Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  ‘She’s taken him, Father,’ Margaret said, coming at a run through the rear door. ‘She’s taken him on the train.’

  He turned to her, his long jaw sagging. ‘Her father’s not cold in his grave.’ And he’d taken pity on the hot pants little bitch?

  Cart and horse gone now, disappearing into the gloom of dusk, Vern left staring at an empty road. And his grandson on that train, gone to Christ only knew where with a bike-riding, leather-booted lout he’d been planning to use as part of his arsenal in court.

  ‘You were advised to strike while the iron was hot. We pay a fortune for the solicitor and you chose to ignore his advice.’

  Lorna, his firstborn, came from the front of the house, marched by him and around the corner. When agitated, Lorna wore out the veranda’s floorboards with her marching. A know-all bugger of a woman, that one. She should have been born the male, Vern thought. No Jap would have taken her alive — nor wanted to.

  She was right though. He had no one to blame but himself. The day they’d heard Jim was being moved down south, they should have got those papers underway, or got it fixed so she couldn’t take that boy out of town. Too much on his mind at the time. First things first, he’d said. We get Jim well, get him home, then we get his boy. That’s what he’d said.

  His house, built around the turn of the century, was a classic for its period, a country classic. Tall tin roof, painted red, white woodwork, doors opening onto wide verandas, fancy veranda posts painted white; a substantial house, shaded by substantial trees, surrounded by a hedge of roses, past their best blooming but still putting on a fine show.

  Lorna, black-clad, a tall ungainly woman, completed her circuit of the verandas and continued her lecture as she approached her father and sister for the second time. ‘The time to make our move was when the murder was on the front pages of every newspaper.’

  Plain as mud, taller than most males, tongue as bitter as gall, she was useless as a woman. Couldn’t iron a shirt, couldn’t make a decent cup of tea, never defiled her hands with a recipe book, but damn near ran Vern’s sawmill — from a distance. Had he allowed it, she would have been down there browbeating his mill hands as she browbeat her sister, as she’d been attempting to browbeat him since his stroke. He was a match for her yet. He kept her away from the mill.

  ‘We’ve had a setback,’ Vern called after her. ‘It’s not the end of it. Not by a long shot.’

  He didn’t understand her obsession with Jimmy. She’d shown no interest in that boy until ’42.

  ‘Nero fiddles while Rome burns,’ she snorted, again rounding the corner, this time colliding with her weeping sister. ‘Control yourself, Margaret!’

  The fat and skinny of them. The short and tall of them. The weeping and the snorting of them, and Vern dependent on both since his stroke.

  ‘God will bring him back to us,’ Margaret sniffled. ‘The first day I held that beautiful little boy in my arms, I knew I was meant to raise him.’

  ‘A bitch always returns to her kennel,’ Lorna said and she marched on.

  *

  Forest darkening, black horse clip-clopping soft through the dust, old cart creaking, seat swaying, gravel crunching beneath iron-shod wheels.

  How many times have I travelled this road? Gertrude thought. Countless.

  The forest had a different smell to it by night, a different sound. Trees sighing, settling for the night, dust cooling, the whisper of an owl’s wings, the chorus of frogs, the plaintive cry of night birds.

  She lifted her face to the evening air, breathing it deep, and for an instant she was young again. I’ve lived alone before, she thought. I’ll have room to spread myself. I’ll miss those kids.

  He loves her. You only have to look at his eyes when she’s in the room to know he loves her — and to look at her eyes to know that she doesn’t love him.

  Jim alive? What if it’s not gossip?

  Vern would have told me. He couldn’t keep something like that from me.

  Gloria Bull had gone into nursing, as had her sister. Gertrude knew that to be fact. She also knew Sylvia Croft as a quiet little woman, not one to gossip.

  If it’s true, Gertrude thought. If it’s true, Vern has known for years Jim was a prisoner. Tom Vevers’ second boy died in a prison camp. They were told by some department that he was in that camp, were told when he died there.

  It can’t be true. I know that man like I know myself.

  People become who they live with.

  She’d never got on with Vern’s daughters, had spent years keeping her distance from them. Vern’d lived with his grandfather for the first twenty-three years of his life, and a harder old sod had never walked this earth.

  He wouldn’t do that to me.

  He’d do it to Jenny fast enough.

  That fool of a girl, running off to God only knew where with three little kids and a man she barely knew.

  Ray had a job and a house to take them to — so he’d said. He’d told Gertrude he was going to marry her. Maybe he would. And maybe she’d come home pregnant again — and God save me from that, Gertrude thought.

  He’d been married before — so he said. A man accustomed to having a wife was more likely to take on a second. Look at Vern. He’d done it three times. It could work out for the best. It could work out for the best for those kids. What chance did they have in this town? Memories were too long in Woody Creek. And putting distance between those girls and Archie Foote was to the good. If that man wanted something enough, he’d pursue it until he got it.

  ‘The bastardry of men,’ she said aloud, unsure if her words were for Archie or Vern.

  She’d seen Vern at Norman’s funeral, or sighted him out front of the church. Too involved with Jenny, she’d had no chance to speak to him. She’d met Margaret’s eyes — and they’d looked like frightened fish seeking a rock to hide behind. That girl’s face was an open book. It could have been true.

  Gertrude’s horse, familiar with the forest road and the track leading off from the road to the boundary gate, made the turn without need of guidance, which was as well. Gertrude’s mind wasn’t on the job tonight.

  I’ve got to think it’s for the best. I’ve got to hope it’s all for the best. Hope. It’s all there is sometimes, she thought as she climbed down from the cart and swung the gate wide. Her horse walked himself through and kept on walking while she closed it. He knew her habits. She knew his.

  The sky was clear tonight; a few stars already peeking out. She glanced up, seeking the brightest star.

  ‘Watch over those kids,’ she said. ‘Guide her in the right direction.’

  DISCONNECTION

  Norman Morrison was murdered on or around Saturday, 6 January 1946, his battered body found in his bed three days later. For almost thirty years he had been Woody Creek’s stationmaster. Three weeks after his death, the Railway Department sent up a permanent replacement. Five kids now ran wild in Norman’s yard, a pup peed in his parlour, while two cats ran up and down the curtains.

  Norman was not a man to be sorely missed. He had been at his best in impersonal situations, a pen and paper in his hands. The Parents and Citizens Association missed his efficiency at their first meeting in February. The Church of England Ball Committee would miss his organisational skills, but not until their first meeting in April.

  Jenny didn’t miss him, as in miss seeing him. In recent years, she’d seen little of her father. The gaping gash of no Norman had been inside her since she was fourteen; his death was a new bruise around the gash, that’s all. It was the knowledge that she had no right to mourn him, that he wasn’t her real father, that created the aching hollow of no Norman.

  She should have been able to get over it. Things could have been a whole heap worse than they were. The weather was good. Melbourne’s summer days were as hot as Woody Creek’s, but the nights weren’t. Melbourne offered beautiful nights. And the house Ray had brought them to in the dead of night: it was a house worthy of the name. Red brick on the o
utside, plaster on the inside, high ceilings. Even on the hottest days, its rooms remained cool. Granny’s house became an oven on such days.

  Everything was good, so why couldn’t she feel good?

  Because she couldn’t deal with knowing what she knew. Not at night, she couldn’t. During daylight hours, her senses bombarded by new places, new people, with three kids dependent on her for everything, she could almost feel like their mother. It was the nights, when the kids were in bed, when their eyes were closed and she had to look out at the dark of Melbourne through her own eyes — that’s when she knew there was nothing out there she wanted to see.

  Thought that if she’d run fast enough, far enough, she wouldn’t have to deal with what she was, who she was — who she wasn’t. But how could anyone deal with it?

  It was no use denying it either. She knew it was true because it answered every question she’d ever asked herself or Granny.

  It was the reason Amber never could stand the sight of her. It was the reason old Noah had given her the pearl-in-a-cage earrings and pendant. It was the reason why Granny’s wedding photograph had disappeared from her wall — she’d seen Jenny’s similarity to the youthful Itchy-foot. The pieces fitted into place like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Everything. Every single thing. The twins’ tormenting chant fitted: Old J.C., she went off to have a pee, squatted down behind a tree, dropped her pants and found Jenny, old J.C. now stinks up the cemetery . . . It was all true. J.C. of that little grey tombstone, who, as a child, Jenny had given flowers to, had died giving birth to her. Archie Foote, absconding husband of Granny, father of Amber, was also Jenny’s sire — which made her a murderess’s half-sister, which was worse than being a murderess’s daughter. Her brain crawled with it. Day and night it crawled with it. And how could anyone let go of something that was eating their head from within?

  For twenty-two years she may not have liked who she was but Jenny had known who she was. Jennifer Carolyn, daughter of Norman Morrison, the stationmaster. She’d had a sister, Cecelia Louise, who she may not have been able to stand, but Sissy had always been her sister. Now she wasn’t.

  And Granny, the only person in the world who, no matter what Jenny had done, no matter what she’d said, had loved her. Now she’d found she wasn’t even distantly related to Gertrude. She wasn’t related to anyone — except Amber and Archie Foote. It was her disconnection Jenny couldn’t deal with, from Norman, from Granny. It was the hollow left inside from the ripping out of that connection that she couldn’t fill. Always, forever, when she’d had no one else in the world to cling to, she’d known Granny was there.

  Nothing there now. And it was like drowning, it was like drowning in emptiness, from the inside out, and trying to save yourself by gripping onto a spider’s web. Every time she thought she had a grip, the web melted in her hands.

  Just pretending to be alive now, that’s all; just doing, not being. Every day. And knowing she’d been supposed to die with Juliana, that the grey tombstone should have read: J.C. AND INFANT LEFT THIS LIFE 31.12.23.

  Should have kept your mouth shut then Nancy Bryant wouldn’t have found you, she thought. It would have finished before it started.

  Before what started?

  Nothing.

  Jenny, an unnamed life form, exists in a brick house, in a long street, with three nameless kids, and each day, while another inch of her disappears, she pretends to be something.

  Ray had introduced her to the Parkers, who shared the house, as a schoolfriend’s widow, now his wife. He’d bought her a wedding ring. She hadn’t put it on. Hadn’t needed to put it on. She still wore Jim’s ring, Jen and Jim, 1942 engraved on its inner circle.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs King,’ the Parkers said.

  She wasn’t Mrs King, wasn’t Jim’s widow, wasn’t Norman’s daughter or Granny’s granddaughter. She wasn’t anything — and wasn’t a mother either. Her kids slept on Sissy’s old mattress on the floor, and she slept with them — or didn’t sleep.

  Ray had a good bed, a big wardrobe, beautiful dressing table. She’d done an Amber, had polished them for him. He hadn’t noticed the polish. He wanted her in his bed. And she didn’t want to be in it. If she knew one thing, she now knew that. ‘Can we go back to Melbourne with you, Ray? I have to get out of here. I don’t expect you to marry me,’ she’d said.

  Marrying him would get rid of the Morrison name. She’d be legally someone. Maybe this was her chance to start again.

  You can’t rip out half of a book’s pages then, in the middle of a paragraph, become involved in a half-told story. She’d be turning pages, that’s all.

  She had to go.

  Go where?

  Nowhere.

  There were three little kids in that back bedroom, asleep on their mattress, and wherever she went she’d have to take them and their mattress with her. What did they call those things the old sailing boats had dragged behind them to slow them down in a wind storm? Whatever. She had three and a mattress behind her, and she was sinking fast.

  Should have left them with Granny. Should have dumped them — like she’d dumped Cara Jeanette in Sydney.

  Stop.

  Couldn’t stand to think about that one. Wanted to vomit every time she thought about that little girl growing up in Myrtle’s house, thinking she was someone she wasn’t. Poor little unnamed life form, born of an unnamed life form, looking out at the world through Amberley’s leadlight window — and nothing, no one, outside that window for her to run to. Blank space. Emptiness.

  ‘Archie Foote spent his life running away,’ Gertrude had said that last day. ‘You learn nothing while you’re running, darlin’. Look at the nomads of this world — they’ve had the same tens of thousands of years as civilised man to learn in, but they were too busy scratching for their next meal to learn how to plant a crop. Stay here with me. Give yourself time to come to terms with who you are.’

  How could she have stayed? How could she have walked into town to buy a newspaper and seen AMBER MORRISON splashed all over the front pages? It was bad enough down here where she was no one.

  AMBER MORRISON UNFIT TO STAND TRIAL.

  AMBER MORRISON TRANSFERRED TO ASYLUM FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE.

  Amber Morrison, mentally deranged murderess, and her conscienceless father were the only two people on this earth Jenny could claim as blood relatives, and at night she knew she was as mad, as bad, as both of them.

  Look what she’d done to her life. Look at those little kids she’d given as much thought to making as she gave to making pancakes. Instead of sitting out here feeling sorry for herself, she should have been standing on some street corner selling herself. At least she’d have money in her handbag, at least she could buy those kids a bed.

  Ray didn’t want them. He hadn’t offered to buy them a bed.

  Amber had sold herself for money. That was in the newspapers too, how years ago she’d been jailed for stabbing one of her clients.

  Norman must have known. And he’d taken her back into his house to mother two kids. What the hell had he been thinking of?

  Question: How does a woman lie beneath multiple men for money?

  Question: How does a woman stab her sleeping husband with the same knife she’d used to carve a thousand slices of meat? How does she smash his dear old face with the cast-iron frying pan he’d used a hundred times to fry eggs for breakfast, to fry cheese sandwiches for supper?

  Question: How do you wipe that from your mind?

  Question: How do you wipe away your last image of the man you’ve thought of as Daddy for twenty-two years?

  It couldn’t be done. Every time she closed her eyes she saw him lying on that table, covered up and cold. Every time she closed her eyes she could feel his cold dead hand in her own.

  Kissed his hand goodbye because they wouldn’t let her kiss his face — like they hadn’t let Mrs Abbot see Nelly’s face.

  Stop!

  Question: How do I stop?

  Impossible.

  The p
sychiatrist who had examined Amber in jail had spoken to the newspapers with great authority on the minds of menopausal woman, how they could disassociate a violent act from their conscious state. He’d spoken about Amber Morrison’s constant pregnancies, her four dead babies. The following day, the newspapers printed two columns about her missing womb and ovaries.

  Jenny could have told them Amber’s violent act had nothing to do with ovaries or dead babies; that she’d been pregnant the first time she’d tried her hand at murder. She might have been successful that day if Mr Foster hadn’t ruined her fun.

  If I’d died when I was three, Norman might still be alive, Barbie Dobson and Nelly Abbot might still be alive, two newborn babies at the hospital might still be alive . . .

  One murder was enough for the police, though not the newspapers. Yesterday they’d found an unsolved knife murder in Melbourne during the last year Amber had been selling herself on the streets — the victim, a younger prostitute.

  God help Granny. How was she surviving those newspapers? No more ‘Granny’. How was Gertrude surviving those newspapers? Her excuse for Amber had always been Archie Foote’s bad seed. A very fine thing to blame — until you learn that you carry that same bad seed, until you know you’ve already passed it on to four innocent little kids.

  They didn’t have a hope! And she couldn’t give them any hope.

  Maybe she had, inadvertently, given Cara Jeanette a pinch of hope. Maybe church-going Myrtle and magical Amberley would eradicate that bad seed, poison it with love.

  Ray’s name would eradicate the Morrison name. Her kids would live in a nice house with a bathroom. And a refrigerator, an almost new refrigerator. Georgina King sounded regal.

  They needed to be in school, or two of them did. Couldn’t bring herself to enrol them as Morrisons; last school attended, Woody Creek. Not while Amber and that town were in the headlines.

  Does a sire’s bad seed, when added to a dam’s lack of morals, allow the resulting life form to think about marrying a man she doesn’t love, a man who can’t read as well as a six year old, just to give her kids a chance at life?