara tucked her sleepy girl into one of Cathy’s son’s beds, kissed her and told her to go to sleep.

‘Where’s Daddy?’

‘He’s talking to all of the people,’ Cara said.

She changed out of her borrowed frock then and looked at its label. Someone had spent big money on it. Loved the sandals, but her feet were relieved to shed them, and the pantihose.

She’d lived in pantihose during her years of teaching. Rarely rolled on a pair these days. Lived in jeans, in comfortable tops and comfortable sandals, and tonight her feet sighed as she slid them into their own sandals.

There was a drip of something on the skirt of the frock. She hadn’t noticed it until she slipped it onto the hanger. It would wash. The label said so.
Hand wash. Drip dry.

Tomorrow.

The frock hung, she returned to Cathy’s party.

The oldies had taken over the comfortable chairs in the lounge room. Cara crept by them and out to the yard to look for Pete, always her favourite cousin. Instead she found Cathy, seated beside her mother on the back veranda.

‘You look worn out, Cath.’

‘Why did you take your dress off?’ Cathy said.

‘I needed to breathe, oh mighty one,’ Cara said.

Cathy patted her mighty belly. ‘It’s on its way,’ she said.

‘She’s been having pains for the last hour,’ her mother said.

‘It’s not due,’ Cara said.

‘It is in ten days, which means it’s a girl. Our boys were all born late.’

‘You’re big enough to be having quintuplets,’ Cara said. ‘One ought to be a girl.’

Y
ears come and go. Few cast reflections more lasting than our reflection in a shop window as we walk by. Yesterday’s melodies linger, but the big news of the day leaves little impression.

Not so the disappearance of the Chamberlain baby. If there was a man or woman in Australia who didn’t follow the inquest into the death of that tiny baby, then he owned no television set, couldn’t read a paper and chose not to speak to his neighbour. Everyone had an opinion.

The inquest claimed the end of one year and the beginning of the next, when because of public interest, the coroner’s findings were televised.

And it was official. A dingo had taken the baby from the couple’s tent. Person or persons unknown had taken the remains from the dingo and disposed of it.

A long hot summer the summer of ’81. The airconditioner, fitted into a sitting room window, battled on as Jenny sweated that summer to a close. Leaves were changing colour before the last of the heat left town. It had taken its toll on the old Hooper house. The constant vibration of the air conditioner had opened up a crack where the ornate cornice met the wall above that window.

There was seventy years of dust trapped above the ceiling. Daily it fell. Cobwebs did what they could to catch it. Last year, Jenny would have climbed a ladder to chase those cobwebs, but Jim, a foot taller, a foot closer to those ridiculously high ceilings, didn’t notice crack or cobweb, so Jenny closed the sitting room doors and allowed the spiders privacy in which to spin. It wasn’t the only crack. There was too much house, too many rooms never used. It needed a plasterer, a painter, and most of its floors complained when she walked on them. Harry said the house needed restumping.

In April,
The Witch Queen
left Woody Creek to commence the second part of the process, and Jim agreed to Jenny booking seats on a bus tour to Ayers Rock, but before she could book them, he became obsessed by Molly Squire.

He and John had put a book together for Jack Thompson’s mother’s hundredth birthday and they’d come upon a handwritten rhyme, titled
Squire Molly
, used as a bookmark in an old hotel guest book, one of several in the carton of photographs, letters and miscellaneous junk that Jack had delivered to Jenny’s dining room. The town of Molliston was named for Molly Squire, its first settler.

By June, Jim, deep into his research, wouldn’t take time off for a trip to Melbourne, or to Willama. By June, his new project had moved from the dining room to Jenny’s warm kitchen. And she’d had her fill of Molly – and of Jim’s rattletrap typewriter – and Jim. Left him sitting one bitter day and drove alone to Willama.

If he’d been with her he would have been driving and she wouldn’t have seen the green disposable lighter when she stepped from the car in Coles’ car park. If that lighter hadn’t flicked into a flame, she would have tossed it into a bin. Maybe if it had been red, she would have tossed it anyway. Had it been amber, she may have stopped long enough to consider her actions, but green meant go, so she walked into Coles and bought a packet of cigarettes. Smoked one before she unlocked the boot to load her supermarket bags. Smoked another before she left for home. Washed her hands well. Bought a bag of mints which she sucked all the way home.

Jim didn’t notice the smell. If she’d smoked the entire packet he wouldn’t have noticed. He probably hadn’t noticed she’d been missing for four hours – and wouldn’t miss her in bed either. She rugged herself up in her overcoat and beanie and went outside to the veranda for a smoke and to write a rhyme about a witch with an itch, and oil of a bat, and tail of a rat. Freezing cold out there but she lit a third cigarette and started a second rhyme, this one titled ‘Confession to Jim’
.

If this paper holds a sniff of ashtray – a minor whiff

do not call me weak. It’s brain retrieval

The conditions cause the stink – just be pleased that I don’t drink

and see my weakness as the lesser of two evils.

Smoking smites a man stone dead, but it’s damn good for his head

Future doctors will prescribe smokes for all ills

With instruction, Don’t exceed more than twenty of the weed

per day. And do remember please that smoking kills

Two o’clock when she placed both rhymes with Jim’s notes on the kitchen table. He was working when she opened the kitchen door at eleven. He actually looked up from his documents.

‘Why, Jen?’

‘Too much Molly and no Alice Springs,’ she said. ‘And Woody Creek, and this bloody cold mausoleum and that mouldy old junk all over my kitchen table.’

*

Trudy phoned on Sunday night. Jim had typed up both rhymes, the witch for Amy, the confession he’d posted to Trudy.

‘How could you, Mum, after all of this time?’

‘Easy.’

‘You admitted to me on Christmas Day that your breathing was better. Why would you do that to yourself?’ Trudy said.

‘It’s not much use having a good set of lungs if you’re suffering from brain rot, Tru – and your father is doing enough nagging so I can do without yours.’

*

In late June, Jim took time off to drive to Molliston. John and Amy went with them. The car was warm. The old-folks’ home they visited was warm. Jim had arranged to go there to interview the elderly, hopeful of unearthing a few factual details on the life and times of Molly Squire. Amy ended up playing the piano while Jenny sang the old songs, and the old folk applauded and wanted more.

John aimed his lens at Molly’s monastery later, which according to the locals was haunted, not by Molly, but by the ghost of her murdered great-granddaughter. Jenny and Amy liked the idea of a ghostly theme. They tossed ideas at Jim on the drive home.

In July, Lady Di married her Prince Charming, to the accompaniment of the rattle and zing of Jim’s typewriter. Jenny watched the spectacle while hemming a wedding gown and a half-acre of train. Di’s gown was more spectacular, her train longer, but the maker should have chosen a non-crushable fabric.

‘Can you stop that noise for five minutes? I can’t hear a word, Jim.’

‘It’s been going for hours,’ he said. As had he – and both would continue a few hours more.

‘Who taught you to touch-type?’

‘I picked it up somewhere,’ he said without glancing up from his copy.

In one of the rehabilitation hospitals he’d spent years in, or from his sisters? Both taboo subjects. Jenny had never ‘picked it up’, though long and close association with his rattling relic had taught her the basics. She used it to type out her accounts – used the old hunt-and-peck method. Each of his fingers had its own eye. He could look at his handwritten notes while his fingers flew those worn keys.

She turned the television volume higher and stitched on. She had another wedding gown and three bridesmaids’ frocks coming in next week. Shouldn’t have agreed to do that wedding, not in winter. Her sewing room was a tomb in winter.

*

Through August she spent her days in that tomb where a small electric heater did little to mitigate the chill while Jim rattled in her warm kitchen.

Then September, and the Chamberlains back on the front page of newspapers. Forensic experts in England had found evidence of a small bloody handprint, a woman’s handprint, on the back of the baby’s jumpsuit.

In September, Jenny’s latest wedding gown made the society page of the
Willama Gazette
.

The bride’s fairytale gown, created by Mrs Jennifer Hooper . . .

Fame at last for old mother Hooper, Jenny thought, a clever lady with a needle and thread. She’d never wanted that fame. She’d wanted to be a famous singer. She could still do it, still did it – at funerals and old-folks’ homes.

She’d never wanted to live in Vern Hooper’s house. That had been Jim’s decision. Most decisions were.

‘You have a lovely home,’ the mother of the society bride had said.

Was it lovely? The sitting room may have looked lovely to one who didn’t have to freeze in it, look up at the cracks and at the globe in the fancy light fitting that had blown. Last year, Jenny would have carried the stepladder in from the shed and replaced the globe. Jim was no good on ladders.

He was good at pruning, but hadn’t touched a pair of secateurs this winter. She did what she could once the sun came back, a smoke in one hand, secateurs in the other. She was pruning when Jim emerged from hibernation.