The Tying of Threads (58 page)

In ’98,
The Stray
was released. It was the
Jenny
file – Jenny’s life – with alterations. As Amber had dominated Jenny’s early life, she’d dominated the early pages of
The Stray
. Unable to delete her, Georgie suggested they alter her name to Vera, the ex-prostitute, wed to John, a widowed country parson with three children. Thereafter, the story stuck close to the original, other than the character of Sissy, who they’d turned into twins. There’d always been too much of Sissy for one person. Jenny had left out the Sydney rape and Cara. Jim didn’t know about that and he was now her editor, and a damn good editor.

He knew she had his
Memory
file. She’d told him he ought to do something with it. He wouldn’t. Maybe she would one day.

Lila hadn’t returned. She’d moved in with Sissy and was still with her, and Jenny was still unable to decide which one to feel sorry for. She felt sorry for herself when Lila phoned, which she did once a month when the Duckworths removed Sissy from the unit for an hour or two. Sissy placed an eggtimer beside the phone every time Lila picked it up.

Jenny lit a cigarette and turned to glance at a women’s magazine, the July issue. September now, and that magazine had lain open on the cutting table at pages twenty-two and twenty-three long enough to wear a film of dust. Shouldn’t have used Juliana’s brooch on the cover of
Before Her Time.
It had raised Angela Luccetto out of Sydney. Way back in ’91 when
Sent in Chains
was released Georgie had received a letter from her. She claimed to be the granddaughter of Juliana Conti’s sister. They’d heard nothing more from her until that magazine, which had printed a two-page spread about a beautiful Italian woman who had gone missing in Australia in 1923. Now that magazine wanted to interview Juliana, the writer – as did a newspaper.

Jenny drew the magazine to her side, wiping and blowing it free of dust. Vern Hooper’s ceilings leaked dust. She’d given up chasing it. They’d printed a photograph of Angela Luccetto, a woman who might have been forty, a blood relative – distant blood relative but, as Georgie always said, blood is overrated. They’d printed an old sepia-toned photograph of Angela’s grandmother standing with her two sisters. The one on the left was Juliana, and if there’d been any doubt in Jenny’s mind, the brooch pinned to the shoulder of her frock killed it. They’d printed a blow-up of that brooch and the brooch on the cover of
Before Her Time.
They were identical. Maybe the jeweller had mass produced them. He’d been dead for a hundred years or more so who was to prove he hadn’t? It would go away. As Jim was still prone to saying, all things pass.

He was eighty and he had a gammy hip now to go with his gammy leg. She couldn’t think of him as eighty, but couldn’t deny it. Woody Creek had begun its preparations for her seventy-sixth birthday party – or for the birth of the new millennium – and the year 2000 sounded like science fiction. According to the media, every computer in the world was going to crash when computer clocks attempted to turn over to 2000.

Paul said it was more media hype, their latest fear campaign. ‘Got to keep the viewers’ adrenalin pumping or they’ll stop tuning in for their daily hit,’ he said. Hype or not, Jenny was making copies of her files – that’s why she’d come in here tonight, to copy, not to worry about Angela Luccetto.

Then the phone rang. It would be Georgie. No one else rang her at ten o’clock at night. Busy Georgie, getting to where she wanted to go – and playing literary agent in her spare time, of which she had none.

‘What do they want now?’ Jenny greeted her.

‘Do you want the good news or the bad first, Jen?’

‘Angela Luccetto’s been at it again?’

‘Worse. The release of
The Winter Boomerang
will be delayed until November. They’re doing a reprint of your earlier books to release at the same time.’

‘Is that the good or the bad news?’

‘Good. I’m working my way down. There was a ton of stuff on the computer when I came home tonight, a ton of stuff from your publicist too.’

‘Juliana Conti does not do publicity.’

‘Get off your soapbox, mate,’ Georgie said. ‘The bad news is some literary coot has got hold of a copy of
The Stray
and he’s accusing Juliana of plagiarising C.J. Langhall’s
Angel at My Door
. . .’

‘
Angel at My Door
?’

‘By C.J. Langhall,’ Georgie repeated. ‘I told you she was Cara.’

‘I’ve never read it. How did I plagiarise it?’

‘I read it, years ago, and I think it could drag you out of the closet, Jen.’

‘I’ve had enough whispering behind hands and fingers pointing at me to last me until 2099. What’s her book about?’

‘From what I remember, it’s about an unmarried girl who has four kids and gives the last of them away to her landlady.’

‘We cut the Sydney baby out of
The Stray
. What are they on about?’

‘Lots of things, Jen. When I read that book I saw a few similarities to your life.’

‘Can you post it up to me?’

‘I need to read it again. Give the Willama library a call and see if they’ve got a copy – it will look good to have it on record when I have to defend your plagiarism charges in court.’

‘That’s not funny, and my library card is in Jennifer Hooper’s name. They’re accusing Juliana.’

‘At the moment.’

‘Has Langhall responded?’ Jenny asked.

‘Not yet,’ Georgie said. ‘But I’ll guarantee if she does, she’ll name Jennifer Hooper as her inspiration for
Jessica
.’

‘The photograph in her latest book looks nothing like Cara.’

‘I hate to tell you, mate, but you don’t look a lot like you used to look thirty years ago either,’ Georgie said. ‘It’s her, and I know it now. She knew the ins and outs of your life story. She used to pick my brains for details back in the sixties – and I know she spent half her life writing and posting off bits of her book to publishers.’

‘That Angela Luccetto brought me out into the open with her magazine story.’

‘She’s the reason they’re reprinting your early books.’

‘Not
Sent in Chains
?’

‘All three, Jen, and you need to get on the internet. I’ve got a pile of stuff down here I need to send you.’

‘They have viruses on the internet that eat your computer’s brains.’

‘They have virus killers too. I got an email from Trudy tonight.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Back in England.’

‘Can you read it to me?’

‘I’ll post it up with the rest. She said in it that if Mum and Dad would come out of the dark ages and connect up, it would make life a whole lot easier – and it would.’

‘If I did it, it would have to be connected to one of the old computers. I’m not putting anything odd on my new one.’

‘They’re too old for the internet. Get yourself a little laptop and we’ll connect you up when we bring Katie for the holidays. She’ll teach you how to use it.’

‘What else did Trudy say?’

‘That a while back she found out her mother’s name was Margaret Morrison and that she lived in Vroni’s street in Frankston, and was she some distant relative?’

‘My God.’

‘Are you going to come clean, Jen?’

‘It’s too late.’ Jenny lit a cigarette. ‘It would be Vroni’s old address. They changed the street numbers when they continued her street through.’

‘She also wants to know the names of the people who adopted Jimmy. She said she’d see if she can find him while she’s there. How come she doesn’t know?’

‘She would have heard the Langdon name – or was she at school that time Lorna came up? Maybe she was. Tell her, Georgie. Tell her that the last we heard Jimmy was in Thames Ditton.’

*

Ask most of the Thames Ditton locals if they knew the Langdon family and they’d admit to knowing the name. Get some of the old chaps talking, and they’d tell how there’d been Langdons living at The Hall for five hundred years. Trudy and Nick had a well lubricated octogenarian bailed up in the local pub; he was a gold mine of information.

‘They owned half the county at one time. Henry Langdon was the one who started the breaking up of the estate when he come into his inheritance.’

‘Is he still living?’

‘Old Henry? No. He passed on in ’52, the same year as King George. Leticia, his good lady, made old bones, then the young Langdon come into it. He sold off all bar twenty acres then spent the lot on putting the old place into good repair. He had workmen out there for twelve month. They did a grand job on it.’

Trudy paid for a shampoo in Thames Ditton. Her hair was long; it took the hairdresser some time to dry it. She learned that Mrs Langdon didn’t frequent the salon, though the youngest girl came in when she needed a trim.

‘She’s a cripple,’ she said.

‘She’d be the daughter of James Langdon?’ Trudy asked.

‘Morris Langdon,’ the hairdresser said. ‘My mother knew him, or she knew the girl he was engaged to at one time. Mum worked in the girl’s father’s office. They had a big wedding planned, the dress bought and all, then less than a month before the wedding, this Australian girl turned up, and the next thing everyone knew, the wedding was off and Morris was squiring the Australian around.’

‘Is her name Karen or Carlene?’

‘I wouldn’t know. She’s Mrs Langdon to me. She’s been living out at The Hall since the late seventies. They say she writes books. One of the girls who served her apprenticeship here told us she was in London one day with her mother and they saw this crowd in one of the big stores’ book departments. They went over to see what was going on and there was Mrs Langdon, sitting signing books. They bought one, thinking it would be about our area, but it was about Australia. Full of violence and murder and whatnot, she said. To look at her, you wouldn’t think she’d know about such things.’

‘You don’t know of a Jim or a James Langdon?’ Trudy asked.

‘I’ve never heard of Jim or James,’ the hairdresser said.

Nick had more luck. He learned that the Langdon family had no living offspring to carry on the name, and that Morris was an offshoot of Henry Langdon’s sister.

‘His mother’s maiden name could be on her tombstone. He said she’s buried in the local graveyard.’

They walked the graveyard that afternoon, searching for Margaret Langdon,
née
Hooper. They didn’t find her. They found umpteen Langdons. They found a Margaret Grenville-Langdon, beloved wife of Bernard and mother of Morris, but no mention of Hooper.

It was a perfect autumn day in a land where perfect days were few and far between. Their sweaters were off.

‘Mum used to call a day like this an ice-cream day,’ Trudy said, so they drove away from the graveyard and bought ice-cream, then drove on to find Langdon Hall. With no gates closed against them, they drove in and up to the house.

‘Wow!’ Trudy said.

‘Ye olde family estate, yer ’ighness,’ Nick said.

‘It could be Jimmy’s. Georgie’s email said that Jimmy was adopted by Margaret Hooper and her husband.’

‘You never met him?’

‘He was gone long before I was born, and they never spoke about him. I’ve seen baby photographs of him. From what I’ve been able to glean, his grandfather claimed him when he was a tiny kid.’

‘How come?’

‘Mum and Dad weren’t married when he was born. It was during wartime and Dad was away in the army, then a prisoner for years. They never talk about that either.’

‘The house of secrets.’

‘It seems like it at times,’ Trudy said.

Nick knocked on a massive front door. No bustling maid came to open it. They looked for a bell they might ring. No bell. Only the power wires feeding into that old building gave away the fact that they hadn’t stepped through a hole in time and back into the seventeenth century.

They knocked again, then walked to the corner and down the eastern side to knock on a smaller, more utilitarian door. No bell. No maid.

‘The hairdresser said they have an open day in spring. I wish I’d started searching earlier.’

‘Wish in one hand and spit in the other, Tru,’ Nick said.

They walked back to the car then, and turned its nose towards London.

*

A rare day, and not many more such days to look forward to, Morrie and Cara were walking their dogs. He too was craving an ice-cream. He too had removed his sweater.

Cara didn’t share his craving, or his idea of warmth. Her conditioning to England’s chill having commenced later than his, her cardigan was buttoned to the neck today.

‘Will you go?’ he asked.

‘I’m considering it,’ she said. ‘They’ve been at me for years to do a book tour over there.’

They hadn’t been back to Australia since Robert’s funeral and had no desire to sit on a plane for twenty-four hours, but publicity sold books and the tour would coincide with the release of her latest novel.

She picked up and tossed a stick towards a tiny streamlet and the two dogs, still arguing over an earlier stick, bounded after the new. They followed the dogs and caught a view of the distant house, at its best from this angle. He’d spent a fortune on removing the rot of generations, along with generations of renovations. He’d brought in an architect and a building supervisor, but had personally supervised the removal of every stone, had watched every ancient wall reinforced, every rafter in the old section replaced.

There was no garden when Cara had arrived with the children, and neither she nor Morrie gardeners they’d hired professionals. The present grounds might not have been as the old Langdons had known them, but who was alive to say if they were or not? They were pleasing to the eye.

They rarely opened the front door, rarely opened the front rooms, other than on open day. They lived at the rear of the house, spent most of their days in the long flagstone-floored eastern room, their living area – sitting room cum study cum kitchen – modern enough to work in, but not obviously so. They’d replaced ancient windows with new, paying a fortune to make the new look exactly like the old. At seventeen, Morrie had fallen in love with the age, the immovability of Leticia’s house. He loved it still. Cara had fallen in love with its sanctuary.