The Tying of Threads (7 page)

He stood a while beside Margot’s grave, blasting rotten egg gas – and maybe it was the wrong place to be doing it, so he backed off and found his way to old Cecelia Morrison
née
Duckworth’s stone, feeling no guilt about blasting there. He could just about remember that super superior old bugger.

Poor old Norman was in with his mother now, poor harmless old Norman dead in his bed for three days before they found him – and found crazy Amber, his wife, standing on a chair, cleaning out her bathroom cupboard.

The moon lit the three angels guarding Cecelia’s tombstone, as it had on other nights when Bernie and Macka had added a few missing appendages. No chalk in his pockets tonight but a lot of bad memories rolling in his gut.

They’d told Jenny they were going to sacrifice her on that cement slab for a bit of good weather.

You stink like a pair of pole cats. Let me up.

A swarm of goose bumps rising thick on Bernie’s soul, he stepped back, remembering the night they’d deflowered little Jenny Morrison on that slab, he and Macka – which most of the time he remembered like something he’d been told that they’d done, or maybe like one of the roles he’d played in the school concerts.

Still real to Jenny. She hated his guts.

They hadn’t meant to do it. They hadn’t. She’d been like one of their sisters, her and Sissy both. They’d been mucking around, that’s all. They’d found her sitting on the oval fence, listening to the band music, and decided to have a bit of fun with her, that’s all. Dragged her through the hole in the fence and held her down on that stone.

I forgot to bring me sacrificial dagger.

Have you got something that would do the job, because by the Jesus, I have.

I dare you.

Don’t you dare me, you ugly bastard.

If Macka hadn’t done it first, Bernie wouldn’t have – or maybe he would have. Didn’t know now if he would have or he wouldn’t have. Didn’t know if he was coming or going, what he thought or didn’t think, or if what he thought he thought was what he thought or what he thought he ought to think, if what he felt was what he thought he ought to feel or if he felt it.

Still erupting from time to time he walked the moonlit paths to the fence and the peppercorn tree, and he found the hole, or found where it had been. Someone had repaired it with twists of wire.

Nothing stayed the same. This place wasn’t the playground it had once been – not since they’d carried his father out here. Bernie had found him dead in the mill office, halfway through filling the pay envelopes. No one had been paid that Friday and not one bugger had complained about not being paid. There wasn’t a man in town who hadn’t respected George Macdonald.

Or Dawny.

She haunted his dreams. Still nagged the hell out of him at times. Eight sisters he had, all older. Seven now. One by one they’d die and be brought out to this bloody place. Maisy would go next – if she was lucky. Then Maureen. She was pushing seventy.

‘A man would be better off having a fast heart attack and going first,’ he muttered, and he went home to drape a blanket over his curtain rod.

It kept the moon outside where it belonged.

S
omeone may have once told Amber Morrison that cleanliness was next to godliness. She may have taken those words to heart. Experts who studied the workings of the human mind might have diagnosed her obsessive desire to eradicate every speck of dust, every smear of grime from her world as a desire for inner cleanliness, which, to those who knew her history, could suggest she possessed a conscience.

They’d be wrong. Had Amber bothered to self-diagnose she’d have blamed the twenty-two years spent on her mother’s fifteen acres, shovelling chook dung from the floors of fowl pens, raking up goat and horse dung, sweeping up the muck her mother tracked into their two-roomed hut on her working boots. Gertrude Foote’s idea of cleanliness had differed from that of her daughter.

The hut of Amber’s childhood had burnt to the ground five days before Christmas. She’d read every report on the tragedy with relish, had read every news item aloud to Lorna, who had also shown interest.

In April of 1978 Amber read a brief report on the inquest into the death of Margot Macdonald Morrison, disinterested in the one who had died in the fire or in how she’d died. It was the details, the accompanying photograph, that caught her interest. She knew exactly where the cameraman had been standing when he’d taken the photograph, and at what time of day.

She stared at the walnut tree a mite too long, long enough for Lorna to reach out talon-tipped fingers to tap the newspaper. ‘Are we reading or dreaming this morning, Duckworth?’

Her teeth exposed in what served Amber as a smile, she turned the page.

Six days a week Elizabeth Duckworth read aloud to her benefactor. Between ten and twelve each morning they sat at the dining room table, the broadsheet newspaper spread between them, the items of interest to Lorna circled by Lorna in red. Given good light and the aid of a magnifying glass, she could read, though her sight, damaged in the accident that had given birth to her Duckworth guide-dog companion, Lorna’s sight had continued to deteriorate. Twice each day, Amber fetched eye-drops she dripped into Lorna’s eyes, which, when the beetle-brown iris disappeared beneath reptilian eyelids, looked like pickled onions.

Lorna’s injured nose produced its own drops. She’d always snorted. Now she sniffed and snorted. In her seventieth year, proud Miss Hooper was a sorry sight. She’d been likened to a totem pole in her youth – a black-draped pole now, short steel wire inserted into its head, its hawk nose mutilated.

Amber was several years her benefactor’s senior. Elizabeth Duckworth wasn’t. When she’d taken that name, she’d deducted seven years from her own birth date. And why not? If one was taking on a new identity, why not remove a few of the worst years from her past life?

There were days when she cursed her choice of name. Given her situation at the time of its choosing, ‘Duckworth’ had epitomised respectability and, above all else, Amber Morrison had required that undoubted respectability. Should have chosen Smith, Jones, Brown.

Had she recognised the bandage-swathed woman in the second hospital bed, she would have. She’d seen only the spikes of grey hair, the hospital-issue gown. Had she heard her wardmate’s natural voice she may have recognised her haughty tones, but for two weeks, Lorna’s mutilated nose had been packed with gauze; the tones she’d emitted were minimal and unfamiliar. Not until much later, until the bandages and gauze packing were removed, had Amber recognised Lorna Hooper’s snort of disdain, but by then, left with poor sight in one eye and less in the other, she’d become dependent on Miss Duckworth’s excellent vision.

Unsociable was not a word to describe Amber’s benefactor. Antisocial, uncharitable, demanding, ill-tempered, an unrelenting enemy may have sufficed. However, to one who had lived for sixteen years with the insane, then for a few years more with the dregs of humanity, cohabiting with a tyrannical, evil-minded hag was, to Amber, next door to paradise – or her staid brick house set in a quiet Kew street was.

Amber delighted in Lorna’s wall to wall carpets. She vacuumed them with love. She delighted in the large expanses of outdoor concrete she swept daily, and in her spacious bedroom with its crisp white lace curtains and matching bedcover. Here, in paradise, she was living the clean life she’d craved since childhood.

Joanne Hooper’s fine furniture filled Lorna’s rooms. Joanne Hooper’s delicate ornaments, locked away in a dark sideboard for years, had been removed from their tomb, washed and placed once again on display.

Lorna’s obsession with church was the one uncomfortable stone in Amber’s comfortable life. Church rubbed her up the wrong way, or the mother and daughter, Alma and Valda Duckworth, who attended Lorna’s church did. They’d moved into a house little more than a block and a half from Lorna’s locked gates. Since learning they were not the only Duckworths in the area, they’d become determined to link Miss Elizabeth into their clan.

Amber had a place there, on the periphery, through Norman’s mother Cecelia Morrison
née
Duckworth. Though considerably younger, Alma had been Norman’s first cousin. Amber had met her parents, Uncle Wilber and his wife. She’d met Alma’s oldest sister when the Duckworths came in force to Woody Creek to attend Norman’s mother’s funeral. It was their invasion that killed Amber’s second son, or forced him to make his entrance into the world prematurely.

Five times Amber had swollen with child. Only Sissy survived her birth. Amber had loved her girl, if only for living. A love not reciprocated. When Amber was released from the asylum with no place to go, Sissy had refused to see her.
Your daughter has made a new life for herself
—

A new life with the Duckworths. Amber had seen her with Alma and Valda Duckworth at Lorna’s church. On the first occasion, she hadn’t recognised the draughthorse of a woman who’d pushed ahead of her in the queue to get out of the church door. She’d recognised her later, as had Lorna.

‘That obnoxious female,’ Lorna named her. A fair description. Sissy had become obnoxious in appearance and manner.

On the second occasion, as she’d walked Lorna down the aisle to their front pew, Amber, recognising Sissy’s mammoth back, had warned Lorna who’d led the way out through the side door, then through the shrubbery to the car park.

That was the day Amber decided it was time to move on. She’d accrued funds enough to rent her own small unit – somewhere. She’d looked at advertisements until learning that her pension would be hard-pressed to pay the rent on a single bedroom unit.

And was Sissy likely to recognise her? Amber’s once beige-blonde shoulder-length hair was now short silky white curls. Her shoes had once been bought to last, her garments chosen for their lack of colour. In Kew, she’d been able to satisfy her craving for smart expensive shoes, for the pretty hats and the pretty frocks she’d craved in her youth.

Since her release from the asylum she’d been in receipt of a pension. It still arrived each fortnight. Had her benefactor known about it, Amber would have been out on the street. Only last week Lorna had circled a report in the
Age
of the arrest of one hundred and eighty Greek Australians alleged to have been involved in a conspiracy to defraud the Social Security Department. Amber Morrison’s private mailbox was in the city. She accessed it monthly on hair-cutting days, when Amber’s bankbook had a brief outing before being posted back to Box 282 GPO, MELB.

It amused her to imagine Lorna’s expression should she learn of her own involvement in a conspiracy to defraud. She’d been instrumental in securing Miss Elizabeth Duckworth’s pension, and thus obtaining at no cost to herself her ‘Duckworth’/cleaner/guide-dog/reader/cook.

*

Jenny’s mind was on bank accounts – Georgie’s bank account in particular. She was opening mail addressed to her daughter, hoping for a statement from the Commonwealth Bank and evidence of another cashed cheque. The last statement had shown three cashed cheques, two for uneven amounts, which suggested payment of bills, but one had been for two hundred dollars.

There was no bank statement amongst today’s mail. Bills from suppliers, a three-year term deposit was maturing at a city bank.

‘Nothing?’ Emma asked.

‘Nothing.’

Until circumstances had thrown them together, Jenny and Emma had rarely spoken. Emma, a year or two Jim’s senior, had been raising a family before Jenny became the town scandal. They’d spent a couple of uncomfortable days together, but women, forced to spend eight hours a day in close confines, don’t remain strangers. They got on well now, and were hopeful that morning. Prospective renters were arriving from Melbourne at eleven, their call the only one received from the agent’s city advertisement.

Two weeks ago the Bendigo couple had driven up to look the place over, which had taken them five minutes. The woman sneered at Charlie’s old cash drawer and docket book system then, without a word, walked out. Her cocky little bantam husband had at least nodded a form of goodbye.

‘Heritage’, had since been added to the agent’s advertisement. This morning’s couple knew what they were driving hours to see – if they understood English. Their name was Con-dappa-doppa-something or other.

Emma, as desperate as Jenny to return to her own life, had lined up a dozen customers to come in at five- or ten-minute intervals – her sisters, her brother’s wives, her husband and her eighty-odd year old mother. All is fair in love and war and in the getting rid of unwanted property.

Jenny had done what she could. She’d raided Ray’s insurance account to pay for a few improvements since the Bendigo woman’s sneer. After the fire Georgie and Teddy Hall had broken into the shop through the storeroom window to retrieve the shop’s and the ute’s spare keys. There was new glass now in that window, and the smell of fresh paint.

By eleven, the prospective renters hadn’t arrived, which necessitated an alteration to Emma’s customer roster, but the Con- doppa-somethings eventually came and while Jenny played guide, Emma handled the customers, who rang Charlie White’s cow bell at five- and ten-minute intervals.

The Greek couple barely glanced at the bookwork where Jim’s neat figures took over from Georgie’s larger figures. Jenny showed them the cash drawer, the old docket book system – the heritage bit – then left them to look around. They’d driven a long way and were in no hurry to leave. They walked out the back door and came in the front, then reversed their steps.

Jim called just before one, impatient for a verdict.

‘No verdict,’ Jenny whispered. ‘They’ve got their measuring tape out now, and we haven’t had a customer since the rush of Fultons. Call Amy and Maisy and ask them to come in and buy something.’

He didn’t call them, but drove around to buy a packet of cornflakes. Jenny added two packets of cigarettes to his order, two kilos of sugar and a pound of butter. The prospective renters watched Jim hand over his money and receive his change and docket then followed him out to the veranda where the male leaned against a leaning veranda post. A passing dog approached, wanting that post, but the woman flung a stream of Greek at it and the dog moved on.