Wind in the Wires (12 page)

N
INETEEN
S
IXTY
-O
NE

T
echnology rushing forward, satellites moving around the heavens, America and Russia in a race to dominate space, and Russia winning every time.

In January of that year, John F. Kennedy, a young go-getter, was sworn in as the thirty-fifth president of the United States. In February, Sydney withdrew its last tram from service. A big mistake, according to many. Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, rocketed into space that year; he orbited the earth and was brought safely home.

Home to what? That was the question in many minds. Eastern Berliners, under Soviet rule, didn’t appreciate home: they were defecting to the West in droves. Nineteen sixty-one was the year the Russians started building a wall to keep their people in.

A few American states might have liked to build a wall to keep the blacks out. They were demanding their fair share of freedom and equality, protesting for it, fighting in the streets for it.

Charlie White’s daughter wanted him walled in but her diagnosis of senile decay wasn’t backed up by Doctor Frazer or his colleagues. Charlie White, sparking on at least three of his six cylinders, was back behind his counter, chiacking his customers and filching again from his cash drawer, on the phone to his city broker, buying an occasional batch of likely shares.

‘Got to keep my hand in, Rusty,’ he said.

He bought no more in his name, and when the new certificates arrived, instead of impaling them on his wire spike, he handed them to Georgie.

‘Stick them in with your stash, Rusty. They’ll be worth something to you one day.’

He’d never been the most popular man in town; he’d reached the age of ‘couldn’t give a damn’, an age where he enjoyed his unpopularity. He knew every man, woman and child in town, knew him by his father’s reputation and by his father’s father’s. He’d never trusted a Duffy as far as he could kick one. Since the accident, since he’d lost his kick, he terrorised Duffy babies in their prams. If he removed his dentures, he could contort his face into something so far removed from humanity that the little buggers screamed when they sighted his twin green front doors.

Jenny had known Charlie forever. She’d never feared him. In November of 1961, Raelene’s tenth birthday, she’d walked around to Charlie’s shop to phone her and wish her a happy day.

‘The number has been disconnected,’ a voice on the line informed.

Georgie rang the exchange and received the same reply.

Raelene hadn’t been back in June, or September. Florence hadn’t been in touch since July.

‘Try Donny’s home, Georgie,’ Jenny said. The Keatings were listed now as Donny’s next of kin. If their phone number had been changed, the home would have it.

They didn’t, or if they did, they wouldn’t give it up.

‘Florence didn’t look well in January when we took Raelene home,’ Jenny said.

She wrote to her that night and asked her to call the shop, during business hours. She didn’t call and three weeks later, the letter was returned.

‘Something has happened to Raelene. I’m going down, Jim.’

He was licensed to drive. He drove in Woody Creek, could manage the trip to Willama but rarely did. Jenny did the distance driving. She didn’t have the confidence to drive in the city, but as Christmas moved nearer, her need to find out what was going on with Raelene and the Keatings grew.

Georgie still considered Raelene a little sister. ‘I’ll go with you, Jen.’

They left on a Sunday morning, a week before Christmas, left at dawn, Jenny planning to go the back way into Melbourne, to leave the car at Lilydale again. Georgie had driven through town with Jack. She had a road map and no fear of city traffic, so Jenny drove to Kilmore where Georgie slid over to the driver’s seat and Jenny opened up the road map.

They worked their way from west to east, Jenny calling the roads as they crossed over, and by nine they were parked out front of the children’s home.

Georgie hadn’t seen Donny since the night Bernie Macdonald had driven her, Jenny and the kids down to the Willama hospital, the night of Ray’s funeral.

Not the fat boy-baby he’d been, but a giant boy-toddler, intrigued by Georgie’s abundant hair, or its colour. He stared at it, as he had at the flame of Granny’s table lamp.

‘He remembers your hair,’ Jenny said.

Maybe he did. Georgie took his hand, and with his palm smoothed her hair, and he sang his dirge.

‘Poor little bloke.’

Not so little. He was eleven and the size of a fourteen year old. He looked clean; thick, but not fat.

‘I should have bought him some chocolate,’ Georgie said.

‘He’s still in napkins,’ Jenny said, remembering his napkins when Ray had fed him chocolate.

‘How do they pay people enough to do what they do, Jen?’

‘They’re the heroes of this world, not the footballers and champion swimmers. I used to dream once about nursing the sick. I couldn’t have done it.’

They didn’t stay long with Donny. The map unfolded again; too large for the confines of a car, they spread it on the bonnet and plotted their course to Box Hill.

For Jenny, it was a replay of the day Laurie had driven her to Surry Hills, to Mary Jolly, her childhood penfriend’s house. A stranger opened the Keatings’ door.

‘We bought the house in August,’ the woman said. And no, she hadn’t met the previous owners. ‘Try next door.’

Jenny tried next door, as she had in Surry Hills. The neighbour had known the Keatings well.

‘Clarrie’s mother died. He was an only child and the house was left to him – down near where they make the electricity – Moe. Yes, Moe. Flo said she’d write as soon as they got settled, but she had her hands full. Did you know her baby turned out to be twins?’

‘Twins?’ Jenny hadn’t even known she’d been pregnant. Sick, Clarrie had said. A bit seedy – or getting ready to shed her seeds . . .

‘They’re identical, boys. The dearest little curly-headed mites. She was sick for the nine months she was carrying and spent the last months on her back.’

She offered tea; they thanked her but got away. Georgie wanted to see the house in Armadale, wanted to visit the school she’d attended when they’d lived with Ray.

They found the house as they’d left it. Years don’t alter bricks and mortar. They alter gardens. Shrubs planted along the fence line. A square of lawn where they’d been no lawn.

They left the car to walk, to blatantly stare in. No sign of movement behind Flora’s sitting-room curtains. No sign of their old vegetable garden. A new car parked in a cemented drive, a new tin shed down the back.

‘I wonder what Lois is doing these days?’ Georgie said. She and Jimmy had played for hours with her.

‘She was a couple of months older than Jimmy,’ Jenny said.

‘Hard to believe we lived in here,’ Georgie said. ‘What would we have been doing now if we’d stayed here, Jen?’

‘What do you wish you were doing?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Had enough of sightseeing.’

‘Nope. The school now, then your sister-in-law?’

‘Who?’

‘Lorna?’

Sister-in-law? Lorna Hooper? It was almost funny. ‘That’s where I put my foot down,’ Jenny said.

‘What if she’s found him, Jen?’

‘He’s old enough to find us, love.’

‘That’s a numbing device you’ve installed in your head,’ Georgie said. ‘I haven’t got one. Where’s Kew on your map?’

‘I don’t know, and I don’t want to know – and Jim wants nothing to do with her.’

‘If there was one chance in a million to find Jimmy, wouldn’t he take it?’

‘If Jimmy lived next door to Lorna, she wouldn’t tell me. She resents the air I breathe. If we leave for home now, we’ll be there by five.’

‘There’s not a memory I’ve got of Armadale that Jimmy isn’t in. I can remember the day you brought him home from Sydney. He’s my brother, Jen.’

She was in the car. Jenny got in and they drove around the corner to the deserted school. Not much to see. Same buildings, same fence, same gate – a new phone booth out front.

Georgie swung the car in beside it. No phone book there. She swung in beside two more phone booths before she found a tattered book. The H pages were intact. There was a bunch of Hoopers. Only one
L. D. Hooper Miss
with a Kew address, which Georgie copied to the rear of the map.

‘We’re not going there, Georgie.’

‘Chicken.’

Georgie found Burke Road and followed it to Cotham, which turned out to be the continuation of White Horse Road. She drove in circles around the Kew area until she called out to a young chap mowing his nature strip.

In Charlie’s shop, Georgie, dressed for comfort and her mane of copper hair tied back with a rubber band, was still a beauty; but well dressed for her day in the city, her hair hanging free, she was . . . beyond superlatives. The lawn-mowing chap couldn’t do enough for her. He stopped his noisy machine and went inside, returning with a map book of Melbourne, every street marked on it, and Jenny wanted one for herself. Didn’t want Lorna’s street, but he put his finger on it, and five minutes later Georgie drove by Number Forty-Three, a red clinker-brick, hard-faced house with a matching clinker-brick fence, black wrought-iron gates and big old black Ford parked in the driveway that looked like Lorna Hooper’s.

Clothe yourself, she’d said, and while Jenny had been clothing herself to take Jimmy down to the hospital, Lorna had picked him up and carried him out to the car.

Hated her. Feared her – and her own reaction should she come face to face with Lorna.

‘Don’t do this to me, Georgie.’

‘Stay in the car and keep your head down,’ Georgie said, pulling into shade beneath a tree opposite Number Forty-Three and two houses down from its gate.

And Jenny saw her, not in her yard but on the footpath and walking towards the car.

‘That’s her! Drive!’

‘Where?’

‘I want to go home!’

‘Where is she?’

‘That evil old hag in black. It’s her!’

The dame in black was now crossing over the road, her back to them.

‘She’s as tall as Jim,’ Georgie said.

Not unless she was wearing spike-heeled shoes, which she wasn’t. Always wore black lace-ups and lisle stockings. Always clad her lamppost form in black garments, walked with a male’s stride.

‘Go, Georgie! Please.’

‘Stay low,’ Georgie said, and she got out of the car. Jenny ducked low and saw no more.

*

Georgie and Lorna’s diagonal paths across the road intersected at the iron gates.

‘Miss Hooper?’ A hand offered. ‘Gina Morgan,’ she said, deleting the Morrison from her name.

‘Who?’ The gust of stale sardine breath issuing with that one word might have forced a step backward in a lesser mortal. Georgie was not one of the lesser.

‘Gina Morgan.’

Lorna glared at the extended hand, didn’t take it, didn’t shake it.

Not a pretty sight, black hat, out of fashion since the twenties, spectacles balanced on a long eagle-beak nose, skirt near ankle length. She was the taller of the two, or would have been had Georgie not been wearing high heels.

‘I believe you have been looking into the disappearance of your nephew.’

‘You know where they are residing?’

‘No.’

Lorna’s sardine ‘humph’ released with maximum effort expressed her disinterest in continuing the conversation, but the gate latch was at her visitor’s back, and to get to it would require her visitor to move.

‘Who . . . employs you?’

‘Charles White and company. We are representing Jim Hooper and his wife.’

A moment spent in consideration. A decision made.

‘You might inform him that I have spent a veritable fortune in attempting to trace the whereabouts of his son. The boy attended Carey Grammar. My representative has spoken to the masters and students who knew the boy. They have had no contact with James since 1958.’

Narrow lips, fighting to release words and not her false teeth, spitting sardine saliva. Georgie stepped back, just a little.

‘You might also inform him that since the thirteenth day of December 1958, when the family home was sold over my head – for the second time – I have neither seen nor heard from my sister or nephew. Nor do I expect to. Now remove yourself.’

Georgie removed herself, and Lorna opened the gate.

‘However, should your company be successful, I would expect to be informed. You have a card?’

‘We have your address, Miss Hooper,’ Georgie said.

Lorna humphed, then strode into her yard and latched the gate. Georgie returned to the car where Jenny remained low until they were out of the street.

‘I’ll never forgive you for that.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. What did she look like when she was young, Jen?’

‘The same.’

‘The family home was sold over her head – twice,’ Georgie said.

*

They bought petrol in Kilmore, ate a late lunch there, then Jenny took the wheel for the final leg home, and for the first time they spoke of Jim.

‘You don’t like him, do you?’

‘I like his car. I’m reserving my opinion on him.’

‘You’ve been reserving it for two years.’

‘He was in a nuthouse, Jen. Don’t take this personally, but your record for picking blokes hasn’t been exemplary, so I’m reserving my judgement.’

‘That evil bitch – and her father – is the reason he was in a nuthouse. What do you weigh, Georgie?’

‘Around nine stone.’

‘He was under six when the war ended, too sick to bring home. He was in hospital over there for months. He told me a while back that he survived that camp for me and Jimmy. I sent him a poem when I was waiting for him in Sydney. He said that every morning he was in that Jap camp, he’d hold the tatters of it in his hand and promise me and Jimmy he’d make it through that day. And he did. And he came home to us and I’d gone and married Ray. There was nothing left of him but determination to get home to us, and his bloody father and sister told him I hadn’t waited for him.’

‘You can’t cry and drive at the same time, mate. Pull over.’

‘I’m not crying. I hate that evil bitch and hate the Hooper name. And I wear it. Do you think I’d wear it if I didn’t love him? Do you think anything else could make me live in that house?’