Wind in the Wires (11 page)

Carolyn’s father referred to Jessica’s town as Pandora’s box. ‘Don’t open it, my dear,’ he said.

In her head, Carolyn knew he was probably right, which didn’t stop her from wanting to meet Jessica, or at least to see her from a distance, or from behind one of those one-way mirrors maybe where you can see without being seen.

She’d seen a couple of photographs of her half-brother, taken when he was tiny. They were in Martha’s old photograph album. There were no photographs of his sisters. Did they look like her? Were they married? There were so many questions for which she had no answer . . .

The phone rang. A phone jangling in a silent house when your mind is a thousand miles away makes your heart jump. She walked to it, stood over it, counting the rings until it rang out. It could have been Myrtle or Robert checking on her, but they knew she never answered the phone. It could have been Uncle John. Gran Norris might have decided to have a deathbed scene. She hadn’t had one for six months. Cara waited, expecting the phone to ring again. And it did, and expected or not, each time it rang it sucked the marrow out of her bones. Three times she allowed it to ring out, then, when it gave up for the third time, she removed the receiver from its cradle and buried it.

She was in the bathroom, writing about the sound of telephones in the night, when a motorbike roared up the street. Her pencil stilled. Dozens of men rode motorbikes in this town. It wasn’t him.

But it was. It slowed out front, putter-spluttered for a moment, then the putter-splutter died and her heart jumped up to her throat and stayed there. She should have let that phone keep ringing. He knew now that she was in the house, and alone. Robert’s car wasn’t parked in the drive.

‘Stupid fool!’ Stood frozen in the bathroom, listening.

Heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel, then the wire door opening.

She was a rat in a trap in that bathroom. Crept out to the passage as he knocked again; then, her shoes off, she continued to the entrance hall where she armed herself with a crystal vase. Stood, her back to the wall. She’d be hidden by the door if he got it open. And with only a cheap wooden door between them, when he knocked again it vibrated her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.

He gave up. His footsteps crunched away.

Heart beating too fast, thumping in her ears, attempting to listen for the gate over its thumping, listen for the bike’s motor. Then she heard him at her bedroom window, tapping on glass. It was locked, all of the windows were locked.

He knew how to break glass.

She ran to the telephone, waiting for the sound of breaking glass. A car approached spraying its light across the front of the house. Too early to be Robert and Myrtle. The car went by.

Stood, phone in her hand, panting air through her mouth like a caged cat as the rear wire door squealed on its hinges. No car lights to expose him out there. Trees to hide behind out there. Shadows.

And what use was a telephone? What good would it do? If he broke in it would take too long for that phone to bring the police or anyone else. She had to open the front door and run. Or find something better than a vase.

She was in the kitchen, feeling for Myrtle’s long carving knife, when the screen door slammed shut. No gravel at the rear of the house. No footsteps. Stood, listening, waiting, that long knife in her hand and heard the gate slam. Heard his bike cough. Cough-cough-cough, then roar its frustration to the night, then gone. Cara, her lungs screaming for air, her hand shaking, placed the knife on the table and sat down. Sat in the kitchen close to that knife until Myrtle and Robert drove in at eleven. She was in bed before their key turned in the lock.

She sat beside her parents in church on Sunday morning because she was afraid to stay alone in the house. Myrtle and Robert didn’t know they had Dino Collins to thank for her company. She prayed too, not that she expected her prayers to be answered. God wasn’t into causing his children to crash motorbikes into brick walls, to have head-on smashes with semitrailers. That’s what she prayed for.

*

God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, according to the Bible and Myrtle. He didn’t manage the semitrailer or the brick wall, but he got Dino Collins. He and Tony Bell were seen climbing in through the back window of a shop and someone called the police. They got them as they were climbing out, and that night Cara wrote a chapter about Carolyn, who converted to the Catholic faith and became a nun . . . except, who had a clue how girls went about becoming nuns? She had to skip over that part, jump over a few years then send her off to work in an orphanage.

Tony’s father put up money to get him out of jail. Dino’s old aunty didn’t. The local newspaper ran a full-page story about him, a rehash of the boy hero story, and an old photograph of him and his parents. The judge would likely let him off with a warning but maybe he’d get a taste of how that cat felt in that box before the judge let him off.

She flipped pages to the editorial, which was sometimes interesting. Glanced at the first paragraph, about murderers released back into the community after they’d served their sentences, and about one woman locked in a Melbourne asylum for the criminally insane, and the group of people working to have her released. She’d been abused by her brutal husband since her wedding day, then one night she’d murdered him with a carving knife, in his bed. Cara was thinking about murdering Dino Collins with a carving knife when
Woody Creek
jumped up from the page.

And
Morrison. Amber Morrison.

How many Morrison families lived in that town? She was probably one of Cara’s relatives.

She scanned the editorial for Jenny’s name, found out that Amber, who was fifty years old, had given birth to four dead babies in about four years, and no wonder she’d murdered her husband.

An unusual name, Amber. Cara glanced at Myrtle, wondering if she dared ask her if Jenny had ever mentioned an Aunty Amber, or a cousin Amber. Glanced at Robert. He’d read that editorial, see
Woody Creek stationmaster
and that newspaper would disappear.

She knew the story of Pandora’s box, how the lid once lifted could never be closed, and how the plagues of hell had come pouring out. Her father may well have been right about Woody Creek.

L
ETTING
G
O

S
ix times though 1960 the Keatings and the Hoopers met at Kilmore where Raelene and her luggage were moved from one car to the other. Her first visits with Jenny went well, Raelene pleased to see her and to go with Georgie to see what the men had done to Granny’s house. She liked Jim’s house, didn’t like him sleeping in Jenny’s bed, did her best to ignore Trudy but, all in all, she appeared to enjoy herself.

The fourth visit, in January of ’61, didn’t start well. Clarrie drove her alone to Kilmore. He looked stressed, and within minutes of making the transfer, Jenny knew why. Raelene didn’t want to be there. She was going to miss her friend’s birthday party.

‘You could have come after the party, Raelie.’

‘Clarrie said I couldn’t because his mother got sick and he has to go down there, and Florence is sick too, and I’m sick of her always sick, and I’m sick of here too. It’s too hot.’

It was. They’d had three days with temperatures in the high nineties.

‘At home when it’s hot I’m allowed to go to the swimming pool.’

‘We’ve got a whole creek up here to swim in,’ Jenny said.

‘At home people swim in clean blue swimming pools.’

‘You used to swim in the creek with Georgie when you were little.’

‘It stinks of dead fish,’ Raelene said.

John and Amy McPherson popped in at four and caught Raelene in a foul mood and Jenny attempting to bribe her out of it with an ice-cream from the café. Amy had been Raelene’s teacher for two years. She’d known a happier child.

‘Do you like your new school?’ she asked.

‘No, and you said we’d go up and get an ice-cream.’

‘When the sun goes down.’

‘Before you didn’t say when the sun goes down. I want one now. Why haven’t you got ice-cream in your fridge anyway? At home we’ve always got ice-cream.’

‘Aren’t you a lucky girl,’ Amy said.

‘How long is she staying here for?’ the little bugger said.

‘Mrs McPherson is visiting with me, and if you can’t behave like a good girl, you can go to your room and there’ll be no ice-cream.’

Amy and John went home, and Jenny went about the preparation of dinner.

She had served the meal before she noticed Raelene was missing. They searched the house and garden, unaware that Jenny’s purse had also gone missing until they sighted Raelene returning with the purse, and a double-header ice-cream.

They met her at the gate where Jenny claimed both. She had a good lick of the ice-cream before tossing it into the gutter.

Raelene’s scream of disbelief might have raised the dead. Her kick to Jenny’s shin would raise a bruise. She didn’t hang around to see the results, but took off towards Blunt’s Road, bellowing like Flanagan’s bull.

‘Was that a bit harsh, Jen?’ Jim asked.

‘Not if it teaches her that there’s no gain in stealing,’ Jenny said.

A few years ago, she would have run her down. Tonight she tracked her, over Blunt’s crossing and into South Road, through the little park between Maisy’s house and the town hall. Raelene didn’t stop to play on the swing.

Jenny tailed her to the sports oval, where she kicked off her shoes and chased her down. And Raelene threw herself down to kick. Jenny grabbed an ankle and got one shoe off, fought her for the other shoe, dodging blows.

‘I can hit back, Raelene,’ she warned.

‘You hit me I’ll tell Flo, and she won’t ever make me come back to this rotten hot place again.’

Do I want you to come back? Jenny thought.

She carried her from the oval, Raelene screaming and fighting all the way. She carried her into the park where she put her down and held her arms, dodged her barefoot kicks. The town must have heard her screams. Jenny was damn near ready to give up the fight when Joss Palmer, one of Maisy’s sons-in-law, came out to the veranda and asked her if she needed a bit of a hand.

He drove them home.

The papers signed in the Frankston solicitor’s office had given Jenny a week with Raelene in June and September, and two weeks in January. That night, Raelene still screaming, still kicking, but at her locked bedroom door, Jenny walked up to the phone box to call the Keating number.

Clarrie picked it up. ‘Flo is feeling a bit seedy,’ he said. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Raelene is miserable. She wants to go to her friend’s birthday party.’

‘She can be a bit of a handful,’ Clarrie admitted.

‘We’ll get her down to you tomorrow, Clarrie.’

‘I can’t take time off from work,’ he said.

‘We’ll get her out to Box Hill.’

They left before daylight and took the back road into Melbourne, through Seymour, Yea and Lilydale, where they parked the car and hoped it would be there when they returned. They caught a train to the Box Hill station, a taxi out to the Keating house, unloaded Raelene and her luggage, and minutes later the taxi delivered them back to the station for the return trip.

The car was waiting where they’d left it, and hot. The seats hot enough to fry eggs on, the steering wheel untouchable. And Trudy worn out by her day.

‘Never again, Jim.’

‘You’ll change your mind,’ he said.

‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘She might not look like Ray, but she’s his daughter!’

By three they were home, red-faced and sweating. Jim put Trudy into a cool bath; Jenny, stripped down to bare feet, shorts and a halter top, was tossing a salad together for a late lunch when someone knocked at the door.

Strangers, a balding male, a chubby female and two kids.

‘Would Jim be in?’ the male said.

‘I’m his wife.’

‘Ian and Lorris Hooper,’ he said. ‘Our girl, Belinda, and this is Owen.’

Jim heard them, he came with a towel-wrapped Trudy in his arms. ‘Come in,’ he said.

They were on a touring holiday. Thought they’d detour a bit and drop off a couple of photographs. They’d heard from Margaret that Jim was back in Woody Creek.

Jenny had spoken to Ian Hooper on the phone. She hadn’t told him she’d been in touch with Jim, only that she’d come across his number in the phone book. She’d given him her married name, Jennifer King. Jim’s cousin didn’t know she was the Jennifer King, the mother of Jimmy he’d spoken to on the phone.

He handed two photographs to Jim, who handed one to Jenny. And there he was, her beautiful boy, ten candles on a birthday cake. A happy ten year old caught by the camera about to blow out his candles. Still Jimmy. Her eyes filled, her throat threatened to close.

Wanted him to be happy. Didn’t want him to be so happy without her. Wiped a leaking tear, then, taking Trudy from Jim’s arms, she escaped with her to the bedroom, to clothe her in a napkin and put her into her cot.

Had to go back. She didn’t sit with them, but picked up the second photograph, this one of a lanky boy clad in his school uniform. His father’s son.

‘He would have been around fifteen when I took that one,’ Ian said.

At first glance he looked like Jim, tall, lean, same hair, but not his face. Jenny was still in his face. She saw her own eyes looking back at her, her nose too, her cheekbones.

God. God, God, God.

‘He’s grown into a lovely looking boy. We saw him a month or two before they left. He’s filled out a bit since that shot was taken,’ Lorris said.

Jenny nodded, her heart breaking but determined not to let Vern Hooper’s nephew see it breaking. But it wasn’t fair. She’d given him life and those strangers had been allowed to watch him grow. It just wasn’t fair. And she couldn’t stand to be in that kitchen with Vern Hooper’s nephew. Opened the back door and walked out to the heat of the garden, determined to control her tears and to not make a fool of herself in front of Jim’s cousin. Hoped Jim wasn’t telling them who she was. They’d know she’d signed her son away.

Shouldn’t have signed anything. Should have fought Vern for him.

She wouldn’t have won. She was Jenny Morrison. She never won.

Jim came out to the rear veranda. ‘Jen.’

‘Coming,’ she said and she went back to the kitchen where she lit a rare cigarette. Today she needed to borrow guts from nicotine. Kept herself busy then, filling the jug, emptying the teapot.

‘You’re in contact with Margaret?’ Jim asked his cousin.

‘Through her accountant.’

‘Lorna thinks we know where they are. She’s on the phone every second week,’ Lorris said.

‘And still as mad as a nest of hornets that Margaret finally got the better of her,’ Ian said. ‘She’s living in Kew. We’re just across from her in North Balwyn.’

‘Too close for comfort for my liking,’ Lorris said. ‘She’s still paying your father’s bloodhound to look for Margaret and James. He’s been around to our place. Six or eight months ago, I caught him talking to Owen out front about his Aunty Maggie. I gave him short shrift,’ Lorris said.

‘I’ll send you her address,’ Ian said.

‘Don’t bother,’ Jim said.

‘She’d probably land on your doorstep,’ Lorris said.

The three-way conversation continued at the table, Jenny no longer listening. Her mind had gone to Jimmy. Born on 3 December 1941, he’d turn twenty this year. Not a boy but a man now. He’d drive a car.

Would he remember Woody Creek, Granny’s house – and her? Jim was six when his mother died. He’d never forgotten his mother.

Why hadn’t Jimmy come back to look for her?

Because little boys believe what the grown-ups tell them, that’s why. Because the Hoopers had brainwashed him before he was ten years old, that’s why.

The three were discussing Ian’s wife’s relatives who lived on the land somewhere near Swan Hill; Jenny turned from the sink to pick up the earlier photograph of her beautiful boy. It changed the subject back to where she didn’t want it. Wanted to absorb him, that was all, to possess him for a little while.

‘Margaret threw him a party every year,’ Ian said.

‘She made him some fantastic cakes,’ Lorris said.

‘Remember when she made him a motorbike, Mum?’ the boy, ten or twelve years old, piped in, and Jenny placed the photograph down, opened her cup cupboard and caught a tear as it trickled, tickled down the side of her nose.

‘We’ve been down to the city and back. We didn’t stop for lunch. You’ll have a cup of tea with us?’ Jim asked.

‘A cool drink would go down well, then we should get a move on,’ Ian said.

‘We’re booked in at a motel in Swan Hill tonight,’ Lorris said.

Cold water in the fridge, lemon cordial; Jenny filled four glasses, delaying the pouring of tea, wanting them gone so she might look her fill at the photographs.

‘I’ll write to Maggie when we get back and let her know we’ve seen you and your family, Jim. She’ll probably get in touch with you.’

‘She’ll be up at your door when she hears about your little girl. She used to visit us just so she could play with our kids – that’s what we used to say – when the kids were babies,’ Lorris said.

Besotted by Jimmy too, Jenny thought. Couldn’t keep her hands off him when he was five months old. She’d got what she’d wanted.

Jim saw them to the door. He hadn’t told them she was Jimmy’s mother. Jenny knew why. He wanted Margaret to get in touch with him. Jenny’s name would kill any little chance of that.

‘Thanks for calling in,’ Jim said.

Jenny didn’t thank them.