Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  Please God. Please God. Please God.

  Peeled his filthy potatoes. Fried his slab of bloody cow. Got rid of him to work, then bathed, washed her hair again, and hurried back up the passage to her door, praying she wouldn’t run into one of the Parkers.

  ‘How long is Ray on night shift?’ Geoff asked.

  How long have you been standing in the passage? How much of what happens in that bedroom do you hear?

  ‘A month,’ she said, and hurried back to the east side.

  She’d know this time next week. Not a thing she could do except wait out that week, count down the days on the calendar, and, for the remainder of his month on bloody night shift, be ready for him.

  Eight days she lived through, eight of the longest days of her life, before she knew she’d been given a reprieve. A jubilant day that one, even before Granny’s letter arrived, with a page from Maisy. She’d found out the name of Jim’s hospital from Vern’s farm manager’s wife.

  Bless you, Maisy Macdonald, and bless your gossiping ways. And thank you, God, for this lovely day.

  She waited until Friday, until Ray was sleeping, then she dressed silently, carefully, in the green linen Jim had bought for her in Sydney. Wanted to wear it for him. Wanted him to see it and smile. She dressed Jimmy in his Sunday best, polished his worn shoes. He needed new shoes. She had her endowment money in her purse, with over a pound of sewing money. She’d get him a new pair today.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he whispered, happy to be going anywhere.

  ‘To see someone who is sick in a hospital, someone you’ll be very surprised to see.’

  Let Jim tell him how he’d come back from the dead.

  They rode the tram into the city and another one out. They found the hospital. She was shaking when she entered, shaking more as she followed a nurse to a sunroom, her eyes, her knees, threatening to let her down.

  Found him sitting like an old man in a cane chair with wheels, staring at a window. She didn’t approach him, not for a moment, just stood looking her fill. It was Jim, but so thin and grown older.

  He didn’t turn to the sound of her high heels on the polished wooden floor and, with a yard between them, she stilled her feet.

  ‘What’s so interesting out there?’ she said.

  He didn’t turn to her voice.

  ‘Jim?’

  Like a wax model, no movement, no sound.

  ‘It’s Jenny,’ she said. ‘It’s Jenny and Jimmy.’

  Was he deaf? Could beri-beri affect the hearing? She closed the space between them and reached for his hand resting on the arm of the chair. It hadn’t changed. It felt the same, felt warm.

  ‘Jim. It’s Jenny.’

  For an instant she thought he’d heard her, thought he was going to reply. His lips parted, but they closed and he withdrew his hand to his knee and grimaced. And his teeth were wrong. No more porcelain teacups. They’d fitted him with teeth too small for his face. Clad him in a tartan dressing gown and striped pyjamas, one pyjama leg pinned up. One sharp knee bone trying to poke through the fabric; the other one . . . the other one just . . . just ending. One slipper on the floor.

  He’d always been slim. Never like this, or not as a man. Skin stretched over a chiselled jawbone, stretched tighter over sharp cheekbones. So pale, yellow pale. And his dark hair greying at the temples. He was Ray’s age. He was Sissy’s age, twenty-seven. Men of twenty-seven didn’t go grey. Wanted to howl for that grey, to touch it. Didn’t.

  Jimmy stood well back, his hands behind his back, being the best boy he knew how to be, but watching her with wide, worried eyes. She wasn’t going to howl. She took that long-fingered hand again, and this time forced his fingers to the ring he’d given her in Sydney.

  ‘Remember Jen and Jim, 1942?’ she said. ‘Remember having it engraved in Sydney, Jim? I’m still wearing it.’

  There was no response to her words or to the ring. He didn’t like being touched. Again the hand was withdrawn.

  She squatted beside his chair, if only to relieve her trembling legs. Her face on a level with his own, she took his chin and turned his face, forcing him to see her. Perhaps he did, though there was nothing in his eyes. They didn’t look like his eyes. They frightened her.

  ‘It’s Jenny. You know me.’

  Empty eyes looking through her. She released his chin and he turned those empty eyes back to stare at the window, and she stood and stepped away, knowing the Japs had killed him, if not on that day in ’43, then soon after. Only his hands had come home. And she had to get out of this place before she started blubbing like a fool.

  She reached for Jimmy’s warm little hand, knowing now that she had the best of Jim, the last of him, at her side. Walked him too fast from the veranda, walked him too far down that passage, and when she turned into a corridor, she came on a nurses station she hadn’t seen on the way in. Lost.

  Two men and a white-clad nurse, discussing papers.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to find my way out.’

  ‘Go back to the first corridor on the right,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Jennifer?’

  The smaller of the two men had spoken. She should have recognised the back of his head, his hair. Had she been thinking straight, she would have. She wasn’t thinking straight. Recognising him washed the image of Jim from her mind. She spun around on her high heel and near dragged Jimmy back the way they’d come.

  ‘Jennifer. Do you have a moment?’

  She didn’t, not for him. He pursued her down the corridor, and to the right, and out into a too bright sun. It burned her eyes. Squinted against it, she walked near blind out to the street, walked fast, believing she’d left him behind. She hadn’t.

  ‘Jennifer!’

  ‘That man’s calling you, Jenny.’

  ‘Walk, darlin’. I don’t want to talk to him.’

  Archie Foote pursued her down to the tram stop, and, no tram in sight, Jenny kept walking.

  ‘One word only,’ he said.

  She had no words for him.

  Jimmy knew where they had to wait to catch the trams he loved to ride in. He pulled back on her hand, and she turned to face the man who had fathered her.

  ‘You have no cause to fear me, my dear,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t fear you, and I don’t want to talk to you either.’

  ‘I have only your best interests at heart. One minute of your time is all I ask.’

  He was a doctor. He looked like a doctor. He spoke like a doctor, but she knew what he was. Granny knew what he was.

  And what was he doing at a hospital full of returned soldiers? He was older than Granny.

  Tram coming over the hill, moving too slow. She released Jimmy’s hand, turned her back to Archie Foote and placed distance between them.

  He spoke to Jimmy. Jimmy liked talking. He asked who they’d seen at the hospital and Jimmy told him of a man who had only one slipper on because his leg got cut off, a man who couldn’t see him and Jenny, and his name was Jim, and his daddy’s name was Jim too and he’d got dead in the war.

  ‘Hooper’s son,’ Archie said.

  One day Jimmy might learn the name of the man with one leg. Not from her, or not today. She turned to face Archie Foote, her hand raised. Stop. He read hand signals. He said no more.

  Tram trundling in. She took Jimmy’s hand and they boarded. Archie followed them onto the tram and found a seat across the aisle from Jimmy.

  ‘You’re having a day off from school,’ he said.

  ‘When I’m five, I can go to school. Only Georgie and Margot go now. What’s your name?’

  ‘Archibald — and I’m not even bald.’

  Jimmy liked a joke. He laughed, and told him it was a funny name, like in a book. ‘Why do you know Jenny’s name for?’

  ‘I knew your mummy when she was a little girl, not a lot taller than you.’

  ‘Did you live in Woody Creek too?’

  ‘That’s enough, Jimmy.’ Jenny swapped seats with him, sat
him beside the window.

  ‘You’re down for the weekend?’ Archie said.

  She had to ignore him, that’s all. He’d give up. He’d got her mind off Jim’s eyes. That’s what she had to think. Not a tear in her now. Her concentration on the road ahead. Not much further. She was learning Melbourne’s landmarks, its streets. They were the first off the tram at Swanston Street and he still on their heels.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Only to speak. I saw Tru quite recently.’

  ‘I’ve made it clear that I don’t want to speak to you.’

  ‘She wasn’t pleased to speak to me either. I’m an old man, Jennifer, and quite harmless.’

  Armadale tram coming but she couldn’t board it and go home. He’d follow her out there. Couldn’t let him know where she lived. She let it go, and caught the next one, to God only knew where. He boarded behind her. They rode in silence to a suburb she’d never visited, to a street of shops where she queued to get off. He queued behind her, and she felt his breath on her neck, or maybe only the hairs on her neck standing tall at his proximity.

  A threesome then, Jimmy walking between his mother and grandfather, Jimmy discussing artificial legs with the doctor.

  ‘Will you make that man a leg he can tie on?’

  ‘My word we will,’ the grandfather said.

  Madness.

  ‘Jenny said a man in Sydney had a leg made out of wood and his knee squeaked when he walked.’

  ‘Perhaps he should carry an oil can.’

  ‘And he could just pull his pants up when he was walking and drip, drip, drip, and no more squeaks,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘I once knew a man with a tin leg. He could play “Happy Birthday” on it with a teaspoon.’

  Just a laughing little boy and his smiling grandpa, chatting as they walked a busy street. That’s what passers-by would think.

  Don’t be taken in by him, Granny had written. He can put on a fine act.

  A very fine act. Jimmy was taken in. Anyone might be. No hat on his head. His mop of white curls, as her own curls, wouldn’t have a happy relationship with hats. A dark grey suit, white shirt, blue tie — to match his eyes. So clean.

  He’d been a too clean swaggie, his beard always Persil white. He’d looked harmless back then — and they’d locked him up for corrupting a minor — a Duffy minor.

  ‘Ray is my stepfather and Georgie’s and Margot’s,’ Jimmy said. Little blabbermouth. He’d never been shy. Jenny wished him shy today.

  ‘That’s enough, Jimmy. I’ve told you not to speak to strangers.’

  He looked at her, at Archie Foote, unsure how a stranger might have known Jenny’s name, but he said no more. Walked beside her and looked in windows, her obedient boy.

  She’d seen today so differently, had imagined his little face when he’d learnt that his daddy from the photograph was alive. Better for him to believe his daddy lived only in that photograph, that he had big smiling teeth and eyes that laughed. Better than the reality. Nothing works out the way you expect it to work out.

  Not this either. And how could a man of his age still be a doctor? And why in God’s name did he have to work at that hospital?

  Fate.

  Maybe I’m meant to speak to him, ask him about Juliana . . .

  They passed a café. ‘A cup of tea would go down well?’ he said.

  ‘I thought I’d made what I want very clear.’

  ‘Your view of me has been coloured by one half of an unfortunate marriage, I fear, Jennifer. There are two sides to each story, and expectations on either side.’

  She knew all about unfortunate marriages and, for the first time, looked him in the eye; just a brief glance — but enough to know that he and Granny would have had about as much in common as she and Ray, enough to know that she’d inherited the blue of his eyes; long enough to doubt that he’d corrupted a Duffy minor. She’d been at school with three Duffy girls. They’d spent half of their time dropping their pants behind the boys’ lavs — when they’d been wearing pants to drop.

  He’d never tried to corrupt her. He’d never touched her. He’d never said much more to her than good afternoon, Jennifer, or good morning, Jennifer — told her once that she had the voice of an angel. Had given her that pearl-in-a-cage pendant, the first beautiful thing she’d ever owned. Posted the matching earrings to her two years later. She’d once given him a sausage wrapped in bread, dripping tomato sauce.

  Don’t be taken in by him.

  She wasn’t taken in. She was seeing him, that’s all, her view coloured by an unfortunate marriage, by too early pregnancies and true brutality. She knew he was harmless, or harmless to her.

  Still had to get rid of him.

  Tram coming, probably going into the city. Billy-Bob’s watch told her she’d be pushing time to get home before the girls got out of school. Had to get away from him.

  She opened her handbag and found a stub of pencil, a small notebook. He thought she was living in Sydney, thought she was down for the weekend. The likelihood of running into him again was remote — as long as she stayed away from that hospital. She’d stay away, and not only because of him. Wrote Lila Jones’s old address, a girl she’d worked with at the Sydney factory, then, just for good measure, wrote Wilfred Whiteford’s telephone number, the only Sydney number she could recall. Ripped the page from the book and offered it. Didn’t tell him to keep in touch.

  He glanced at it, folded it. ‘Tru mentioned that you were singing at a club in Sydney.’ She nodded, willing Jimmy to be silent as Archie placed the paper into his wallet. ‘We have that in common, my dear.’

  ‘I thought you were a doctor.’

  ‘I am, as ever, a man of many parts. I do a few numbers at a cosy little jazz club. If you find yourself in town on a Friday evening . . .’ He had removed a printed card from his wallet. ‘It would give me great pleasure to introduce your beautiful voice to our fair city.’

  ‘It’s unlikely.’ She took his card, took his offered hand. And was shaken by the contact. He was her father, her blood, and her hand knew it. She snatched it free. Watched him offer his hand to Jimmy, who knew all about shaking hands.

  Got away, wiped her hand on her thigh and hurried Jimmy across the road at traffic lights. Perhaps Archie followed them. She didn’t turn to see. Jimmy turned.

  ‘Was he your friend before, Jenny?’

  ‘He was Granny’s friend, darlin’.’

  Granny’s nemesis.

  Met by accident. Fathered by him, by accident. Life was just one big accident.

  It would give me great pleasure to introduce your beautiful voice to our fair city.

  What if . . . what if meeting him wasn’t an accident? What if she’d been . . . guided? What if she was meant to . . . to use him to get a job singing?

  She didn’t catch the tram. It hid her while she entered a large drapery store, where she drew Jimmy to a halt behind a chaotic table piled high with stained calico. Stood watching the entrance. No sign of him.

  A large sign over that table: Fire Sale. The table was piled with smoke and water-stained calico sheets. And that price couldn’t be right. She freed one sheet from the pile and studied it, freed another.

  ‘They stink,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Stink washes out.’

  She bought half a dozen smelly sheets for next to nothing, and two bottles of blue dye. No new shoes for Jimmy, not this week.

  BLUE CURTAINS

  It took three days. One day of soaking, scrubbing, boiling, then dyeing; one day to cut and stitch hems and headings; another to damp those dyed sheets down and iron them. Norman’s brace and bit made the holes for large cup hooks. A hardware store in High Street supplied the dowelling for curtain rods. She and the girls carried the lengths home, cut to size by a flirty man at the shop. They hung the first curtain in the kids’ bedroom, and it looked beautiful. They hung three over the kitchen windows and glass door, and had two left to hang in Ray’s bedroom when he woke up.

&nbs
p; He didn’t comment on the transformation. The curtain over the glass door got in his way when he wanted to get out.

  ‘I’ll loop them back in the daytime,’ she said.

  ‘It’s d-d-day now.’

  ‘I wanted you to see how good they look.’

  He wanted to get out. She looped them back with ribbons made from the off-cuts, and her kitchen looked like something out of a magazine, and his bedroom more so, after he’d ridden off to work. Wished . . . wished Granny would come down and see what she’d done. Wished she could invite Maisy and Maureen out for afternoon tea the next time Maisy was in town. Wished she could write to Granny and tell her about meeting Archie Foote. Couldn’t.

  Wished she’d had the guts to have a cup of tea with him and ask him about Juliana Conti. Wished she had a job singing at a jazz club. She’d made good money with her voice in Sydney.

  Hadn’t opened her mouth since Norman’s funeral.

  He’d been her father, her only father.

  Archie Foote would ring that Sydney number and get some government war department, no doubt closed down. He’d know she’d lied to him.

  So weird, seeing her own eyes looking back at her. Shaking his hand had been weird. He had young hands. Not her hands. She’d always known she had his hair. Wondered who cut his. Her own needed cutting and hairdressers didn’t understand it. They sheared her. Granny knew how to cut it. Gained her practice on his hair? She’d lived with him for eight years. He’d drugged her and aborted her first baby. She knew him better than anyone. I have to trust her judgement, Jenny thought.

  Should burn his card. She’d thought about burning it when she’d lit the copper to dye those sheets. It was in her bankbook in her handbag. Should burn it now, get him out of her head.

  Better to have him in her head than the image of Jim. Jim no longer Jim.

  Had to keep busy, that’s all. Making the curtains had got both of them out of her head. Idle hands are the devil’s tool, Granny used to say. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

  She washed her floors, bare boards but oiled. She polished them, as Amber had polished her boards, with a mixture of turpentine and beeswax; polished Ray’s bedroom suite, then took sandpaper to the old chest of drawers she’d bought for the kids’ room. Wore her fingerprints away before she was satisfied with it, then polished it with Amber’s trade secret, and that old wood lapped up the polish and glowed.