Wind in the Wires by Joy Dettman Page B

Margot to eat it.
    Elsie had been given three bottles of pills with Margot’s name on them. She’d fed her two with her dinner. Georgie didn’t know what they were for. Some sort of sleeping pill maybe. She was asleep now, her head on Elsie’s shoulder, Jack’s travelling blanket over her.
    They spoke of the greasy roads, of Raelene, Florence Keating and her solicitor. Jack knew the law. He knew the court system. Given the facts, he believed that most judges would award Raelene to her natural mother. Florence and her husband were childless. Florence claimed that Ray had thrown his mother-in-law from the house and broken her wrist, that she’d gone with her mother in the ambulance, and when they’d returned the following day, Ray and the babies were gone.
    The solicitor had obtained the hospital records of Florence’s mother’s broken wrist. Flora and Geoff Parker, who’d owned the Armadale house, had both sworn statements backing up Florence’s story. They’d gone with Florence to report her kids missing.
    Georgie didn’t doubt that what they claimed was true. She had total recall of Christmas Day, 1951, of Ray pulling Donny out from beneath his riding jacket, then digging Raelene out of a saddlebag. He’d looked half-crazy, had been shaking so hard Granny had sent her across the paddock to get the bottle of medicinal brandy. At the time Georgie had been convinced that he’d murdered his kids’ mother and buried her in Jenny’s garden. He’d half-killed Jenny one night.
    Granny had made the rules on her land. He’d obeyed them. There’d been a wildness in him, but most of it in his eyes when he’d looked at Jenny. He’d paid for the two back rooms to be built then had his bedroom furniture brought up on the train, expecting Jenny to share that new room. She hadn’t. She’d moved Donny’s cot out there.
    Her eyes left the road for an instant to glance at Jack. He wanted her to marry him. For the best part of a year she’d been telling herself he was a mate, maybe her best mate, but not her boyfriend. She was close to understanding why a man and woman might want to share a bed. Knew she probably could with him.
    He’d do anything for her. She hadn’t asked him to drive down to Frankston. He’d been in the shop when Jenny rang, and while she was on the line, he’d said to tell her they’d be down on Sunday, as if he was already a part of the family.
    Charlie liked him. Elsie and Harry liked him. Most did.
    ‘Want a break?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m good,’ she said.
    Elsie was asleep before they reached Willama, propped against the doorframe, her coat as a pillow, Margot still dead to the world, her head now on Elsie’s lap.
    ‘Unless someone does something, she’ll have Margot draped around her neck until the day she dies.’
    ‘How come she calls her “Mum”?’ Jack asked.
    ‘Easier to say than “Elsie”.’
    ‘She’s good with her.’
    ‘Her own kids don’t need mothering any more. Margot does.’
    ‘What’s going to happen when she brings the baby home?’
    ‘Elsie’s still imagining weddings and happy families. Did you hear what she wants to name the poor little coot?’
    ‘Gertrude, for your gran.’
    ‘Even Granny loathed the name.’
    ‘What’s your favourite name?’
    ‘Not Gertrude.’
    Just the road noise then, and the windscreen wipers’ flap-flap, flap-flap. They were through Willama and heading into familiar country before Jack spoke.
    ‘If you moved down to Frankston with your mum, I’d be able to see you.’ He was being transferred to the city at the end of June.
    ‘Charlie,’ she said.
    ‘Charlie is becoming a law unto himself. I should have charged him for what he did to his tenants.’
    ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
    ‘He’s not going to improve with age, love, and you’re too young to have the responsibility of him.’
    ‘So you keep telling me.’ Silence again and more rain blowing at the windscreen. She sat forward and eased off the