by Joy Dettman
Flora looked the other way and didn’t reply. It hurt; it hurt enough to drop both sock and peg to the dirt.
She was hanging Ray’s work trousers when Lois came out to show Jimmy her picture from church. Flora came at a run to drag her away from pollution. That hurt more. What she’d done was now affecting Jimmy and he didn’t understand.
Pancakes for lunch. No complaint from the kids. They loved pancakes, spoke of eating pancakes with lemons and sugar like they’d had at Granny’s house. No lemons down here, and little sugar. The canister was empty, sugar bowl almost empty. There was enough stew for the evening meal, or there was until he came in for a change of clothes and found their stew. He heated it up and looked for bread to toast.
‘No bread,’ Jenny reported.
He ignored her and ate the stew from the saucepan.
‘Give me my bankbook and we’ll leave. It will be faster than starving us out, Ray.’
‘G-get your s-s-singing p-p-pimp to feed your k-kids,’ he said and pitched the saucepan at the sink. One of Amber’s saucepans. He dented its lip.
Two kids skedaddled. Margot was playing Patience. She had the reading skills of a five year old, but those stubby little hands handled playing cards like a thirty-year-old woman.
‘T-tell your m-mother she’s a she-she-dog slut,’ he said.
Too many S’s in the sentence for Margot. She left her game on the table and followed the other kids. He changed his shirt and rode away — stayed away.
Monday, the kids took pancake sandwiches in their lunch bags. Jenny saw them off then came inside and dressed for the city, hoping she’d strike a decent tram conductor. She had to get to the bank and report her lost book. She was locking the glass door when a couple of police officers came around the corner of the veranda, a male and a female. She had to unlock the door, had to take them inside. Had to stick to her hospital lie.
The female did the talking. She told Jenny that Mrs Parker had stated that she’d seen her leave the house before nine and not seen her return until after three thirty on the day of the abortion.
‘I don’t know if she was out or in,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t know if she’s in today.’
Not a sound issued from the west side. The wireless had been playing while she’d dressed. Not playing now. Not a footstep, the rattle of a dish. Flora would have seen the police coming. She was probably standing with her ear to the passage door — only ever unlocked between six and eight on bathroom nights now. They’d gone the full circle, from enemy to almost friend, back to enemy.
Jenny’s reply had silenced her visitors. Mrs Parker was at home; minutes ago, she’d directed them to the eastern door. They listened for fifteen seconds, then asked if they might sit, asked her to sit. She sat, and the female of the duo asked what implements the abortionist had used.
‘I don’t know.’
That was the truth. She’d closed her eyes, just wanting done whatever had to be done. The first time, at Wilma’s, she’d been watching for Veronica to arrive, had seen her slide from her chap’s car out the front of Wilma’s house, and shuddered at the small brown case she carried, afraid of what may have been inside it.
‘She brought a case about the size of a school case. I didn’t see what she had inside it.’ The truth was easier. ‘A man dropped her off and picked her up.’
‘Can you describe the driver, his vehicle?’
Veronica’s chap drove a maroon car, low-slung, classy, but why not keep it all in the one family? Vern Hooper had driven a dark green Ford before the war. She described the old Ford but stilled her imagination before describing the driver.
The male policeman was eyeing her. He was one of the dominant bulls of the human race. Ray was one of them gone wrong. Vern Hooper was the king of the bulls. They had a way of looking at women, of seeing them as service centres, easy on the eyes, vital for breeding stock, but not quite human. Vern had gone through three wives. According to Granny, Lorna’s mother had been dead when they’d cut her baby out. Jim had been cut from his mother a month early and she’d never got over it. It was a woman’s lot to die pushing out the next generation. Plenty more where they’d come from.
She could have died with Jimmy’s head stuck halfway out. Little Lenny Hall had ridden in to get someone with the car to take her to the hospital. He’d had Vern Hooper’s door slammed in his face. Maisy had got her down to the hospital. Doctor Frazer had given her chloroform and dragged Jimmy out.
She’d told Ray about Jimmy’s birth. She’d told him before she married him, and he’d listened to her, told her he wanted her, not kids. How many times had she told him she was never having another baby? Four? Five? Six times, the last after she’d gone to the chemist’s shop and bought him two packets of rubbers, knowing that day that he was too embarrassed to go in there and stutter his needs. He’d never opened them. Had never discussed why he wouldn’t open them. A nod towards the bedroom was as close as Ray had come to discussing sex.
The female policewoman was discussing sex across the kitchen table — or speaking about a fourteen-year-old girl who had died as a result of sex, though it wasn’t the sex that had killed her; it was the abortionist.
No ring on the female cop’s finger. Was she a cop because she cared about fourteen-year-old girls, or was she making her single-handed attack on the dominant bulls’ paddock?
Hoped she was.
Jenny picked up the framed photograph of her and Jim and ten-month-old Jimmy. Jim had been big enough to be a bull. Born with the wrong mindset. Gentle Jim. Loved his face, his eyes, his big hands. Loved his mind. She glanced towards the kids’ bedroom and considered rising and returning the photo to the windowsill. Jimmy had brought his daddy out this morning so he could watch them eating their funny breakfast — one and a half Weet-Bix spread with jam. She’d eaten the leftover half, the last of the Weet-Bix.
In photographs, people stayed forever young, forever happy. Jim’s eyes still smiled at her, he still flashed his big teeth. Fat little Jimmy showing his front teeth, not so big as his daddy’s. She looked like a kid in that photo — had been a kid. Eighteen when she’d gone up to Sydney, a kid with a kid and two more at home. Strange studying her own eyes, seeing things in them and not knowing what she was seeing; eighteen-year-old Jenny calling the twenty-three year old a bloody fool —
‘Mrs King?’
Bull cop’s eyes appreciating her; female eyeing her, waiting for a reply. Jenny hadn’t heard the question so she asked her own.
‘Was she raped? The fourteen-year-old girl who died?’
Shouldn’t have said ‘raped’, should have asked if she’d been taken advantage of. Bet a bull male had used that term first — after he’d taken full advantage. They weren’t in her kitchen to discuss the how, the why, the when, but the where. They didn’t care if that fourteen-year-old kid had been held down on a tombstone and split in half by two bulls who had taken full advantage.
She turned the photograph face down and stood. ‘If hospitals were allowed to do abortions, she wouldn’t have died, would she? It should be written into the law that fourteen-year-old kids are not allowed to have babies.’
Wrong reply, but it got them back to the script. The female gave her a spiel about the sanctity of a life newly formed; how abortionists and those who seek their criminal services are not only violating the laws of the country but committing a sin against heaven. She didn’t read it from a pamphlet, but the depth of feeling she put into her spiel suggested she’d learnt it by rote from the abortion witch-hunt manual.
‘God has got no more interest in pregnant women than he’s got in pregnant cows.’
It came out uncensored, out of the mouth of another fourteen-year-old kid, still cowering somewhere inside Jenny, or maybe not cowering today.
And why should she cower? That kid had done nothing wrong. She’d come third in a radio talent quest, had won a five-pound note; she’d sat for a scholarship that would have got her out of Woody Creek, and she’d got it too. She coul
d have been . . .
The five-pound note! That’s what eighteen-year-old Jenny’s eyes had been trying to tell her! She was sitting on a five-pound note.
Jenny snatched the photograph and stood. How had she forgotten that? There was something very definitely wrong with her head. She’d never spent that talent-quest money. It had come from the time before her dreams had been ripped out of her. She couldn’t spend it. Years ago, before she’d come home from Sydney, she’d hidden it behind that photograph, when Jim, like her old life, had been dead. And he wasn’t dead; and that singing kid inside her wasn’t dead either.
Her visitors weren’t done with her yet. They asked her to sit down. They wanted her to describe Myrtle Norris the abortionist.
She didn’t sit, but stood, the photograph held to her breast, and with great pleasure described Lorna Hooper. ‘At least six foot, with ears to match her height. She wears her dark hair in a bun. Narrow hawk-beak nose, fingernails like a hawk’s talons, lisle stockings, lace-up shoes, old maid’s black dress . . .’
What if Lorna Hooper was walking down a city street and the police recognised her by that description? What if they marched her off to prison in handcuffs?
Jenny turned quickly to the dresser to hide the twitch of her lips, and, to prove she had a better reason, opened her three cupboard doors. Not a lot in them apart from Amber’s pots and basins, her spices and empty canisters.
‘I’m not twenty-four yet,’ she said. ‘I’ve got three school-age kids and nothing in the house to feed them when they come home.’
She reached for the tea canister, removed its lid and placed it upside down on the table; offered the sugar canister, also upside down and lidless. They weren’t interested in Amber’s empty canisters, so she opened the refrigerator.
The female asked her again to sit, and when she didn’t, they stood, maybe to arrest her. Jenny offered her dripping bowl.
‘If I can’t feed three kids, tell me how I’m expected to feed four, six, eight? I’m young enough to have twelve more.’
Neither one wanted the dripping bowl. She returned it to the fridge and closed the door.
‘I’ve still got an inch of flour in my tin. My kids took pancake sandwiches for lunch today.’
‘There are charities, Mrs King —’
‘I don’t sing alms for the poor on street corners.’
The male wanted the abortionist’s phone number. Her handbag was on the table. She opened it, upended it. Lipstick rolled to the floor. She picked it up.
‘When I told my husband I was taking my kids home, he took my money and bankbook so I couldn’t. The abortionist’s phone number was in my bankbook.’
Or Archie Foote’s phone number was. Should have phoned him.
Look, no pennies.
She had a five pound-note though. She was getting out of this place as soon as the kids came home from school, taking what she could carry.
They wanted to know where her husband was employed. She told them, and when they were done with searching her handbag, they left, and she locked the door, closed the curtains, and with the help of a knife removed the back from the photograph. The envelope was there, and the note.
Just holding it, just smelling it, brought back memory of that night. She could feel the weight of the frock she’d worn, so little of it, but heavy, silky, against her skin. Fourteen-year-old Jennifer Morrison, the golden girl with the golden voice. That’s how the master of ceremonies had introduced her. She’d felt golden that night, standing up there clad in Juliana Conti’s gold crepe frock, in Juliana’s shoes. Hadn’t known who the dress had belonged to then — or maybe some primitive section of her brain had. She’d felt so tall, so powerful. And that bank note meant more to her than what it would buy. It was like holding hope in her hand — and she wasn’t going to give that hope into a stranger’s hands to soil.
Had to. It meant she could get the kids away from here tonight. She slid it into the patched pocket of her handbag, slid her child endowment book in beside it. Then spun around on her chair to stare at the calendar. She hadn’t bothered to collect her child endowment for months, not since June. Had no time; had no need to queue up with those desperate for the few bob incentive to populate. It was due on Tuesday week, and four months of the governmental incentive would be no pittance.
She kissed the five-pound note, and Jim’s photograph while it was free from its glass, then placed photograph and talent-quest money back, safe. She’d go into the city, report her bankbook missing, and if they wouldn’t give up her money, she’d wait for endowment day. She had vegetables, dripping, chutney, two-thirds of a jar of plum jam. If she stretched that flour, they’d manage.
The photograph back on the windowsill in the kids’ room, she left the house. It took two trams to get her into town. The first conductor, a thirty-year-old woman, eager to flaunt her little power, didn’t care if Jenny had lost her purse or not. She’d put her off the tram. The second conductor, a battle-scarred male of sixty-odd, winked at her and allowed her to ride without a ticket.
And the bank needed identification before they could issue her with a new book.
‘I know to the penny what I’ve got in it. There’s eighty-seven pounds, four shillings and sevenpence.’
They had no argument with the figure, but still needed identification. Jennifer Morrison Hooper had no identification on her, other than Mrs Jennifer King’s endowment book. She had Jimmy’s birth certificate at home: James Hooper Morrison; and her own birth and wedding certificates in the cake tin on top of her dresser. Or Charlie White — he was a justice of the peace. He’d write her a letter of identification.
On the tram home, she chose a seat beside a middle-aged woman with three wailing kids; the conductor didn’t try to sell her a ticket; and when she stepped down from that tram, she knew she wasn’t up to repeating that trip, not today.
Pulled two carrots, an onion, picked a bunch of silverbeet. Inside, she chose two big potatoes. The kids turned Amber’s mincing machine’s handle while Jenny fed it with vegetables. She had no egg to bind the mixture, but plenty of flavourings. They added a spoonful of chutney, a shake of curry, two shakes of ground ginger, salt and pepper, then a heaped tablespoon of flour. A fast fry in plenty of dripping, then into the oven to roast a while.
The kids wanted more. There were no more, and not much dripping left either.
He came while the dishes were being washed. He’d bought a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk and some sort of meat. It could have been sausages, or minced steak. Jenny unwrapped the newspaper parcel. Tripe. She rewrapped it.
He cooked it, wasted half of the milk on it, the kids standing big-eyed, watching the level of milk in that lone bottle drop. Jenny snatched it before he could waste the lot. She took it and the kids out to the veranda to share the last of it from the bottle.
Maybe he tasted his tripe. Most of it was in the saucepan when he rode away. It looked like glue and smelled worse. Even Margot, who would eat anything served up on a plate, turned her nose up. They buried it.
‘I wish Granny sent some eggs to us,’ Jimmy said.
‘Me too, darlin’.’
‘Can we have two eggs each when we go there?’
‘You can have eggs every day, buckets of milk every day.’
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
Jenny wrote to Charlie White that night and posted her letter the following morning when she walked the kids to school, hoped it didn’t get lost in shop mail, hoped Charlie picked up on its urgency.
Hoped someone would come to her door wanting a hem taken up, trouser cuffs let down. No one came. A day is slow in passing when the kids are at school; when your housemate snubs you if she runs into you on the way out of the lav.
Then Wednesday, and Wilma Fogarty knocked on her door. Before the abortion, she’d popped in for a cup of tea every Wednesday while Flora was visiting her mother.
‘Veronica told me to thank you for keeping her name out of it. She said she’l
l come around once things die down. How did Ray take it?’
Jenny shrugged.
‘Men’s memories are in their trousers, love. He’ll come around.’
Didn’t want him to come around. Wanted him to stay wherever he’d been staying.
‘I hear that Flora is giving you a hard time.’
How had she heard? Carol spying over her fence? She hadn’t been in to visit.
‘I can’t offer you a cup of tea,’ Jenny said.
‘You’re wiping me because I go to church with her?’
‘Because I’ve got no tea,’ Jenny said.
They had a smoke and drank water. They had two smokes. Wilma may have stayed longer had she brought more cigarettes. She left at three with a bunch of silverbeet and two carrots. At four, Janice, her daughter, came around with a bit of tea, a cup of sugar, a bottle of milk, a few cups of flour and three cigarettes.
Charlie’s letter came on Friday. To whom it may concern. I have known the bearer of this document since birth . . .
Good old Charlie. His half-page would satisfy the bank. Too late today though to run the gauntlet of tram conductors. Monday would be soon enough.
No sign of Ray or his meat on Saturday. They heard his bike on Sunday night, and went quickly to bed and stayed there until the bike left on Monday morning. He came in at six on Monday night with a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. No tripe. No liver.
On Tuesday, Jenny lined up with two dozen women as desperate as she for the governmental handout — all strangers, and a good few bellies advertising that they were doing what they were being paid to do, breeding up the next army. Not one face amongst them she recognised, or who recognised her; not a sneer out of one of them. Loved the anonymity of Melbourne, the thousand faces she didn’t know. She loved the government that morning, loved Charlie White. By ten, his letter, plus the birth certificates and her marriage certificate, had convinced the bank manager she was who she claimed to be. They’d issue her with a new book in her married name. It would be posted to her.
‘Why?’
‘Bank policy.’