Wind in the Wires Read Online Free PDF

girl’ to Gran, never Cara – and in the real world, she wouldn’t even be considered tall. The Traralgon backyard wasn’t the real world. Myrtle and Beth might have measured five foot three. Uncle John’s two girls were no taller, unless they wore high heels. Gran might have stretched to five foot before she started shrinking. There was no more room for shrinkage. She’d become a hobbling, carping Egyptian mummy.
    ‘It must be this good healthy country air, Mum,’ Uncle John said.
    ‘Why don’t you stay down here for a month or two, Gran,’ Pete said. ‘You’ll probably grow six inches.’
    ‘Where’s my cup of tea,’ Gran carped.
    Cara made a pot. She took it with cups to the table. Myrtle poured, then Cara had to carry Gran’s cup inside. She’d had enough of the filthy flies. There were no flies in Sydney – so she said.
    ‘Put it in me bedroom,’ Gran said. ‘And get me me pills and some water.’
    Never a please, never a thank you polluted Gran Norris’s mouth. How she’d produced her father and Uncle John, Cara didn’t know.
    Laughter growing in the backyard, Cara wanting to be a part of it, and here she was, fetching and carrying for Gran. She untied Gran’s shoelaces, placed her shoes against the wall. She opened her shoe box of pills, then stood waiting, just in case a bottle top required a stronger hand than Gran’s. It wouldn’t, or not until Cara tried to walk away.
    A major production, Gran’s pill popping. Lids removed one at a time, a pill or two poured from each bottle to be placed in a row on the bedside table, then the lids replaced, the pills counted, the bottles returned to the shoe box.
    Robert took pills when his war-injured knee played up. He went to the bathroom, tossed a couple into his mouth and washed them down with a mouthful of water – and was rarely seen doing it. Gran took hers one at a time, the glass placed down between sips. And she talked, about her various pills, her variety of ills, forcing Cara to wait, just in case she needed more water.
    She’d lived in Sydney all her life, had wed a fool of a man, then taken in lodgers when he’d left her to raise his two sons alone – which was probably where Robert had got the idea to turn Amberley into a boarding house. Cara didn’t know how Robert’s father had died, if he’d died or just run for the hills. Knowing Gran, he’d probably run for the hills.
    Today she asked, between the laxative and the tiny pill that was supposed to keep her tranquil and didn’t.
    ‘When did Dad’s father die, Gran?’
    ‘Your father was fourteen year old when I was left on me own.’ Two pills went down, and Cara still didn’t know if he’d died or run. ‘Another woman would have taken him out of school and put him to work, and for all the thanks I get for educating him, that’s what I should have done. I worked my fingers to the bone to keep that boy in school, and what does he do to me? He joins up before he’s old enough to be in that filthy war, that’s what he does.’
    Probably saw it as the lesser of two evils, Cara thought. ‘What did he die of – my grandfather?’
    Gran humphed before replying. ‘The Norrises were all weak in the chest. I told your father he wouldn’t last a week in the trenches, then his fool of a brother tries to go with him. Fifteen year old, John was. I put a stop to his games. I went down there and dragged him home by the ear.’
    ‘He was in the second war.’
    ‘In the home guard,’ Gran scoffed. ‘He never went further than Newcastle. Your father was overseas for years.’
    ‘How long was he overseas before I was born?’ Cara asked, just a fishing sort of question. She wasn’t expecting it to hook a soul-swallowing shark.
    It was weird how you could question people until you were blue in the face and end up learning nothing, then, when you were least expecting it, out it came. The shoe box was in Cara’s hands. She’d been on her way out the door when Gran put her cup