Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  ‘The distance, perhaps,’ Margaret said.

  Bernard doubted it had much to do with distance. When last Lorna had spoken to Bernard, it had been to name him a pile of imported rat turds.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she decided to remain with her aunt?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Have pity, sweet Maggie.’

  He felt pity for the families of 180 souls lost in a horror train crash in London — an express train from Scotland, collided with a London suburban train . . .

  ‘Good lord! What if Lorna was on that train?’ Margaret said.

  ‘My word, yes,’ he nodded, his tone not expressing the correct concern.

  *

  In December, Bernard painted Lorna’s Return: a grey mushroom cloud, the fires of hell reaching up with ghoulish fingers of flame. There wasn’t a violent bone in Bernard’s little body, but that painting was violent, and quite wonderful. Margaret praised it, and displayed it in their narrow hallway.

  Days disappearing too quickly. Only ten more shopping days to Christmas. Only seven more shopping days . . .

  ‘We are running out of time, Bernard. It must be done.’ Lorna’s return trip had been booked prior to her leaving.

  Margaret fetched pen and pad, and the couple sat subdued at the table, staring at a blank page and unable to fill it. She had to be informed of her altered living arrangements, and before she boarded the boat. They’d ascertained how long it took an airmail letter to reach its destination, give or take a day or two; had decided the letter should not reach her more than a week before her boat departed, which may save Leticia a little of the blast, and certainly the smoke would have cleared before the boat docked in Melbourne.

  ‘The trip home will give her time to appreciate what we’ve done for her.’

  ‘God grant it be so, sweet Maggie.’

  It took the entire afternoon and five drafts, the pen passed from one to the other, each word questioned, accepted or rejected.

  My dear sister,

  How sad for you to lose your dear uncle. I hope you have come to terms with his loss and that it is some consolation that you had seen him shortly before his passing.

  A line or two was filled in hoping that Leticia was well and also coming to terms with her loss, then the pen got down to business.

  You will have noticed the enclosed photograph. The house is yours, dear, for your lifetime. We have ascertained that the neighbours on the right are a pleasant couple, with adult children, and that you are well sheltered from the house on the left.

  The estate will pay into your account a quarterly allowance, which will increase with the cost of living. Bernard and I both feel that you are long overdue for your independence, which I’m certain you will agree you deserve. We also feel sure that you will be impressed with both the position of your property and the furnishings.

  You will find the key to the front door of No 43 beneath a black rock situated in the rockery near your back door. All other keys are inside, on the dining room table. The pantry and refrigerator are well stocked.

  We wish you a safe and pleasant journey home.

  Love, Margaret and Bernard and James

  The couple spent some time choosing which photograph to enclose. They read the letter aloud, wondered if they should have mentioned selling the Balwyn property, but as they hadn’t included their new address, perhaps visualising them where she’d left them might be easier at this stage.

  A sweating January; a fiery sun burning Margaret’s garden of Eden where little thrived. Bernard painted January, a chaos of grey on grey on grey.

  Come February, they were counting the days, then the hours, Bernard hopelessly turning the pages of his newspapers searching for ocean disasters. Icebergs all melted. Perhaps a Russian submarine . . .

  Her boat docked on the eleventh day of February. On the thirteenth, Vern’s black Ford drove into their yard and Lorna unloaded her luggage.

  They tried to bar the doorway.

  ‘As you can see, dear, it’s a very small house.’

  ‘You will comply with the terms of my father’s will; a will you and your pile of pommy horse droppings coerced a dying man into signing.’

  Bernard gave up his bedroom studio. Lorna cleared it of canvases, threw them into Margaret’s struggling garden, the paint on two still wet. Margaret and Bernard retrieved them, picked off leaves and twigs, shook off grit, stood them against the walls of their bedroom.

  James rode his bike further afield. Stayed away longer.

  ‘You have your own house, Lorna. You must go home, dear.’

  ‘Look to the will, you devious, bug-eyed cretin.’

  In May, Bernard and Margaret put the Cheltenham house in the hands of an agent and moved down to the beach house in Frankston, the emptying of their dream home into storage achieved while Lorna was in hospital. She’d taken on a truck driver, or his truck, fractured her skull, broken her spindly ankle, a rib had punctured her lung. They made no visit to the hospital, sent no get well card, directed their accountant, and the estate agent, to keep their whereabouts under lock and key.

  Beach houses are not meant to be occupied in late autumn. No telephone, the kitchen was archaic, the furniture dank and moth-eaten. A stop gap, just for a week or two until the agent found a suitable house well distanced from the city. No school for James; not worth enrolling him for a week or two.

  They were not aware that Lorna had been released from hospital. She arrived in a taxi, hobbled down the drive on a crutch, her scalp shaven, a beret covering the many stitches.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘How?’

  Their accountant’s receptionist had given them up in Cheltenham. She’d since been given her marching orders.

  James gave up his bed to sleep on a moth-eaten couch. The following day he spoke again of his maternal grandmother’s house, of Jenny. Margaret had hoped he’d forgotten Woody Creek and his other family.

  Two weeks of hell before their new property, sixty miles from the city, was available. The accountant saw to the moving of the stored Cheltenham furniture and Bernard’s paintings. The little family made their escape in the night, James’s racing bike in the car’s trunk — not quite in it. They lost it somewhere between Frankston and their new address.

  ‘Never mind, darling. We’ll buy you a new bike.’

  They were safe from vilification until August of ’53, when Bernard displayed three of his art works at a city gallery. They sold Lorna’s Return, renamed Holocaust: Britain’s nuclear devices were big news, and coming soon to the mainland. They sold Storm,a sombre work, which, in Margaret’s opinion, had been somewhat assisted by its near brush with death in the Cheltenham garden. Bernard was delighted with his brief mention in The Age; and with his photograph and half-page spread in the local paper. And of course Margaret was delighted for him — may not have been so delighted had she known Lorna was again in collusion with the investigator who had dug up the dirt on the Morrison girl.

  She came again, her hair grown through, spiky and grey.

  The constant disruptions, the changing of schools, was playing havoc with James’s grades — and the quality of his companions.

  Then Jim disappeared off the face of the earth. Since Margaret had inherited responsibility for her brother, she’d had him moved to a pleasant place in the hills. Bernard, so recently on a high, fell into one of his depressions. Margaret, frazzled by decisions, wanted to join him and couldn’t. Decisions had to be made. The tenant wanted to purchase the Woody Creek house. He’d made a good offer. She wanted it sold, wanted to cut all ties with that town, but couldn’t contact Jim to ask if he wanted to sell it. Knew that selling it wouldn’t cut the ties with that town anyway. The farm, which Vern had stipulated must never be sold, would tie her forever to the place.

  Then James went missing. For twenty-four hours they didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Margaret was convinced Jim had taken him, or the Morrison girl — or both. The police were called in. They found him and his so-cal
led friends halfway to Melbourne; may not have found him had one of the boys not punctured his back tyre.

  Back in ’48, Vern had put his grandson’s name down at several of the better private schools. The advisory pages of Margaret’s favourite magazine stated that boys of his age required strong male figures to guide them. Bernard was a perfect companion for her, but by no stretch of the imagination could he be described as a strong male figure.

  Carey Grammar agreed to take him midterm, and once more her dear boy changed school. Sadly, he was pleased to go.

  ‘The school is in Kew, Lorna, only a short tram ride from your house,’ Margaret informed her sister. ‘James could spend an occasional weekend with you.’

  A scoff said it all.

  Having been raised in the era when housekeepers dealt with the merchants, when servants served, Lorna was ill equipped to live independently. The threat of weekends with her nephew made her cling more possessively to her guest room.

  The accountant suggested he advertise for a live-in companion who might cook and clean for Lorna at Kew in return for free board.

  ‘Do what you think best,’ Margaret said.

  The accountant spoke of the Woody Creek tenant’s offer.

  ‘Do what you think best,’ Margaret said.

  The accountant moved Mrs Matilda Muir into the Kew house’s guest room. A well-spoken and sprightly little widow, she had worked as a domestic before her marriage.

  Two nuclear devices detonated at Emu Field, Woomera, were fireworks beneath a midday sun compared to Lorna’s explosion when she discovered Mrs Matilda Muir was a Jehovah’s Witness.

  ‘God help us, Bernard.’

  ‘He has forsaken us, sweet Maggie.’

  Margaret turned from God to her horoscope, which suggested a new direction. Lorna’s house, being so close to her darling boy’s school, would be so much more convenient. They packed the car while Lorna was at church — or flung items into its trunk and rear seat. The long drive on a Sunday was harrowing, the roads unfamiliar, but why fear disaster when one is escaping catastrophe? And dear, comforting Mrs Muir waiting to greet them, to sit them down with a cup of tea. Such a gentle, sweet-natured woman — and they’d thought to subject her to Lorna?

  For a time they were safe in the grey shark’s home waters; so safe, Margaret started planning her boy’s birthday party. Each December, since ’48, she had created splendid parties for groups of small boys. She telephoned Michael’s and Peter’s mothers in Balwyn; Graham’s mother in Cheltenham.

  ‘How surprised he’ll be, Bernard.’

  The surprise was for Margaret. When she drove with Bernard to the school on Friday with written invitations for James’s new friends, he told her Alan’s father was coming down to take them to the cricket for their birthdays.

  ‘I’ve already invited several of your little friends, darling.’

  ‘I’d rather go to the cricket with Alan, Mum,’ he said.

  Driven to tears by his rejection, driven frantic by chaotic peak-hour traffic, driven off the road by a brewery horse, Margaret and the Holden mounted a gutter and attempted to enter a house via its brick wall. Thankfully, the wall was only half a block from Lorna’s house. She and Bernard walked home suffering little worse than bruises. The Holden was towed away.

  Party invitations cancelled, night had fallen over the city when the couple, bathed and clad for bed, Bernard in green silk pyjamas, Margaret with nipples showing through the clinging fabric of her brief pink gown and negligee, sat down to tea and ham and mustard sandwiches.

  Lorna entered via the rear door with her small travelling case. ‘Cover yourself, you harlot.’

  Margaret’s incredible and unsupported breasts trembling, her nipples making a hasty retreat, she stood and placed her sandwich down.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, no, Lorna. We have been such good companions for so long. We have worked together for a common objective, supported each other in our times of trial, but you have become . . . obsessive, Lorna. And it must stop.’

  Lorna reached for a ham sandwich. She hadn’t been eating well.

  ‘Can’t you see there is no sense to this obsession of yours? I am a married woman. I want to live with my husband and son, as a family. Surely we can come to some compromise? Mrs Muir is a dear and good woman, a fine cook and housekeeper.’

  Lorna reply was more snort than scoff. Her mouth was full.

  ‘Bernard and I will return home in the morning. You must remain here. Of course, you’ll be welcome to join us for Christmas. We’d have it no other way.’ She looked towards the passage, where Bernard had scuttled on seeing the grey shark’s return. ‘We want Lorna to have a place in our lives, don’t we, Bernard?’

  He heard her; he didn’t reply. His back to the wall, he was watching that pile of sandwiches shrink.

  ‘We have been more than generous to you, Lorna. We have gone far beyond the terms of Father’s will.’

  The shoulder strap of Margaret’s gown had slipped, her breast was attempting to escape.

  ‘You’re no better than that Morrison harlot, flaunting your wares.’

  Lorna’s normal speaking voice could have been mistaken for a male’s: deep, slow, a professor’s lecture to his class of cretins. Emotion raised it tonight, and raised her arm to smite the harlot. Instead, she smote the plate of sandwiches to the floor, and Bernard’s small mouth opened, closed, like a cod out of water.

  Margaret adjusted her strap. ‘You have a malevolent nature, Lorna, and if I have become devious in my dealings with you these last years, then certainly I learned all I know from you. Don’t you dare deny that you were planning to do exactly what I have done. Bernard and I copied your letter verbatim, and I have kept it to prove your . . . your . . . perfidiousness. Had you wed Bernard, I would have been put out, or put upon by you for the remainder of my days.’

  ‘You inherited all you know from your lying slut of a mother.’

  Again Lorna’s arm rose. In their youth, a slap had swiftly silenced Margaret’s hysteria. Margaret saw the blow coming and parried it with her own raised arm.

  ‘You saw that, Mrs Muir?’ The little woman had crept out of her room to stand at Bernard’s side. ‘Ring the law, Mrs Muir. One way or the other, we will have this . . . this hostility out of our house tonight.’

  ‘You threaten me with the law!’ Lorna shrieked. ‘You, who coerced a dying man into leaving his estate in the hands of two nameless bastards! You’re no Hooper, and my father always knew it.’

  ‘Coerced?’ Margaret’s plump little hands went to her impressive buttock humps, her gown gaping. ‘Coerced? He was delighted, you evil witch of a woman. Jim said it better than I, but if I never set eyes on you until I’m on my deathbed, it will be too soon.’

  Margaret was magnificent and quite capable of handling the situation. Bernard backed away. For the first time in months, he felt a painting coming on. His paints . . . had Margaret packed his paints?

  ‘You’ve got more in common with the Morrison trollop than a lack of morals.’

  ‘I vowed never to tell you this. Why do you think Father took you with him when he travelled? Because you were his favourite? Oh, no, no, no, you were not. One of the last things he asked of me was that I keep his grandson out of your clutches. Those were his words. Don’t allow her to ruin him like she ruined your brother, he said to me.’

  Bernard recalled sighting Margaret carrying two stretched canvases out to the car. Had she carried them in? In his mind’s eye he could see a masterpiece: his Maggie framed by the doorway, sandwiches spread at her fluffy pink slipper-clad feet, the contents of Lorna’s teacup dripping from her chin, staining her negligee, moistening it enough to cling.

  Until that night, he had not seen Margaret’s claws. They were exposed tonight and capable of drawing blood.

  He glanced at Mrs Muir, who appeared to be praying for peace.

  ‘Canvases,’ he said. ‘Did you sight them, Mrs Muir?’

  She had her finger on the pul
se of this house. She found his paintbox, his canvases. The last he heard of the altercation was his sweet Maggie’s voice.

  ‘My marriage enabled Father to die in the knowledge that you would have no hand in the raising of James. Had you wed Bernard, I would have raised that little boy alone.’

  The smoke cleared by midnight, perhaps earlier. Paint-smeared but satisfied, the bedcover paint-smeared, Bernard emerged from his work as Margaret entered requiring her bed. He removed his paraphernalia, leaned his painting against the wall then stood back, pleased with the triangles of white bread and black rye, the pink ham stretched between two hands, one large, its talon nails dripping blood, the other dimpled, a pale, virginal hand, with sharp claws.

  The painting had not dried sufficiently to transport, but Margaret ordered a taxi for eight the next morning. The painting travelled home on his and Mrs Muir’s laps. Margaret sat with the driver.

  Lorna arrived at five that afternoon. Bernard hid in his studio.

  Margaret took a phone call from the mother of Alan, James’s new schoolfriend. They were planning a camping trip over Christmas, and Alan would so much enjoy having James spend his Christmas with them. Say no, and she would subject that dear boy to six weeks of unrelieved Lorna. Say yes, and a bitter, lonely Christmas loomed before Margaret.

  She took the woman’s number and told her she’d discuss it with James’s father. The phone returned to its hook, she ran to her bedroom, flung herself down on the bed and cried. All she’d wanted was her darling boy, and slowly but surely she was losing him. All she’d needed was the Balwyn house and enough money to live on. The wording of that letter to Vern should have been altered, giving Lorna control of the estate. She would have thrived on the responsibility, made decisions with a wave of her hand. She was a woman who needed to control and Vern’s will had stripped her of control. Her only power now was her presence and her evil tongue.

  The telephone rang again. No one answered its call and the exchange gave up — for five minutes, then it began again. Bernard would chose not to hear it. Lorna, who had an appalling phone manner, had been asked not to answer it. Someone had to silence the thing.