Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Get out of this place,’ Joey had told her when he’d come home for a couple of days after the war. ‘Do what you have to to get out, Jen. There’s nothing here for either of us.’

  They’d got out. Jenny hoped his escape had been more successful than her own. Wondered if the cane farmer was rich, if he knew about Elsie, or if Joey was playing the grandson of a Spanish pirate. Hoped he was. He’d looked like a Spaniard when he’d had his moustache. Hoped he got married and lived happily ever after.

  Her mind too busy for sleep, it didn’t draw the shutters until dawn was near, until the early birds started chirping and cooing, until she woke with him on top of her.

  ‘No!’ Tried to push Ray off. She wasn’t going through that again. ‘Get off me, Ray.’

  He was too big. Fridays were his sex nights and he’d missed out. He loved her.

  A wife can’t charge her husband with rape. A wife was like a cow, bought at the saleyards; once it’s safe in the farmer’s paddock, he can do what he likes to it.

  ‘I l-love you,’ he said when he was done.

  She pushed him from her, snatched her coat and struggled to find the sleeves. ‘That’s not love. That’s dogs-in-the-street sex,’ she said. ‘How dare you.’

  Nowhere to wash him off her, only the sleep-out, and ragged blinds in there. She took her basin of water, her soap, her towel, out there, locked the kids’ door and did what she could, emptied the water down the lavatory, then went to the washhouse for her cigarettes.

  Walked her garden, cigarette in hand, packet and matches in her pocket. Lit a second cigarette from the first. Was he trying to get her pregnant? Didn’t want her playing cards on Friday nights?

  I’ll do more than play bloody cards. I’m going home for Christmas, and going as soon as school breaks up too.

  She sewed a frock for Flora to wear to Geoff’s brother’s wedding, and looked after Lois all day on the day of the wedding.

  By Sunday she knew her luck had run out, knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

  PUNISHMENT

  October: plump little onions in the garden; baby carrots giving up their space early so their siblings might grow big and long; silverbeet leaves large enough to pick, and the snails feasting on them; slugs eating the lettuce.

  She was six days overdue and wanted to get run over by a truck, wanted to go into the city and jump off a tall building.

  You can’t jump off tall buildings when you’ve got three kids. You can’t stay inside a house when its walls are crushing your soul either. She took Jimmy into the city where they ate dishes of ice-cream for lunch at the Coles cafeteria. She couldn’t stand her head, or the thoughts in her head, so she took him to a movie, uninterested in what was play ing, just needing that flashing screen to turn off her brain.

  She’d made a bad choice: Fred and Ginger were dancing. Loved dancing. Hadn’t known the dancing would end with the wedding ring. So she’d married him for the wrong reasons, but did that mean she had to swell up like a toad every other year? She’d told him she wasn’t having any more kids. How many times had she told him? Countless times.

  Eyes leaking in a movie theatre when everyone else was laughing. Jimmy was laughing.

  It would be different this time. She was a married woman. The kids were old enough to be interested in a new baby.

  It would be worse different. It would be born in the middle of winter, and probably weigh twelve pounds, and its skull would be made of solid bone, and they’d have to cut it out of her, not drag it out like Jimmy had been dragged out.

  And trying to wash napkins only on Wednesdays and Sundays. She couldn’t do it. She’d be washing napkins in the kitchen sink — between sorting out his bloody meat. And how the hell did anyone get napkins dry in July in Melbourne?

  No more exploring on the trams with Jimmy. No more chasing waves at the beach. No more movies. No more dreaming of singing. No time for sewing either. She’d be dependent on his roadkill.

  Jimmy would be at school next year, which would put an end to their exploring anyway. Babies grew on you. Cara Jeanette had grown on her — though by the time she had, she’d no longer been hers, which was probably why she’d allowed her to grow on her.

  Nine months married. February to October. She’d done everything she could to be careful. He’d done everything he could but be careful. And he’d keep on doing it. She’d probably have one every eighteen months until she went through menopause. Her fingers did the sums while Ginger danced in a gown Jenny wanted to wear at Archie’s jazz club. Her sums told her she could produce twelve or thirteen more before she was forty-five — and some women didn’t go through menopause until they were fifty; add three more to the total.

  And knowing Ray, he wouldn’t waste money on buying milk for it, not when he’d already bought the cow — or the bloody goat — for its udders. Her kids rarely saw fresh milk. At times they were lucky to see powdered milk. Breastfeeding was Elsie’s only means of contraception. For self-preservation.

  I’ll end up feeding little Ray Kings until I’m tucking my breasts into my belt, she thought.

  Which might stop Geoff Parker winking at her, which might make Ray a happier man. He was green-eyed jealous — jealous of the secondhand man who always greeted her with a smile, who must have been sixty-five. Even he wouldn’t smile at her when she had a pumpkin belly and udders hanging down to her navel.

  Look on the bright side, she thought. Ray won’t want to have sex with me when I’m blown up like a toad.

  As if he’ll care what I look like. Does any man care what his wife looks like? They do when they marry them, then their eyesight changes. A farmer has to admire a heifer at the sale yards or he wouldn’t buy it. Thereafter, it’s only as good as the calves he can get out of it.

  That damn movie went on and on. Why did good movies end too soon and bad movies last forever? It seemed hours since they’d walked into the theatre. Not enough light to see the hands on Billy-Bob’s watch, which she’d told Ray she’d found on a Sydney beach, which she had found on a Sydney beach, which he may have believed — and probably didn’t.

  And why should he trust her? She still wore her ex-fiancé’s ring. It had been a tight fit on her right ring finger when she put it on there. Now she couldn’t get it off — and didn’t want to anyway.

  When she was struggling to feed ten or twelve, she’d learn to love cooking his livers. There was something to be glad about. She’d accept his tripe as if it were a bouquet of fungus flowers.

  He was getting on better with Margot. He’d probably like having his own kid.

  How was he going to feed thirteen of his own kids when he couldn’t afford to feed her three? She bought the milk, most of the bread, all of the fruit and vegetables.

  I didn’t want Georgie and Jimmy. I love them. I’ll probably love it.

  How can you love dozens of them? Each one snaps off a bit more of you. A woman must reach the stage where so many bits have been snapped off, there’s not enough left to love anyone.

  ‘We’ll have to go, Jimmy,’ she whispered. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘It’s not the end yet,’ he whispered back.

  That kid would watch anything that moved on the screen. She sat, unable to concentrate on the story — if the fool of a movie had a story to concentrate on. It ended, and while the rest of the crowd squeezed the last moments out of the credits, Jenny and Jimmy got out of the theatre.

  Dazzled by the afternoon light, they made their way with the afternoon crowd towards the tram stop, Jenny knowing she’d be late picking up the girls. She felt nauseous too, and it was too early to be suffering from morning sickness, and it wasn’t morning. Knowing that she was pregnant was more than enough to make a cow nauseous.

  And why did it have to happen in October? She hated October. Every October she saw that little girl growing up in Sydney, saw her blonde, saw her dark, saw hands that were miniatures of her own. She would have turned two on the third of October. She tried to forget her. At times she almost
did, then she’d see a little girl of around the same age and Cara Jeanette was back in her head. Once you had them, once you gave them life, they became a part of you. And she didn’t want any more parts of her running around.

  And what if Robert Norris hadn’t returned from the war? What if Myrtle had been run over by a truck? What if that little girl was being raised in an orphanage — or by some mad, murdering bitch of a woman?

  Since learning the truth of her own birth, she’d felt worse about what she’d done to that baby. People needed to be connected to someone. For months after she’d found out who she was, who she wasn’t, she’d felt disconnected from life. Was connected to her kids. Even Margot, a bit. She loved cards, played like a little tooth-grinding demon.

  People milling, blocking her way. She’d never seen such a crowd in Melbourne. It was impossible to get around them or to push her way through.

  ‘Why is everyone here, Jenny?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘Something is on, or someone important is in town.’

  The girls would be walking themselves home from school today. They’d done it before, though not to a locked house. Flora would be there. And it was no use worrying about something she couldn’t change. Her arm around Jimmy’s shoulder, they walked with the crowd to the tram stop, where the crowd milled and not a tram in sight.

  She couldn’t change being pregnant either so it was no use worrying about that. She’d tell Ray tonight. He might be pleased. He ought to be. He’d done it. In the movies when wives told their husbands that they were expecting, husbands were jubilant.

  ‘What a thing to go and do at this time of day,’ a woman said.

  The faces in the crowd weren’t showing anticipation. It was frustration.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘The tram drivers have gone out on strike.’

  ‘Are there any trains?’ she asked someone, anyone.

  ‘Plenty of trains, love,’ an old bloke said. ‘None of the buggers are going anywhere.’

  ‘What are we supposed to do?’

  ‘Try shanks’s pony,’ someone said.

  ‘We’ll have to walk, love,’ Jenny said to Jimmy.

  It couldn’t be much more than five miles to Armadale. She could do it. Jimmy was a good walker, or had been in Woody Creek. She took his hand and they joined the herd walking towards St Kilda Road.

  For a time it was almost fun: strangers had something to say to other strangers, the strike melding the crowd into a group with a common grudge. There were fast walkers and slow walkers and many paths that led to home; there were taxi drivers who charged more than the recommended fee, and those prepared to pay the fee. Not Jenny. She crossed the bridge with a smaller crowd, Jimmy happy to talk about the big river — he hadn’t known Melbourne had a big river. They walked by gardens, where women sat down on the lawns to remove high heels from their burning feet. Jenny’s shoes were old, flat-heeled, worn comfortable, so comfortable their soles were near worn through. Jimmy’s shoes were close to new, but he was happy enough to walk in them, until they passed the shrine and he realised how far they hadn’t yet walked.

  ‘It’s too far, Jenny.’

  ‘Walking makes you strong.’

  He was very, very strong. He showed how strong he was until they crossed over Toorak Road. Perhaps he recognised that corner.

  ‘How far more, Jenny?’

  ‘Not too far. Do you want a piggyback?’

  He rode for a hundred yards, but he was a big boy and heavy, and she felt heavy enough without him on her back. She set him down, held his hand and they walked on towards Commercial Road. There may have been shorter routes home; Jenny knew only one way. She followed the tramlines, be it the shortest or longest route.

  ‘My shoes are hurting.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  They’d need resoling after today. And she was going to pay for a haircut next endowment day. Give her hair any length at all and it frizzed. She’d tied it back this morning. Somewhere between Jimmy climbing onto her back and sliding him off, she’d lost her ribbon. Her hair hung free for the late-afternoon sun to spin into gold, for the light breeze to twirl into springs of gold.

  Midway between Commercial Road and High Street, Jimmy again riding on her back, a chap driving a horse and dray came alongside.

  ‘Not going down High Street, are you, love?’ he called.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He’d already collected twenty-odd passengers. They made room for two more. It was a bumpy, slow old ride and Jenny blessed each bump. It was a happy, laughing ride; a singing ride too, like the hay ride she’d gone on once with Maisy’s daughters.

  They rode the dray to their corner, where many hands helped them down, and they stood on the corner smiling, waving their fellow travellers on their way, Jenny knowing she’d been closer to herself on that dray than she’d been since Norman died.

  She lived a fake life with Ray, and with Flora. Rarely said what she was thinking, censored her words before she opened her mouth. She wasn’t her true self with the card players either, just determined to fit in. That’s what happened when you spent time being Jenny No One.

  In Woody Creek last summer, she’d lived in shorts. Ray didn’t approve of her shorts. She’d packed them away. He said he liked her hair long. She’d let it grow. She was losing more of who she was every day she spent in his house. He’d planted that baby in her, needing to steal what was left. Maybe he loved her. Maybe he just wanted to possess her. She didn’t want to go home to him. Wanted to chase that dray and the happy travellers, ride it until it shook his baby loose.

  Wanted a cigarette too. She had two in an envelope in the bottom of her bag. She found them, straightened and lit one, found peppermints, gave one to Jimmy and popped one into her mouth. Peppermints disguised the smell of smoke. Ray didn’t approve of women smoking.

  They walked on then, Jimmy sucking, Jenny blowing smoke, until she saw Ray waiting at the gate with the girls. She drew one last gasp from the cigarette, then dropped it, ground its ember beneath her shoe — and felt the heat of it. She’d worn a hole in that sole.

  ‘The trams and trains have gone out on strike,’ she greeted him. ‘We’ve got blisters on our blisters.’

  ‘Wh-where have you b-b-been?’

  ‘To a movie.’

  ‘You let your kids c-c-come home to a l-locked house.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have bothered locking it if you hadn’t told me I had to lock it, and we would have been home in plenty of time if the tram drivers had been working, and Flora is here anyway, and she owes me for more than two hours of babysitting, and we’re exhausted. We walked most of the way from the city.’

  ‘You’re always r-r-running in th-there.’

  ‘I’m not always running in there. I haven’t been in there for three weeks.’

  ‘A man gave us a ride on his dray, Ray,’ Jimmy said. ‘He had a giant horse that did number twos.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A carrier playing taxi driver to us and two dozen more.’

  ‘And we sung green bottles hanging on the wall and every time someone got off we had to sing less bottles,’ Jimmy said.

  Jenny slid her shoes off, poked her finger though the hole in its sole and wiggled it. Georgie giggled. Margot smiled. Ray didn’t.

  ‘You’ve b-been to s-s-see him again?’

  Little blabbermouth Jimmy had told him about the man who had one leg and only one slipper when they went to the hospital. Wished he hadn’t told him.

  ‘We saw that new Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movie, and it wasn’t worth seeing. And I told you, he didn’t know who we were, and that we’re not going back.’

  Couldn’t go back had she wanted to. Couldn’t take the chance she’d run into Archie Foote. She might like to dream about him getting her a singing job. Dreams were free.

  ‘H-how do I know w-w-what you g-get up to?’

  ‘Because I tell you what I get up to, Ray, and you either trust me or you don’t. And if
you don’t, that’s your problem, not mine.’

  She’d never spoken to him like that before. She’d never been pregnant to him before, and he’d had no right to get her pregnant. Walked away from him. Walked down to the lav. Thought about lighting the other cigarette, but Jimmy wanted to do wee. She gave up her space and went inside.

  She’d been planning to tell Ray tonight — so he could run out and buy her a pound of tripe. And to hell with him. Anyway, after today, she may not be pregnant.

  Fried chops, fried bread for the kids in the leftover fat — one of the fringe benefits of his meat: she never ran out of dripping. Saved every drip of it, clarified it and used it in biscuits, in pastry.

  There were not many fringe benefits. He’d taught Margot how to write backward Js. And why should she practise her reading when her stepfather wouldn’t attempt to read his own newspaper? Or bathe, when he didn’t bathe often enough? The smell of his sweat was nauseating tonight.

  Sighed and served the meal, unable to see a lot of good whichever way she turned. A half-house, a refrigerator, water on tap . . .

  Too tired, that’s all. Her legs, her feet, throbbed with weariness — or pregnancy. Jimmy was as tired. Elbow on the table, his head supported by a hand, he was too weary to eat. She got him into bed, and at seven thirty got the girls in with him. Five minutes later she was in bed.

  And he came in wanting sex.

  ‘Go away,’ she said and turned her back.

  ‘W-what’s w-wrong with you?’

  ‘I walked home from the city, half the way with Jimmy on my back.’

  And your baby in my belly. And I’ve made a gigantic mistake. And today I know it. And I don’t know if I feel like this because I’m pregnant, or if having your baby inside me is allowing me to see more clearly.

  ‘I l-love you.’

  ‘You want to have sex with me, Ray. Say what you mean.’

  Hands all over her, one trying to get between her legs, and she rolled from the bed.

  ‘And why the hell you’d want to sleep with me when you don’t trust me, I don’t know.’