Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  They ate railway-station fruit cake and shared a bottle of lemonade when the train stopped for twenty minutes at a large station; they walked the platform, looking out at a strange town, then the train called them back and they took their seats. Jenny sat staring out of the window, waiting for the land flatten out, for the green paddocks to change to brown, for the white sheep to become dusty.

  ‘How many more stations, Jenny?’

  ‘Two little ones.’

  As a three year old she’d known the name of every station, every siding, on Norman’s line.

  ‘How many more miles?’ they asked when there were no more stations to count.

  ‘About twenty.’

  They wanted to get there. She wanted to get them there. The best cure for bad memories were happy times.

  ‘Close your eyes and count up to a hundred, and I bet when you open them we’ll see a herd of white-faced cows.’

  They counted, and when they opened their eyes they saw two blue dogs herding those white-faced cows.

  There was something about Woody Creek country, something the years were incapable of changing. She recognised a family of argumentative crows bickering on a barbed-wire fence. She recognised a stand of blue gums still sprinkling their shade to the Tylers’ rusty-roofed farmhouse. And Lewis’s dam with its white clay walls. And his cluster of sheep watching the train go by and still resenting its disturbing hoot.

  Same old fig tree leaning over the same old convent fence. More rust in the fence, more bulges in the corrugated iron. And Blunt’s shop roof, and the train’s elongated warning to kids and dogs at Blunt’s crossing. Unchanged, forever unchanged.

  And Norman’s station — no longer Norman’s station, though it would ever be his and little Jenny’s. A part of her was still there somewhere, still colouring newspaper pictures with her box of crayons.

  The kids, eager to board the train in Melbourne, were as eager to leave it. They ran ahead down the corridor.

  ‘Be careful stepping down!’ she called after them.

  They weren’t careful. She should have been more careful. She almost fell on her face. He was waiting for her. He’d ridden up. Should have known he would. Why hadn’t she known he would? Because Friday was a working day. He hated missing work.

  Margot ran to him. The other two looked at Jenny for answers. Unable to find her own answers, she took Jimmy’s hand and walked down to the goods van to watch her pile unloaded.

  Red case. Bedding. Then the cartons, three of them. All there. Jimmy’s trike, Granny’s tin trunk.

  The stationmaster approached her. He wanted her tickets; didn’t know he was the interloper here, didn’t know she’d lived half her life on this platform, that she knew more about what was beneath it than he’d ever know; of what was beneath his house, buried in his garden. Wondered if he’d unearthed the wooden spoon that had dug its own grave beneath the oleander tree, wondered if it was still blue. Full of memories this place, chock-a-block full.

  He took her tickets. Ray hadn’t moved, nor had Margot.

  The ability to forgive was a good trait. It said so in the Bible. Forgive us our trespasses. Turn the other cheek.

  ‘You’d be a relative of Mrs Foote, would you?’ the stationmaster asked.

  Jenny turned to him. ‘Granddaughter. Is Mick Boyle still the carrier?’

  Stupid question. She’d been gone for less than two years, and in fifty years’ time Mick Boyle would still be Woody Creek’s carrier; Mick or his son, or his grandson. That’s the way it was in a town that stood still.

  ‘If he comes by, could you ask him to deliver this lot, please?’

  ‘My wife and myself have got good reason to be grateful to your grandfather,’ the stationmaster said. ‘There’s a bad dose of the flu going around.’

  Jenny nodded, glanced at Ray.

  ‘Holidaying, or moving?’ the man asked.

  Two years in Woody Creek and he was already cataloguing new arrivals like one born to the town. He’d be standing on this station twenty years from now, married into the place by his kids.

  ‘Can I ride my trike home, Jenny?’

  ‘It’s too far,’ she said. ‘Mr Boyle will bring it down.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. Margot! If you want an ice-cream, walk with us.’

  Margot wanted an ice-cream.

  They waited for the train to clear the lines, then the kids ran ahead, remembering well where to buy ice-cream. Jenny walked behind them, her heart lurching when the bike roared into life. Thought she’d left the lurch behind. Hoped Ray would be pleased to be rid of her and her kids. Hoped another woman would plug in her iron, her toaster, pick her rhubarb, slice up his livers, boil up his tripe with one of her onions.

  The bike roared over Blunt’s crossing, turned left into North Street and drove by them as they waited to cross the road. Hated the sound of that motor. It turned into the hotel yard and died. They crossed over to the café.

  Mrs Crone standing behind her counter, unchanged, as was her Madonna, still claiming its corner, both untouchable. A good Catholic, Mrs Crone; a good businesswoman too. She still knew how to use that scoop so the ice-cream ball looked solid but wasn’t.

  He was standing beneath the pub veranda, lighting a cigarette. They’d have to walk by him or go the other way. She’d changed enough habits because of him. This was her town. She walked her troop by him. Didn’t look at him. Didn’t look at Clive Lewis either. He’d had a talent for football. He’d got out of this town and tried to make it big in Melbourne. He’d come back. Shaky, they called him now, Shaky Lewis. He didn’t sleep at the pub, but he lived there.

  The kids holding hands, they crossed over Three Pines Road, then, hands freed, they walked down the far side of the road, placing distance between them and Vern’s hedge of roses, Jenny pointing out landmarks, hoping Jimmy wouldn’t look east, wouldn’t remember where Grandpa and Aunty Maggie lived. He remembered and stopped to stare.

  ‘No dawdling,’ she said and took his hand again, drawing him on towards Macdonald’s mill.

  They stopped to give way to a log buggy hauling bleeding logs into the yard, and they smelled again the smell of chewed-up forest while a giant saw screamed its victory over timber and sawdust flew. The mountain of sawdust had grown taller since she’d been gone.

  She knew Ray was behind them. The hairs on her neck felt him there. She didn’t look back, or not until McPherson’s bend when she glanced over her shoulder.

  She didn’t fear him, not up here. She feared what he’d tell Granny. Feared that he’d been down there already, had already told her what she’d done.

  Is it your first, Mr King?

  Always afraid of something, of someone. She’d probably pushed her head out of her dying mother’s womb afraid. And why not? She’d had a head-on crash with life.

  Just get there, find out the worst and deal with it. No use imagining the worst. What you expect never happens.

  ‘Keep up, Margot. And slow down, you pair.’

  You pair with those long walking legs, her legs. Margot had the Macdonald short pins — and Maisy’s desire never to walk if she could drive.

  Ray’s legs were long enough, solid enough to walk a hundred miles. He rarely used them to walk on, and was well behind when they crossed over the road and entered into the trees.

  The smell of the bush never changed: eucalypt, honey, rotting leaves, fungus, dust. She didn’t know if she liked that smell or not. It was the smell of home, that’s all.

  ‘Will Granny have some baby goats?’

  ‘She might.’

  ‘And baby chickens?’

  ‘Granny’th alwayth got baby chickenth.’

  Cooler walking that bush road. The day wasn’t hot, but hot enough to appreciate shade.

  ‘Don’t run, Georgie!’

  Almost there now, and Georgie wanted to get there. Jimmy had fallen back to Jenny’s side, Margot lagged behind, Ray behind her — strung out on that road like a herd of cows at milking
time.

  Should have known he’d follow her. He loved her — so he said, had said, the second time he’d taken her out. Ridden his bike up here to take her to the movies, to a New Year’s dance. He’d probably ridden up last night, while she’d been eating fish and chips, while she’d been standing, head out of the window, smoking with Harry.

  Had Margot told him they’d spent the night at the hotel with Harry? Hadn’t considered that either. There was something wrong with her head. It didn’t think far enough forward, or not about certain things. Free, that’s all she’d thought about last night; getting free of him, sleeping free.

  The trip up on his bike used to take three or so hours he’d said once. Only eleven o’clock. He’d probably ridden up this morning and gone straight to the station.

  ‘’member that train before, Jenny?’ Jimmy’s hand had crept into her own.

  ‘Everyone can,’ Georgie said.

  ‘You weren’t there. I mean just me and Jenny, a long time before when we went on the train. And we got a pink ice-block, not an ice-cream.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly remember that,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Can so. I dropped it in the dirt.’

  She could remember being three; just snapshots. Had his threeyear-old mind taken a snapshot of that pink and brown ice-block lying in Woody Creek’s dust?

  ‘When I hold back a tear to make a smile appear,’ he sang. ‘’member that song, Jenny?’

  She remembered, and she sang it with him, sang as loudly as she had when they’d come home from Sydney, knowing Granny would hear them coming, as she had the last time — wanting her to come at a run up that track . . .

  Ray was a good fifty yards behind them when they poured in through the boundary gate.

  He wasn’t wanted here. Wasn’t wanted anywhere. Never had been. His mother hadn’t wanted him; his father had begotten him then forgotten him. There was little Ray recalled of Big Henry King, other than a roaring presence. And a toy motorbike he’d brought home once from a gymkhana. For a day or two it had raced across the floor.

  Raymond King was seven years old before he learned about fairytales and happily ever after. He’d been given the role of Cinderella’s coach horse at the school concert. Clad by the town ladies in a crepe-paper costume, told to pull a golden billycart slowly across the town hall stage, little Raymond had done it well and the town ladies and the audience had applauded him. His memory of each concert, each costume, was vivid. The following year, he’d played the woodchopper in Snow White and carried a broadaxe made from cardboard. At nine, he’d worn a clean white sheet and presented a gift to baby Jesus. He was ten when he played the role of Father Bear in Goldilocks. He’d stuttered his first lines that year. Grumpy old bears were allowed to stutter, Miss Rose said.

  Eleven was his finest year. Clad in Mr Blunt’s suit, a colourful waistcoat and a tall top hat, he played the ringmaster, and for three hours he’d been on that stage, cracking his whip, opening and closing the curtains, bowing and lifting his hat to the audience. Each time he’d walked on, he’d been applauded.

  He had never worn the Prince Charming costume. Paul Flanagan wore it in Cinderella. Billy Abbot wore it in Snow White. In The Frog Prince, the Macdonald twins had played both frog and prince. The Prince Charmings of this world didn’t stutter.

  Ray’s first wail may have been a tremulous plea to be someone’s prince. It went unheard in Big Henry King’s shack, where a bowl of burnt porridge was as close as it ever came to happily ever after. Filth and neglect should have killed him before his first birthday. Five of his eight siblings had succumbed before reaching school age.

  On his first morning in the classroom, he’d fallen in love with Miss Rose, the infants mistress, in love with her name, her pretty clothes, her perfume, her gentle voice, and her fairytales. Her concerts had transported him into a magical world.

  Ray was eleven when the fairytales ended. Big Henry King, woodchop champion, drunken giant, was crippled by a falling branch at work. When they carried him home from the hospital, he’d shrunk. Spent his last days sitting in an invalid chair on the veranda while his bitch of a wife sat with her crones around the kitchen stove, a coven of draggle-haired witches, their strident laughter a cackling insult to the cripple who sat in messed pants.

  Big Henry had needed someone to run up to the pub for a billy of beer, and for much else that no father should ask of his elevenyear-old son. For Ray, being needed was similar to being loved.

  On the last morning of Big Henry’s life, he’d needed his son to bring him a basin of hot water and his razor. He’d wanted to have a shave because it was Sunday.

  Ray would never forget that cut-throat razor. It had a white bone handle and a blade so sharp it could slice through Big Henry’s beard like a spoon through porridge. He couldn’t find a piece of soap that morning. Big Henry couldn’t shave without soap. By the time he’d found a bit of soap, the razor had been on the floor, its handle painted by the dark red blood spouting like a tap from his father’s throat.

  To his dying day Ray would see that blood. To his dying day he’d remember running for Constable Ogden. He could see them now, Ogden, Vern Hooper and half a dozen more standing looking surprised that so much blood could have come out of one man. To his dying day Ray would hear his nasty bitch of a mother telling those men how her brainless, stuttering oaf of a son had handed his father the razor so he could cut his own bloody throat.

  As a kid, Ray’s eyes had shuddered when he’d fought too hard for words. He’d fought for words that day, needing to tell the constable that his father had said he’d wanted to clean himself up for Sunday. Palms pressed to his temples, Ray stood before those men striving to push those words down and out through his mouth. They wouldn’t come out.

  They’d taken Henry King away and left Ray alone with that nasty bitch who wouldn’t stop blaming him, wouldn’t stop calling him a stuttering idiot, an overgrown oaf.

  He’d done something stupid. It hadn’t felt as if he’d done it. He’d felt icy-cold, that’s all, crackling cold, as if the words in his head had turned to ice and were burning holes through his skull. He’d heard the devil’s words cursing his mother to hell. Had seen her fly the width of the room but couldn’t remember hitting her. To Ray, it had felt as if those iced-up words in his head had blown like a gale from his mouth, that he’d blown her over with words.

  His two brothers came home for Big Henry’s funeral. They were twelve and fifteen years Ray’s senior. Molly, eighteen years his senior, told them how Ray had knocked his own mother down. The brothers took him out to the wood heap to teach him what happened to stuttering, overgrown bastards who hit their widowed mothers. They’d blackened his eyes with their lesson, they’d broken his nose and left him lying on the wood heap. And later, when that nasty bitch saw what they’d done to him, she’d laughed.

  God paid her back for that laughter. She went to bed one night and didn’t get up the next morning. She was still asleep at midday. Ray had stood at the foot of her bed playing with one of the brass knobs on the old iron frame, spinning it with his finger until it spun off and flew like a spinning top to land on her pillow, on her hair. He’d expected her to sit up and call him names. She hadn’t. She hadn’t moved when he’d retrieved the knob and screwed it back where it belonged, or when he’d pulled her hair, pulled a bit out by the roots.

  He’d gone to get the constable again, not running this time, but walking slowly and twisting that length of hair around his finger, like a ring.

  Ray would never forget his father’s funeral. It was like one of Miss Rose’s fairytales. The men had made Big Henry King a heavy rough-cut red-gum coffin; eight wood cutters strained to carry it. Outside the Catholic church, two long lines of timber workers, axes over their shoulders, had sung Henry off to the grave. They hadn’t honoured Ray’s mother when she’d been planted in the same grave ten days later. Ray hadn’t honoured her either. He hadn’t gone to her funeral.

  He’d ridden into town w
ith his sister, but when they went to the church, he’d gone home.

  Anything worth taking had been taken. Big Henry’s work boots were still there. Ray’s brothers couldn’t fill them. Ray’s feet had almost filled them. He’d felt taller with those boots on. They hadn’t taken an old tweed sports coat. It made Ray’s shoulders broader. A worn-out felt hat had covered his clipped-to-the-scalp head, had made him old enough.

  He’d left the shack with a wheat bag over his shoulder; inside it, a broken pocket knife, half a bag of porridge, two rabbit traps, a rag of blanket, a dented saucepan, half a box of matches, his toy motorbike and half a tin of treacle. He’d walked down to the forest road and kept on walking, walked out past Nurse Foote’s land, out past Wadi’s camp, just walked; lost track of how far, for how long, where he’d walked.

  Walked a lot of slow miles in Big Henry’s boots, learned where to set his rabbit traps, to cut and stack a ton of wood for a corned beef sandwich. He’d slept in hollow logs, in sheds, under bridges, followed rivers and sometimes roads.

  He’d followed a railway line for a few days. Rabbits liked railway lines. Ray had liked rabbits. He must have been thirteen, as tall as he’d ever be, when he’d found himself amongst a thousand houses and no more rabbits. Plenty of cats. They had more fight in them and hadn’t tasted as good.

  He’d knocked on a few suburban doors asking to cut wood. Most had turned him away. Hungry, so hungry his gut had stuck to his backbone. Starving, footsore, he’d leant against a fence to watch a woman trying to chop a branch as thick through as she was. She was wearing a pretty flyaway gown, green, had looked like Miss Rose — until she turned around.

  ‘What are you staring at, boy?’

  He hadn’t replied. Ray had given up on talking.

  ‘Can you use an axe?’ she’d said.

  He could use an axe when he was five years old.

  He’d swung that axe for her that day, and when that branch was down, her front yard lost beneath it, she’d applauded him. It had been a long time since anyone had applauded Raymond King. She’d gone inside, but minutes later came out with a meat sandwich and a mug of sugared tea. He’d never forget the taste of that sandwich, that cup of tea.