Wind in the Wires (9 page)

C
HARLIE
’
S
A
CCIDENT

O
n the second Sunday in October an ambulance screamed its bad news through town. A hit-and-run driver had knocked Charlie White off his bike, out on Cemetery Road. With no house now where he might visit his Jeany, each Sunday he’d been riding his bike out to the cemetery to sit and talk with her a while.

A crowd gathered to watch the ambulance take him away. He looked dead. Joss Palmer, an army medic during the war, diagnosed a smashed leg and arm and a dented head.

‘What a way to go,’ the people said.

‘At his age, he never should have been riding that bike.’

‘Hilda tried to put him in the old folks’ home a year ago. That redhead should have left him where he was put.’

Anyone who knew Charlie knew he didn’t take chances on his bike. He’d been riding it for as long as Georgie could remember. She phoned his granddaughter. The cop who had replaced Jack Thompson, who would never replace him, came back from wherever he’d been all day. Georgie and Joss Palmer spoke to him. He barely knew old Charlie White. Didn’t care about him.

He knew his age, and when they told him Charlie had always been a careful rider, he doubted their word. They told him about Charlie’s trouble with the feral tenants, and of the robbery, how one of the blokes locked up for the robbery had been married to a Duffy, that the Duffy family owned land just out past the cemetery, and at any given time there were car loads of drunken fools speeding in and out of that place.

The new copper drove out there. The Duffy family had seen nothing and knew nothing – which most in town would agree was pretty close to right.

No one had seen the impact. Two kids had seen a dark blue car racing off, then turning right onto South Road.

Long gone, back to the city, or back to where it’d come from. And finding out who had hit him wouldn’t do Charlie a lot of good anyway. He wasn’t dead but close to it. The doctor Georgie spoke to didn’t expect him to live through the night. He’d snapped his shin and thigh bones, broken his arm and maybe his collarbone. They didn’t waste any plaster on him.

‘We’re keeping him comfortable,’ he said.

They kept him comfortable through the night, through the next day, and still no plaster.

‘We’re keeping him pain-free,’ a sister said. ‘Has his family been told?’

They didn’t know Charlie White’s family. They didn’t know old Charlie either. He regained consciousness on the third morning.

The young doctor didn’t know Georgie, but she was beginning to know herself. She attacked him verbally, as Gertrude might have. He wasted a lot of plaster on Charlie that day, and that night Georgie sat with the old man, feeding him slices of preserved peach from a can. With one arm in plaster and the other shoulder out of action, he couldn’t feed himself.

‘Did I ever tell you that your blood is worth bottling, Rusty?’ he said, slurping peach slices from a fork.

‘A few times, Charlie.’

She told him she’d given Emma Fulton a job for a while. Charlie trusted the Fultons, and Emma was always available when they called. The shop wasn’t much more than a one-man business. Georgie could have managed it alone, had there not been more than Charlie and that shop on her mind.

Too much more on her mind. Jenny and Jim, and Jack Thompson who wouldn’t stop phoning, and Margot. She was in hospital too, with a miscarriage this time, thank God – and even Elsie saying thank God – and telling Georgie every second breath to marry Jack, or to move into town with Jenny and Jim.

There were four spare bedrooms in Vern Hooper’s house, large rooms, with floors that didn’t rock and a huge empty sitting room, a library too, with bookshelves on two walls and only a bare scattering of books on them. Verandas to sit on, lawns to walk on and all Georgie’s for the taking – as was Jack Thompson’s two-bedroom East Malvern flat.

They moved Charlie down to the old folks’ annex when they realised he wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t happy.

‘Half of ’em are gaga,’ he said. And no doubt a damn sight easier on the staff than he. He demanded trousers. They clad him in a gown.

‘They can’t get trousers on you, Charlie. Start behaving yourself or they’ll start putting you in pink gowns.’

Hated leaving him there in his nightgown. Hated going home too. Hated driving by Hooper’s corner, scared stiff that Jenny had gone and made another mistake.

All of her life, Georgie had known about Jim Hooper. She’d imagined him to be something more than the lanky yard of pump water that he was, who limped like Vern Hooper had limped and at times resembled his father, or his hair and his jaw did. Different eyes, nose, probably a different personality, not that she’d seen enough of any personality yet to be sure on that point.

She hadn’t seen a lot of Margot’s baby either – and didn’t want to. It had spent weeks in an oxygen crib. Kids who spent too much time in those cribs came out of them with problems. A reader, Georgie, a hoarder of useless information, and one who had lived too long with Donny to want to go through that again.

As had Jenny. And Georgie didn’t understand her, and at times wondered if she’d ever known her. The Jenny she’d known wouldn’t have lived in Vern Hooper’s house. He’d kidnapped Jimmy, or his daughter had. Vern might have been dead, but to Georgie that house represented what he’d been. And she’d given up Raelene.

Twelve months ago Georgie had a little sister. Now she didn’t. Like with Jimmy. She’d had a brother – then she hadn’t. Twelve months ago, she’d had Jenny. Lost her too. And now she’d lost Charlie to the old fogies’ home.

She had a chance to clean up the storeroom while he was away and was considering taking his overcoat down to him, to cover his gowns, when she lifted it from its hook behind the shop’s back door. And found his share certificates, on a wire spike, hung over that same hook, a pile of them. She tossed the overcoat and stood, bug-eyed, leafing through flyspecked, yellowing paper. Valuable paper some of it.

Didn’t know what to do with his spike. Knew he’d bought those shares with ill-gotten gains, that if she took them over to the bank manager, it might somehow get Charlie into strife with the taxman.

Didn’t want the responsibility of knowing about them. Thought about ringing Jack. Considered hanging them back where she’d found them. Thought about Jim Hooper. Jenny had said that some of his money was in shares. He should know something about them.

He knew a lot. He told her they needed to be in the bank vault. She told him about Charlie’s filching from the cash drawer, about the tax accountant going through him not too long ago.

‘Your name is on a few of them,’ Jenny said. ‘He could get you into trouble.’

‘Get a safety-deposit box,’ Jim said. ‘In your joint names.’

‘Where?’

‘At any bank.’

Not Woody Creek’s. Everyone would know about it.

‘We’re going down to Willama on Friday,’ Jenny said. ‘Come with us and we’ll do it there.’

She rode in the back seat, Margot’s baby crowing in her car basket beside her, and growing too big to fit that basket. She didn’t look like Donny, or sound like him.

Jim went with her to the bank. He knew what he was doing. She stood back, allowing him to do it. She signed papers, then got rid of the shares, now sorted by Jenny into
his
and
hers
and placed in separate envelopes.
His
were worth a fortune, according to Jim.
Hers
were worth big money.

They saw Charlie that afternoon and he’d got his trousers, washed-out and baggy pyjama trousers. He had four fingertips sticking out of his plaster cast, and with them shook Jim’s hand. He wasn’t interested in his safety-deposit box. He wanted to go home.

‘We’ll talk about it when your plaster is off and you can walk, Charlie,’ Georgie said.

*

On Gertrude’s land it was generally agreed that Teddy and Margot had the sex instincts of rabbits, and smaller brains. Small or not, Teddy’s had been wired directly into motors. Georgie hadn’t spoken to him since Margot’s miscarriage. She had to when her old ute went ‘Bang!’ And stopped dead. Roy, the garage bloke, was in Melbourne visiting his kids.

‘Rear axle,’ Teddy said.

‘Can you fix it?’

‘We’ll have one somewhere.’ In the shed, or behind the shed, or maybe under Roy’s house.

‘How long.’

‘Tomorrow or the day after – if I can find one. One side of the diff has to come out.’

‘Ta,’ she said.

*

By December, Charlie was escaping again from gaga land, with the aid of two walking sticks. A determined old coot; if they’d given him a pair of trousers and boots, he might have made it home. In pyjamas and slippers, he was an easy target. They kept picking him up, taking him back. His daughter wanted him assessed for mental incompetency. He assessed the assessors, asked them if they knew their thirteen times tables, then showed them that he did. That was the day Georgie decided to kidnap him again.

They made an appointment for ten o’clock on Sunday morning, around the corner from the old fogies’ annex.

He needed help to get into the ute, and more help to get out, but there was no happier man in Woody Creek that day.

‘Did I ever tell you your blood is worth bottling, Rusty?’

‘You’re repeating yourself, Charlie White. I’ll tell the gaga assessors on you.’

He ate Christmas dinner with the Fulton family, always had since Jeany died. He gave the many Fulton grandkids ten bob each, always had.

Georgie ate with Jenny, Jim, John and Amy McPherson, and Trudy seated in a high chair, chewing on a chicken bone, her Father Christmas hat fallen over one eye. Eight months old now, old enough to enjoy being the centre of attention and playing for it.

It was a good Christmas, normal. It brought back memories of Georgie’s last Christmas.

Wondered if Jack was eating dinner in Molliston.

*

Not a good Christmas at Elsie’s table. Margot and Teddy ate there, though not side by side. They didn’t speak, didn’t look at each other.

‘What the hell do you two think you’re playing at?’ Josie said. ‘It’s no secret that you sleep together.’

‘Shut your trap,’ Teddy said.

Josie, the last of Elsie and Harry’s brood, was a freckle-faced redhead. Brian, the second youngest, was fair and not as tall as his brothers. Teddy and Maudy had inherited Elsie’s darker than average hair and complexion, which had never worried Maudy. It worried Teddy. Since childhood, he’d resented Brian’s fair skin and Ronnie and Josie’s red hair. They’d spent their childhoods arguing, and the older they grew, the more they argued.

‘Stop!’ Harry demanded. ‘You give a man indigestion.’

‘As long as Margot doesn’t end up with it again,’ Josie said.

The table erupted into laughter, initially, but Margot hadn’t inherited Jenny’s fingernails. Unworn by labour, hers were long, strong. Josie, who sat on Margot’s left, wore the proof of their strength in three long raking gouges down her cheek.

Josie had less weight than Margot but a lot more height. Raised amid brothers, she’d learnt early how to hit back. She hit back, her open palm connecting with Margot’s jaw, the full weight of her arm behind it. The last they heard from Margot that Christmas Day was her
ahzeeing
wail across the goat paddock.

‘She’s been a sister to you,’ Elsie said. ‘To all of you.’

‘Try explaining that to Ted, Mum,’ Brian said.

‘Keep your mouth shut, you whitey bastard, or I’ll shut it for you,’ Teddy said.

‘Keep your fly shut and we might, you black bastard,’ Brian said.

No more eating was done. Brian and Josie took off towards Flanagan’s, the short cut to town.

Ronnie, who shared a room with Teddy and threatened regularly to leave home, started tossing his belongings into his car.

‘Stop being silly, Ronnie,’ Elsie said.

‘I’m going this time, Mum. Move her in with him. What you can’t change, you accept.’

He drove into town to phone up his girl in Mildura. Brian and Josie saw his car parked beside the phone box.

‘We’re going with you,’ they said.

All three drove home to pack. Elsie’s bawling may have worked on one, it didn’t work on three. Harry, white-faced and chain-smoking, gave up and walked over to the creek. Margot spent the afternoon upending Georgie’s room, looking for the key to her bedroom door confiscated by Georgie months ago.

She was still looking when Georgie came home. ‘What do you think you’re doing in here?’

‘You’ve thtill got that thtupid photo.’ Margot had the framed newspaper mug shot of Laurie Morgan in her hand.

‘Put it back where you found it, Margot.’

‘Ath if he careth about you.’

Georgie manually retrieved the photograph, and was manually removing Margot from her room when Jack Thompson drove in. She released Margot and walked out to his car.

He drove her out to a lane behind the old slaughteryards and they walked down to a bend in the creek where she sat on the bank, pitching twigs into the water, watching them float downstream, while he spoke of Melbourne, about Charlie, asked about the new cop. She had little to say.

‘Mum said to invite you over for dinner.’

‘No thanks.’

‘I need you with me, Georgie. I love you. The flat has got two rooms. You can have your own room and I promise I won’t pressure you into doing anything you’re not ready to do.’

She sighed. ‘I’m only six months older than I was in June, Jack, and Charlie is about ten years older.’

‘You should have left him where he was.’

‘You’re starting to sound like his daughter.’

‘Has she been to see him?’

‘Ha.’ She pitched a clod of earth, watched it plop, watched the ripples circling. ‘She rang me and blasted a hole through from my left ear to my right, threatened to have the law onto me if I didn’t take him back to where I’d got him.’

‘He can’t look after himself, love.’

‘Joss Palmer helps out with him. Mrs Fulton brings him down a meal at night. A few of the old blokes wander around to talk to him. He’s happy, and I’m not going to be the one to take what little he’s got left away from him. And that is the end of the story.’