Authors: Joy Dettman
There was surprise in his voice when he turned the final page face down. ‘Please, miss, I want some more.’
‘That’s all I’ve retyped. The rest is messy. When it was returned, I attacked it with a red pen.’
‘I’ll read around the red.’
‘You’re just saying that so I won’t evict you.’
‘I’m saying it because I want to know what happens to Archie.’
‘Do you know anything about jails?’
‘I’m working on it. Why?’
‘Rusty visits her mother in jail and it’s an important scene and I don’t know enough about jails to make it believable.’
‘I saw a prison show on the box a while back.’
‘I watched it, but Chris says that Australian jails are different from American jails. I’ve tried to pick his brains, but he doesn’t visit prisoners as a prison visitor. They’re his clients. He speaks to them in private rooms.’
‘That’s why you hooked up with him? Research?’
‘I hooked up with him because he turns up when he says he’ll turn up.’
‘You’re supposed to say, Because I love him.’
‘That goes without saying.’
‘Not for us, it didn’t,’ he said.
‘Stop that or go, Morrie.’
‘Then give me the rest of your book. You’ve left Archie dangling.’
She picked up the rest of her manuscript and dumped it on the table, with a pencil. ‘Edit it while you’re about it,’ she said, then leaving him to it, she went to the bathroom.
He’d made more coffee when she returned. She checked his bottle. It was in the fridge where she’d placed it.
Washed his dishes, the pan, watching him turning pages, occasionally glancing back at a page before reading on. She watched his pencil make corrections, write comments in the margin, then at ten-thirty he stood, stretched, and asked if he could call Ballarat.
She gave him privacy. She took a bag of rubbish down to the bins, and when she returned, he was back at the table, reading. She watched him for a moment, trusting his pencil, trusting him to give her an honest opinion too. Went to her desk then to write to Georgie and ask her to be a bridesmaid in September. What would Myrtle and Robert think of her? And Chris. She’d need to tell him she was adopted and had a half-sister.
Five pages later, one page filled with Morrie, with his parents, she sealed the letter into an envelope, then walked down to the postbox and sent it on its way.
He was still reading when she returned. The least she could do was to feed him. Fried ham and cheese sandwiches, opened a can of tomato soup – and felt Chris’s disapproval. He rarely ate bread. Fried bread oozing cheese! He’d be aghast.
Morrie dispatched his share. ‘What does Con think of your novel?’
‘He’s not into fiction.’
‘Have you got anything in common with him?’
‘Change the subject, Morrie.’
‘Cathy says you don’t.’
‘Cathy only thinks she knows everything.’
He moved from the table to the lone easy chair after lunch, a pile of pages on the floor, on either side of the chair. He read until seven, then again phoned home, just briefly.
‘How is she?’ Cara asked.
‘Sleeping,’ he said. ‘She’s . . . they’re keeping her pain-free with injections. She would have wanted . . .’
‘They know what they’re doing, Morrie. You have to trust them.’
They shared a tin of spaghetti at eight, on toast. She opened her last bottle of milk for their coffee.
Ten-fifteen before he placed the final page down, when he placed his pencil down and sat looking at her.
‘You hate it?’
‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Your characters are good. Your ending wasn’t what I expected, but to use Cathy’s word, it’s brilliant. You’ve got a novel.’
‘True?’
‘Fair dinkum.’
‘That sounds silly coming from a Pom, but thanks.’
‘I’ve served my time here.’
‘Fair dinkum?’ she said. ‘I can’t say I noticed much of it. Now you have to go.’
‘The major general will be in my bed.’
‘Chris will call me before he goes to bed. You can’t be here when he calls.’
‘He checks up on you, eh?’
‘He calls to say goodnight.’
‘And to check up on you.’
‘It’s been a good day, Morrie. Let it end on a good note.’
‘Going,’ he said.
She opened the door and he, stepping by her, changed his mind before he was by and drew her to him. Kissed her. She didn’t fight him.
‘Don’t take it personally,’ he said. ‘It was for the one inside you, capable of writing that novel.’
‘I’ll . . . pass it on to her.’
‘You might tell her I love her while you’re about it.’
‘That would have been enough to win her heart back when she believed that parents live forever, that publishers fought over every would-be writer’s scribble.’
‘They’ll fight over
Rusty
.’ Long arms still holding her, and where anyone coming up the stairs could see them. What if Chris had decided to fly home? What if he walked up those stairs?
He kissed her again.
And why did his kiss reach down to the one deep inside?
Because he’s bad for me. Because I’m like Jenny, and if not for Myrtle and Robert, I probably would have ended up pregnant at fifteen and had four kids by the time I was twenty. Whoever I was supposed to be might want to drag him into my bedroom, but the one I became knows better.
She shook off her genetics, shook him off too, then stepped back, closing the door between them. Stood behind it, listened for his footsteps on the stairs.
He didn’t leave immediately. Perhaps he was waiting for her to leave the door. She walked heavily to the kitchenette window, and a minute later he walked by, just a shadowy figure walking in the rain. She watched him to his car, stood watching until his toy pulled away from the kerb.
Plates, mugs stacked beside the sink,
Rusty
on the table. She glanced at a page or two where his pencil had been busy – and knew, knew without a doubt that with him at her side, with his belief in her, she’d get it published.
Turned back to her sink, full of plates and coffee mugs. Not once in her life had Myrtle gone to bed before the last dish was washed, the last cup placed away. Chris’s sink was used, but every time she went to his flat, it looked unused. He paid a cleaner.
Myrtle approved unreservedly of him. For the past two months he’d spent half of his life in Sydney defending someone big – and courting Myrtle and Robert, eating with them, taking them out to restaurants. Robert got on well with him.
She hadn’t planned for the relationship to escalate. The first time she’d gone out with him, he’d expected to follow her inside. She’d come straight out with it, told him she didn’t sleep around, that she had a long-term boyfriend in England. Thought she’d got rid of him. Hadn’t. He sent her a beautiful bouquet of flowers, to the school. Who doesn’t appreciate a huge bouquet of flowers?
Then in Sydney, long days, long nights, no television, nowhere to write in peace, her highlight cooking badly in Myrtle’s kitchen. When he’d asked her out to dinner, she’d gone with him, just to break the monotony.
He’d pursued her thereafter and she’d stopped dodging him. Taking him to Cathy’s wedding had been a huge mistake. She’d only taken him up there to show Morrie that other men were prepared to spend time with her. It had backfired. Determined to prove how happy she was, she’d emptied too many wine glasses and ended the night in Chris’s bed.
Research, she’d named it. A final shedding of childhood, she’d named it. Hadn’t planned to repeat it. Hadn’t for over a month. For Chris, that night had meant more than research.
She was in love with his bedroom and his palatial bathroom. He took her to all of the new shows, drove her there in his expensive car. He’d got her fit. She ran with him on Sunday mornings, and could keep up now – if she was in the mood to keep up.
He drank grapefruit juice when he returned from his morning run. She squeezed his grapefruit on Sunday mornings. No bread for toast in his kitchen. He lived on steak, seafood, salad.
She knew why. She’d eaten several times at his mother’s table, beautiful food, beautiful cakes. His father weighed half a ton, his mother not a whole lot less, and two of his sisters were attempting to outdo their parents.
Dark hair, dark eyes, no more height than she, a pleasant face. Short legs, not bandy, but somehow not quite right when exposed in his running shorts.
Nor was his name quite right. Cara Marino sounded like a breed of sheep, not an author. He wanted four children. If Cara Marino had four children she wouldn’t have a lot of time left to worry about prize sheep or writing.
And she couldn’t stand grapefruit juice – or his yoghurt and grain breakfasts. She’d tried yoghurt and grain one Sunday morning, after he’d put forward his case for its defence, with scientific proof to back up his claims. Lacing on her running shoes was sufficient self-inflicted punishment.
He ate oysters, ate them raw from their shells. He’d eaten snails one night in Sydney, had taken her and her parents to a French restaurant, and when they’d brought his roasted, buttered snail entree, she’d left the table. Twelve hours later, the smell of roasted snails had remained in her nostrils.
He could afford to pay the bill. He knew which wine to order. She didn’t know one bottle from the next. He dressed well, wore imported shoes – and ultra-short running shorts and oversized, overpriced runners. And an ankle-length bathrobe and slippers after his shower. And nothing more.
Cara had seen an identical pair of those slippers in a city store, and when she’d looked at the price, she’d dropped the slipper. She could have paid a month’s rent with what they cost.
She didn’t own a pair of slippers. Old scuffs sufficed. They’d come off a bargain-basement table three or four years ago. Her favourite high-heeled shoes had come off a bargain-basement table, and were prohibited in his flat – their black fake leather soles had a bad habit of marking floors.
His floors were white, white tiles in the kitchen, white deep pile carpet in lounge and bedroom. Always shoes off at his place. Always cold stockinged feet at his place. And so pleased to return to her beige dog-box squat, to its threadbare carpet where she could put a pair of shoes on in the morning and not take them off until she went to bed, where she could always find bread, butter, eggs, cheese.
Absolutely adored his bedroom. The bedhead wall was black, the others white, his bedcover was fake zebra hide. The entire room had been done in black and white with touches of a rich jade green, and he had a pair of the most beautiful black and jade bedside lamps which he’d found somewhere in Italy. He’d been over there twice before she’d known him. He had a grandmother still living in Italy and cousins. He had cousins everywhere.
She’d fly with him next time, see the world with him.
Not when she had four kids she wouldn’t –
So delay the kids –
She didn’t want four. She’d had her fill of kids. One maybe, but not yet. Her writing was her unborn baby and tonight it was kicking to get out.
John and Beth had a pile of grandkids. Myrtle and Robert would be over the moon if she gave them one, if they lived close by, like John and Beth’s grandkids. Chris had mentioned to them that he might buy in Sydney, after the wedding.
Bet he wouldn’t. His family lived in Doncaster, lived in a cluster there. Years ago his father had bought a two-acre block, and through the years four houses had been built on it. There was space waiting empty for one more. Cara knew she’d end up in that space – with four bandy-legged kids.
Stop. He’s a good man. And you sleep with him. And you’re marrying him on 27 September – and will probably be pregnant by your birthday.
He used condoms, making sure there’d be no little accidents before the wedding. An only son, the baby of the family, they wanted a big white wedding, as did Myrtle. The two families agreed on that, if not on the church. Chris’s family was Catholic. Myrtle wanted Cara to marry in her own church. They’d work it out, or she’d end up getting two wears out of her wedding gown – if she was prepared to swear to raise her children Catholic. Myrtle hadn’t agreed to that either. It mattered little to Cara, who hadn’t been inside any church, other than for weddings, since . . . she couldn’t remember since when, maybe since Traralgon when she’d asked God to let Dino have a head-on with a loaded transport.
She couldn’t see herself as a married woman, in maternity clothes, spending her days like Cathy, head over the toilet bowl as she blew up like a balloon. Definitely could not see herself splitting her bones apart in attempting to push a giant grapefruit through the eye of a needle.
How did she see herself if she dared to peek into the future?
Easy, that one. She was in a bookshop, holding a copy of
Rusty
in her hand.
What else?
This flat.
What else, and be honest.
Morrie beside her.
‘Satisfied?’
He hasn’t got a job. He lives in a rented house.
He’s got a house in England.
His aunt’s house.
She thought of his solicitor joke, thought of telling it to Chris. He’d smile, then tell her a long and detailed tale of an amusing incident in his day. She’d feign interest – as he’d feigned interest when she’d told him the publishers had sent back her novel – then he’d told her a long tale of a would-be Sydney writer his colleague had represented, who had become convinced that a Hollywood producer had stolen his plot.
He may have been in love with the teacher, the exterior, the created Cara. Whatever Myrtle and Robert had raised her to be fitted very nicely into his image of the wife of an up-and-coming solicitor. She spoke well, had socially acceptable parents, who may have been more acceptable had they not turned Amberley into units. He’d been ultra-impressed by Amberley’s externals, by its position, if unimpressed by its modern renovations – the one thing he and Cara agreed on.
He knew nothing about the inner Cara, the one Morrie had kissed. Didn’t want to know her.
Wondered if he’d still consider her an acceptable wife when she told him how Myrtle and Jenny had pulled their swiftie. He’d explain the illegalities, the possible repercussions of that switch.