turned on the hot water faucet and leant over the old enamel tub, welcoming the steamy mist rising up into her face.
As red droplets hit the water's surface like blood from a wound––a souvenir of the day's dusty journey across red plains––she thought about Rex down in Brisbane, about their phone call an hour ago. She should have confided in him, let him know what tonight really meant to her. He would have thought no less of her, not Rex, and she needed his strength tonight. Tonight she was flying solo, and scared.
Bernie was too worried about her, and unable to hide it, she thought, recalling the questioning looks and the way Bernie had hugged her and wanted to come south.
She thought about Bernie's story. She had no right to burden that poor soul with her misery, given what the bastards had done to Bernie. The woman had inner strengths and resources she wished she possessed. There was no bitterness in Bernie Blackburn, or at least none the woman let the world see. She was blessed to have such a friend. A mentor. That’s what Bernie was; her mentor, nudging her out of her melancholy. But not tonight, no Bernie tonight to help chase away the black dogs barking at her heels.
She wiped the grime from her face and walked across to the cabinet to lay out her toiletries on the bench top. The face that looked back at her from the cracked and water-damaged mirror accosted her, disgusted her. Bitter bile rose in her gut, choking her.
Head over the basin, she gagged and then heaved, dry wretching until the waves of peristalsis calmed and she straightened up, wiping the spew from her mouth with the back of her hand and staring into the mirror again, determined to interrogate the image staring back at her.
Caroline Patrick, the fraud. Making like a hero, on the run, fighting authority, pulling swifties on national television, rescuing these kids from the clutches of war. But where was her own son tonight? Who would be sitting with Dominic tonight as the barrel spun and his fate was decided? Who would be with her son to advise him if, God forbid, the worst happened and his number was called out? Not her, because she had given him away to strangers.
Tonight had been a long time coming. She stared until the mirror misted up and clouded her image. Before turning, she etched the number “38” hard onto the steamy surface, then, determined to fight her superstitions, forced herself to leave it there.
She undid her shirt and belt before stepping out of her dusty jungle fatigues and into the welcoming bath water, lowering her body down into it with more pleasure than she deserved, closing her eyes and giving in to the primordial bliss, the sheer joy of being suspended womb-like in warm water. Until self-hatred returned to ambush her emotions, she was determined to make the most of this moment of sweet oblivion.
Oblivion was elusive, however. Even with her head submerged, her brain refused to take a holiday. Minister for Defence they call it, she thought bitterly, her mind unable to back off from the events of this night; a lottery to send another quota of the nation's finest young men off to the terrible jungles of Vietnam. Minister for Warfare, more like it. War mongering old bastards, all of them. What were we defending? Were hoards of Vietnamese peasants invading our shores?
Minister for Defence! What a lie. She hated them with a passion. She might be worthless as a mother, but as a woman with nothing more to lose, she would go on fighting them with every last breath in her body. Bring it on. Whatever tonight's results, she would be there, helping to thwart their worst intentions.
Where was Jude, tonight? The Jude of old, of their school days?
She tasted the bile again and realized she hadn't eaten all day, nothing more than the few peanuts downstairs in the bar while they were fixing her room, installing a small TV for her. But the peanuts were on their way out to sea now, and the heartburn was back. The twisting and cramping in her gut was brought on by anxiety, or so the doctors told her when they could do nothing to alleviate the discomfort she constantly suffered. Self-inflicted, one GP down in Melbourne informed her, scolding her for not being able to control her subconscious mind and stop it from fretting over things she couldn’t alter.
She let more hot water run into the tub.
Where was her mother tonight? And her father? Did either parent ever think about her, talk about her, wonder how she had fared once they'd thrown her out in to the cold world like some Dickensian fallen female?
Not quite that dramatic, she checked herself, but not too far off the mark, recalling the lies and shame of those years, and the way her attempts to cozy up to them had fallen flat.
She reflected on the Patrick household's attitude towards her on that occasion a dozen or more years ago, remembering the weirdness, the embarrassment of the futile family get-together. So much for the Christmas spirit. A Christmas invitation accepted but never repeated. Too many hurtful memories had haunted the room for it to be anything else but hurtful. No amount of noisy bon-bon popping could conceal the silence of things not said that day, and no amount of her mother’s awful tinsel could conceal the gorilla sitting in the corner of that room.
Dominic. Their grandchild to whom they denied an existence
Too many things that couldn’t be said. Ghosts to be avoided. Nieces and nephews in her face, children cherished by their proud parents and doting grandparent. She had been able to stand only so much of the forced joviality before silently slipping out the front door and leaving it all behind. Leaving them to get on with being smug in their respectability. Life in Goodna had obviously gone on without her. At least Life as lived by the Patrick family. They had been spared the infamy of illegitimacy in 1951, the ruination of their good reputations. They had disowned her and got on with their lives.
And she had got on with hers, she reasoned, trying to calm the waves of bile determined to overtake her. Yes, she had got on with her life. For better or worse, give or take a malignant sadness that crept into her soul some days, sorrow dropping like thick fog to smother whatever small joy she might be experiencing, burying her under its weight for weeks, months. Yes, she had got on with her life but they had set the pattern of its moods when they'd sent her packing.
She slid further under the water. How might her life have turned out had her mother’s employer not forgotten to leave the envelope with the paltry wages in it on the sideboard that afternoon? Would she have turned out to be the kind of daughter who makes a parent proud? Could she have gone on to excel in her studies? Become an English teacher? Shined with her music? A concert pianist, perhaps? Daddy’s girl with her name in lights? Even one of those doting mothers in her parents' living room that Christmas Day.
Goodna had been far enough away from Nudgee to make her feel she was being sent into exile the day she was taken to the Home. Wrapped, stamped and posted off. No return address. Good riddance to bad rubbish. St Anthony’s Home for Unmarried Mothers. An institution run by the nuns for wayward girls, bad girls. Nudgee. Everyone knew what it stood for. Shorthand for sinfulness.
But wayward and sinful wasn’t how she'd felt. Not after Donald Manning. Not when Jude stuck her in the mustard bath. Not when taking confession. Not when saying her rosary. And certainly not when standing at the gates to the Home with her suitcase in her hand. Not at any of these times had she felt sinful. Or wayward.
Wayward. She had looked it up. The dictionary had it as meaning obstinate, rebellious, uncooperative, wild. And a lot more beside, but she was none of those things.
All she was, was scared. Terrified. Afraid of going into the unknown.
Entering the gates of the Home for the first time that day, she had experienced a deep sense of hopelessness, a sense of despair that was so visceral it had taken her breath away. The gates seemed too much like the ones at St Brendan’s Convent. They made her think about silly Jude acting the fool while she stood with her camera trying not to break into hysterics. She and Jude. Clowning. At that moment, as she entered St Anthony's gates, she realized her life would forever be divided by what had gone before and what would follow. It was this certainty that had taken her breath away. The reason for her heavy heart as she followed her mother through the gates of the place for wayward girls.
She sat up and reached for the soap and lathered her body, scrubbing vigorously with the flannel, aware the water was cooling again. She dribbled