The Tying of Threads (45 page)

Jenny’s face was well known in Woody Creek. She couldn’t walk into the butcher’s shop to buy her dogs a bone, or into the newsagent’s to pick up her paper, without the stares, the whispers. Stopped shopping in Woody Creek. Stopped walking her dogs. Stopped.

She nagged John into a trip to Willama to have his hair cut, and that half-hour on the road with him was a relief. She drove him up to the hospital to look at a room similar to the one he’d be moving into.

‘You won’t survive in that,’ she said.

‘It’s enough,’ he said.

‘It’s not enough. And the dogs will miss you. You’re their alpha male, and we’ve got rooms rotting for lack of use, and you’re part of our pack.’

‘It’s done, Jen.’

‘It’s not done until it’s done. What am I supposed to do with a pregnant dog, and pups?’

‘Lorna has done it before. She’ll handle it,’ he said.

‘She won’t, and I won’t. I can’t handle what I’ve got now. Cancel your room and get your deposit back.’

He didn’t agree, not that day.

By February’s end Vern Hooper’s antique dining room table was buried beneath piles of antique Hooper documents, moth-eaten photograph albums, the typewriter and the familiar pile of Jim’s notes. He’d started compiling a book on the history of the Hoopers, and who did he think would be interested in reading about them?

Jenny read a letter written by the first James Hooper, a shepherd, or a letter he’d paid the town scribe to write to James Richard. It told him that his mother had died and that her final words had been of her son – interesting – but Jim wasn’t writing about the old shepherd. He had details of the boat James Richard had sailed on, and the date he’d set out for Australia, and the date he’d arrived, and his date of birth, and the date that he and Maximilian Monk were named as joint owners of the thousand-acre property they’d named Three Pines.

March, eight days of unrelenting heat. It broiled the musty scent of old documents and aged furniture, and the distilled essence of Lorna seeped from the dining room and hall into every room, and into Jim, who spent his days and nights sitting on Lorna’s chairs, his knees beneath her table, became steeped in that musty scent of dusty old age. John’s house was Jenny’s escape, and morning, noon or evening she walked her dogs to his door.

Found him packing up one morning. Found Amy’s typewriter on his kitchen table with
Molly Squire
, a bulk of pages, tied into a bundle with a blue ribbon. She undid the bow tied by Amy’s hands then sat down to read. They’d done a lot of work on poor Molly; they’d got rid of much of Jim’s work, his umpteen excess names had gone, his dates too. She found a pencil in Amy’s desk drawer and ran a cross through two pages of Mr Kennedy, who would later become Molly’s son-in-law. Then, after a late lunch, she erased her erasing and wound a sheet of typing paper into Amy’s typewriter and while the dogs roamed free in John’s garden, Jenny created a battleaxe mother for Mr Kennedy then, fifty pages deeper in the manuscript, after Molly’s daughters had wed – or bred – she allowed the one with the illegitimate son to bump off her sister’s mother-in-law with a spear.

Jim hadn’t appreciated Jenny’s suggestion that Molly had managed to raise her infant daughters because the blacks had taken her in. In Jenny and Amy’s version of Molly, she’d taken a black husband, Wadimulla, and her daughters had grown wild.

Jim missed out on lunch that day. She made him a sandwich at half past two. He ate it in the dining room while she set about cooking something for dinner. She’d left the dogs with John, had told him he could walk them home at around six and stay for dinner. Hoped he’d come. She cooked enough for three.

He was at Jenny’s side the day Lorna produced six pups, blind, rat-like and as red as their parents, and they looked underdone to Jenny. It was the pups who moved John back into the rear bedroom, and while he split his days between the pups and their parents, Jenny escaped alone to Amy’s house where she lived a happier life with Molly – and Amy’s chuckling ghost, who urged her labouring fingers on.

She needs a reason to have gone back to the whites, Jennifer.

She did. The whites had hanged her husband. They’d left her and her babies to their fate, then along came Wadimulla and his tribe to save her. She’d had a life of freedom with the blacks and Jenny had never found a good reason for her to leave Wadimulla.

When in doubt kill them off had been Shakespeare’s method of problem solving, so she killed her noble savage, or allowed one of the new settlers to shoot him, then during the night the rest of the tribe had taken off, leaving Molly with no alternative but to return to the whites, which meant that Jenny had to lose half a dozen pages in order to slot the new pages in, but they strengthened the chapter where Molly’s daughter speared her sister’s mother-in-law. Jim would have a fit if he ever saw what she’d done to his manuscript.

Trudy came home in April. She took precedence over all else. Lorna’s house had sold.

‘Sophie and I have booked our tickets to Greece,’ Trudy said.

‘When?’

‘We fly out on the eighth.’

‘Where will you stay?’ Jim asked.

‘Sophie’s got scads of relatives. We’ll relative-hop until we wear out our welcome then backpack across country to England and see if we can get work there for a while.’

‘Two girls hitchhiking? You’re putting yourself in danger, Tru,’ Jim said.

‘Backpacking isn’t hitchhiking, and there’ll be three of us, Dad.’

‘To go over there without a plan is dangerous.’

‘I’ve been an adult for a while now, and India was more dangerous than Greece is likely to be.’

‘You travelled there with a group,’ Jenny said.

‘Three is a group, Mum.’

‘Who is the third?’

‘Sophie’s cousin, Nicky,’ Trudy said.

‘Are you shouting the trip?’

‘I’m paying Sophie’s fare – if the solicitor pays the money in when he said he would, otherwise our credit cards will be shouting.’

She was an adult. She had a profession, she spoke serviceable Greek and Sophie spoke the language like a native. They’d be safe together, with Nicky, who Jenny couldn’t place. Trudy had a lot of friends.

Jenny had Maisy, and if today was Tuesday then she’d lost a day somewhere. She waved to her, couldn’t open the gate until the pups had been rounded up and placed into their pen, a chicken wire construction John had built behind the shed. He tied up Lorna and Vern, Jenny opened the gate and Maisy drove in – and got out of the car with a parcel, and its floppiness suggested fabric.

‘What have you been spending your money on?’ Jenny asked.

‘I know you said that you’ve retired, love, but young Glenda bought me a dress-length. She’s having an evening wedding and she wants me in an evening gown. It’s not until August,’ Maisy said.

Since Amy’s death, Jenny had refused half a dozen orders. She had enough to fill her days without her sewing machines, but how could she refuse Maisy? She led her down to the kitchen, hurriedly vacated by Trudy, who preferred the pups’ and John’s company to Maisy’s.

‘I wouldn’t ask you if she hadn’t gone and bought the material, and just look at it. It must have cost her a fortune.’

Jenny looked at it. Chiffon, but beautiful, a deep blue with metallic silver and blue/green thread woven through it, a fabric she might have chosen for her own gown had she been the mother of a bride. Not to be. Maybe never to be. She’d done something wrong with the raising of her girls.

Cara had married; Jenny had played no part in her raising. Jimmy had married. She hadn’t played a long role in his raising either. She’d raised Georgie and Trudy, one determined to rise to the top of her profession, the other destined to die a charitable pauper – and both of them childless. Maisy was grandmother to the multitudes and the multitudes were marrying and producing great-grandchildren.

‘In August?’

‘The second last Saturday, love. I just want something very simple.’

She stayed for two hours. Jenny learned that one of Patricia’s sons was in hospital with a broken leg and head injuries, that Sissy had suffered a nervous breakdown, that one of Amber’s breasts had been cut off.

‘Sissy said she had a lump in it as big as a golf ball,’ Maisy said.

‘When are they trying her?’ Jenny asked, feeling no sympathy for Amber’s breast.

‘Sissy said they’d found cancer in it.’

‘I was hiding behind a door when forgiveness was handed out, Maisy,’ Jenny said. Forgiveness, forgetfulness, motherliness, wifeliness.

She’d given up nagging about the stink of Lorna’s furniture. She never looked up when she walked through the entrance hall – she’d stopped vacuuming it. Stopped vacuuming the dining room – her room once, and a beautiful room. Her dining room setting, now relegated to the small sitting room corner, looked like the modern junk it was. Its chairs were comfortable, though. She’d chosen it for its six comfortable chairs, and Jim had been at her side when she’d chosen it – on her side.

Didn’t know what was going on in his head lately. He’d become obsessed by his family. She’d known him as a boy who had called his father ‘sir’. Had known him as a young man dominated by Vern Hooper and Lorna. Knew as much as Nobby knew about his missing years in psychiatric clinics after the war – next to nothing. Since she’d got back together with him he’d had nothing to do with his family. Lorna hadn’t let him know that Margaret was dead. His cousin had passed on that piece of news, after the funeral.

Maisy was still talking. Maisy never stopped talking, and Jenny drew her mind back to the kitchen.

‘. . . terrible photograph in Saturday’s paper?’

‘I saw it,’ Jenny said.

The Grinning Granny business settled down for weeks at a time. Her breast had returned her grin to the headlines. Jenny knew it well, Amber’s snake-getting-ready-to-strike smile she’d named it as a kid. She wanted her convicted, not for Lorna’s murder but for Norman’s.

‘She’s been on pills for it,’ Maisy continued.

‘Pills for cancer?’

‘Sissy. For her nerves. She’s living with one of your cousins in Hamilton, and she said that the cousin puts an eggtimer on whenever Sissy picks up the telephone.’

‘I was born without compassion for the great human horde, Maisy – and I don’t count Amber and Sissy amongst them anyway.’

‘You were raised as sisters,’ Maisy said. ‘She took Amber in when she had no place to go, and that friend of hers too when she had to get out of her unit, and because of what Amber did, Lacy won’t even talk to Sissy on the phone.’

Jenny leaned, elbow on the table, face supported on her palm, her mind searching for a safe place to go. It found Molly Squire. Jim had written her death scene. His Molly had died alone in her bed, but Jenny liked her and didn’t want her to die alone.

‘She phoned Lacy before she phoned me last Sunday, to tell her that she’d been given a two-bedroom unit and to ask her to move into it with her. All Lacy did was bawl. Then her sister-in-law came on the phone and demanded that they be let into the Doveton house to pick up her mother-in-law’s furniture before Sissy moved, like she was scared Sissy would take off with it.’

‘Where was she going to put Cousin Reg?’

‘He’s with some other cousins. Sissy said that they can keep him if Lacy changes her mind. She’s going to write to her.’

‘Poor old Cousin Reg,’ Jenny said.

‘The new unit wouldn’t be any good for him anyway. It’s close to a big shopping centre with a hotel, and it’s got a bus stop at the front door, Sissy said.’

‘If I had to live with her, I’d drink too.’

‘Don’t let life make you hard, love.’

‘You’re too soft, Maisy.’

‘It stops me getting wrinkles,’ Maisy said.

*

By July Trudy had flown away, the pups had moved on to new homes and Ray’s insurance money account had paid for a concrete drive. Pups dig. They’d dug up bulbs, dug holes beneath the side fence, excavated beneath the gate, tormented their parents when they wanted to sleep and scuttled around the veranda when Jenny had wanted to sleep.

She’d sat Vern down the day the last of the pups was driven away and told him in no uncertain terms what she’d do to him if he ever did it again. Hoped he understood
castration
. He understood everything else.

Most dogs will heel when told to, they’ll sit, even stay. Old Joe’s kelpies would stay until ordered to move. Ask ‘Where’s your bone?’ and they’d run to retrieve it, ask ‘Where’s the cat?’ and they’d scare that cat up a tree in the blink of an eye. ‘Bad dog’ meant ‘Go to your chain’. ‘Good dog’ meant ‘Have a good time’, and the more Jenny and John laughed at their good time antics, the better time the dogs had. Mention ‘Walk’ in their hearing and they’d run to the gate. ‘Where’s your lead?’ or ‘Get your lead’ and they’d run to the shed where their leads hung and return with both, or arguing over the one they’d managed to unhook.

At times they behaved like pups, but John, the dog expert, put their age at around six. All things being equal, Jenny could expect to be a dog owner for another five or six years – as could Jim, and he didn’t want them defiling his lawn, and they knew it. They kept their distance from him, except when Jenny asked ‘Where’s Jim’s gammy leg?’ at which point they’d approach him warily, sniff his plastic leg, then move away, the fur on the back of their necks standing on end.

From time to time they barked at a passer-by, but only if the passer-by was too slow in passing. They barked at Amy’s garden pixies, her leadlight winged butterflies which had found new homes in Jenny’s garden.

Spring would come, it always did, but not to Amy’s garden. Jenny knew its fate. She’d seen land developers at work before. They’d arrive with their bulldozers. They’d level that old house and garden, then cut those two and a half acres up into building blocks, fifty per cent of which would be bought by Melbourne retirees. And who could blame them for getting out of a city where murders had become commonplace, where strikes crippled. Truckies throughout four states had blockaded major highways, protesting about fuel tax and the cost of registering their vehicles. And could you blame them? The cost of living kept skyrocketing, housing prices in Melbourne had gone mad. With what the owners might get for a grotty little weatherboard house in Richmond, they could build a mansion in Woody Creek – and did.