by Joy Dettman
Jenny had no interest in Lila’s bills, only her whereabouts. ‘Is she living in Willama?’
‘She’s working at the big restaurant in the centre of town and living with one of the waitresses, five houses down from Rebecca. I won’t be eating there again,’ Maisy said.
‘She won’t be there long. She’s never liked work.’
‘Sissy was saying last Sunday that your mother hasn’t changed.’
‘Still murdering, you mean?’
‘She can’t remember anything about Norman, Sissy said, and I meant her cleaning. By the sound of things, they’re getting on better. She was telling me too that your mother can’t even remember my name,’ Maisy said.
‘She’s not my mother. If you have to talk about her, call her Amber,’ Jenny said.
‘Anyway, she reckons that Amber’s brain injuries from the accident wiped out everything that happened to her before the accident, that her memories start from when she woke up in hospital, which is why she didn’t know her own name and why she didn’t recognise Lorna,’ Maisy said. ‘I saw a movie once about a woman who lost her memory after an accident, then she got another hit on the head and it all came back to her.’
‘If they’re looking for a volunteer to swing the hammer, I’ll put my hand up,’ Jenny said.
‘You’re all talk and no action,’ Maisy said. ‘Anyway, she’s still writing to Lorna, who keeps posting her letters back. She even posted back her Christmas card, Sissy said. She’s got it into her head lately that your mother and Lorna must have been on together.’
Jenny hadn’t laughed in weeks, but the visual image of Amber and Lorna ‘on together’ broke her up. She laughed until she coughed, coughed until she choked, until Maisy told her that she’d need to give up smoking.
At four, Jenny started chopping onions for a stew, and Maisy took the hint and left. The stew boiling, Jenny moved it to the hob to simmer then went to her sewing room where a half-finished ballgown lay across the cutting table. It was supposed to be ready for a final fitting tomorrow morning at eleven. She’d have to work tonight, and her sight was no longer good enough for night sewing. It might have been if she’d given in to reading glasses. Jim lived in glasses. He reached for them before he reached for his leg in the mornings. She didn’t want to become dependent on glasses and swore she’d give up sewing before she did.
Age was in her head lately, the big SIXTY out there on the horizon, flashing its neon sign. The older she grew the faster the years flew.
Trudy would turn twenty-one in April and she’d said the last time she rang that she didn’t want a Woody Creek party. And who could blame her for that? She had a lot of friends, Melbourne friends, and other than hiring one of the reception places down there and having the party catered, there was no way and no place Jenny could organise a twenty-first party. Leave it to her to organise it. Give her a limit and tell her to do whatever she liked within that limit.
The big machine humming, Jenny sat before it, feeding a pretty green crepe beneath its foot while her mind travelled. Sewing was therapy for the hands, not the mind. She thought of Lila’s fancy car, which Jim said would have cost a fortune. She thought of the mill, of the money Maisy had paid Macka for his half-share of it. How long ago? Not long after Margot’s funeral.
Living high on the pig’s back – Lila must have revelled in that. When she’d moved to Woody Creek as Mrs Billy Roberts, she’d lived in an old house and driven an old car. She’d lived well with the Freeman chap, the semi invalid son of rich parents, and Lila closer to his mother’s age than to his. Of her four husbands, two had divorced her. The Freeman chap had suffered a heart attack fourteen months after the wedding. Macka hadn’t lasted much longer. Who would the next fool be?
Jenny shook her mind back to Trudy. She was a gem of a kid, a gem Jenny had failed to recognise twenty-one years ago. Back in ’59 she’d seen Margot’s underdone infant as another problem to overcome. It wasn’t until she and Vroni Andrews had picked up that tiny baby from the hospital, until Jenny had smelt the familiar Georgie and Jimmy scent of new life, that she’d recognised Trudy as her own – her own granddaughter – and Trudy didn’t know it. Wished she knew it.
What would you say if I said I wanted to raise her, Jim?
That you were giving me a second chance to do something worthwhile.
Trudy had given him his one chance at fatherhood and he’d jumped into it feet first. She’d offered Jenny motherhood at an age when she’d been ready for it. They’d had three perfect years before Raelene had come into their perfect lives to shake them up. Dead. Margot dead. Jimmy gone. Only Georgie and Trudy now. Georgie would turn forty on 26 March. Trudy’s birthday was on 11 April.
She didn’t look twenty-one, or not to Jenny. She’d grown into her face and height as a thirteen year old and had altered little since. Same slightly turned-up nose, same wide innocent eyes, though not so innocent. Living with Raelene had opened them – and nursing had done the rest. A fine mixture, Trudy Juliana Hooper. She had Teddy’s mouth, his teeth. She had a smidgen of Harry around the nose. Her hands and eyes were Elsie’s. There wasn’t a smidgen of Jenny in her and there should have been. There was more of Jim – she had his calm good sense, his logic, his attitude to cigarettes, too – but not one drop of his blood.
She hadn’t inherited his hang-up about eating out at hotels. On 11 April, she booked a table for fourteen at the White Horse Hotel, not too far from Ringwood or Box Hill, where she and Sophie lived and worked. Only one of Trudy’s mates being a smoker, there were no ashtrays on the table. Georgie and Jenny and the young male smoking friend made frequent trips out to a large ashtray in the foyer.
Jim drank two glasses of wine. He sat until nine, yawned until nine thirty, then handed the chequebook to Jenny and drove alone to Ringwood. It was after midnight when the waiter refused Jenny’s cheque. Georgie handed over her bank card and Jenny ripped up one cheque and wrote another, payable to Georgie, who taxied her out to Ringwood.
Three days later they drove home to Woody Creek to an uproar. Old Joe Flanagan had bought a brand new Toyota, a Jap car, and in Woody Creek, Jap was still a dirty word – and this two weeks before Anzac Day! It was sufficient to convince many that old Joe Flanagan had lost his marbles along with his missus.
He was missing her. He’d been advertising in the Willama Gazette for months for a cleaner/cook but got no takers in Woody Creek. And he wouldn’t only be missing Rosie in his kitchen. She’d spent half her life working like a slave in his milking shed.
A hated man, Joe Flanagan, but he had pups for sale, a litter of seven, and he bred the best dogs in the district, dogs the farmers wanted. John and Amy McPherson looked at Joe’s pups but changed their minds when he told them his price.
His nature was imprinted on his face, a mean, miserable ferret of a face – like his sons, with an added greasy grey goatee beard and moustache. He had a full head of greasy grey hair which hadn’t seen a pair of scissors since poor Rosie had died. He dressed like a pensioner down on his luck and the mean old coot had money coming out of his ears.
Jenny wasn’t concerned about Joe Flanagan, his Toyota, his advertisement or his pups. Since the night of the party, since Trudy had kissed her and told her it was like kissing an ashtray, she’d given up smoking. Yes, the Olympic Games were being held in Russia this year and, yes, their troops were causing havoc in Afghanistan and, yes, half a dozen countries were boycotting the Games in protest. And who cared? Jenny wanted a smoke.
Then it was Anzac Day and Jim sat as he always sat on Anzac Day, and if she turned the television on to watch the march, he turned it off. She walked off in a huff to watch the meagre Woody Creek parade, stood alone watching men form up on Charlie’s corner, then march down to the town hall for the service. Every Anzac Day since ’59 she’d stood alone while Jim withdrew to his silent place. She’d asked him years ago why he denied that day. He’d told her it was a public holiday in celebration of massacre.
Giving up smoking was
supposed to be easier if you got through the first week. She’d got through two weeks and this past week had been harder than the first. It wasn’t as if there was a time limit on weeks. It was for life, and when Jim was in one of his withdrawn moods, smoking saved her sanity.
All things pass, as did Anzac Day, and by May, seven farmers forgave Joe Flanagan and his Toyota long enough to buy a pup.
In May, Malcolm Fraser, Australia’s prime minister, appealed to Australian athletes to boycott the Moscow games, but the Olympic Committee decided to send half of the team. They’d probably end up in gulags, but they probably issued cigarettes in gulags. Jenny had never smoked a Russian cigarette. Someone had given her a Turkish cigarette once. If a Russian offered her one today, she’d smoke it. If Joe Flanagan offered her his pipe, she’d smoke it.
Maisy, who did her supermarket shopping in Willama after her Weight Watchers meeting on Tuesdays, called in for a cup of tea on the way home. She filled Jenny in on the latest anti Wallis woman news, but without a smoke in her hand Jenny couldn’t sit still to listen.
‘Betty Dobson sent young Steven in to get a bottle of tomato sauce she’d forgotten to pick up in Willama, and that Wallis woman told him to go elsewhere,’ Maisy said. ‘There’s those who move up here and make an effort to fit in, then there’s those like her who’d have trouble fitting in anywhere.’
Jenny nodded and peeled a carrot.
Maisy was half the woman she’d been. She used to fill that chair and hang over its edges, had never walked if she could drive. She walked four mornings a week now, walked around the central block and by the supermarket corner, walked close enough to the glass door to make it beep and rumble open, and if it failed to do so, she waved her hand or basket at it until it did. Most had seen her doing it.
Bernie didn’t go to the Weight Watchers meetings, but was also half the man he’d been in ’77. Jenny had seen him march by in the parade, and he’d been wearing his old army uniform, his medals and Macka’s pinned to it. Half the man, but maybe twice the man, a few in town said. He was a good son to Maisy. Jenny couldn’t deny that.
She denied the tombstone he’d bought for Margot. She hadn’t been out to the cemetery since it had gone up. Most in town had seen it. Most who visited the cemetery would have had trouble not seeing it, according to Amy. She saw it the day of Miss Blunt’s funeral.
Jenny sang at the service and said her goodbye there. Goose bumps still rose on her soul when she thought of Margot’s funeral – goose bumps of guilt, multiplied by lack of a smoke. Jim had followed the hearse to the cemetery. He’d seen Margot’s stone. ‘Big,’ he’d said. ‘Very fancy. White.’
And fancy tombstone or not, and half the man or twice the man, Jenny would never forgive Bernie Macdonald. She hadn’t spoken one word to him since the night she’d felt obligated to toss a ‘thank you’ in his direction when he’d given her a lift down to the Willama hospital with Donny, back in ’58 – twenty-two years ago.
It’s human nature to forgive. There were plenty in town who’d forgiven him his youthful sins – or perhaps with Macka dead and in his grave, it became easier to lay old blame at a dead man’s feet. Jenny couldn’t.
She couldn’t forget cigarettes either. She’d smelt the wafting smoke from Bernie’s cigarette when he’d walked out of the newsagent’s this morning just as she’d walked in, and he’d had the gall to hold the door open for her. She hadn’t felt obligated to thank him – had wanted to knock him over and snatch the smoke from his hand.
Vern’s old rosebush hedge, always pruned in June and July, was a hell of a job. This year she’d suggested Harry’s chainsaw and a faster, more brutal pruning. You can’t kill a rosebush – Granny’s climbing rose was testament to that – but Vern Hooper had pruned his own rosebushes each June and July, Jim at his side once he’d been old enough to hold a pair of secateurs. He knew when and how it was supposed to be done and he liked to do things the right way.
They were pruning when they heard that old Dave Watson, one of the town councillors for umpteen years, had died. It was expected, but it meant that he’d have to be replaced on the council.
They were pruning along the south fence when Joss Palmer, Walter Watson, who was Dave’s son, and Robert Fulton, all councillors, came to the fence to tell Jim that Brian Fogarty, a blow-in councillor, had suggested the male Wallis to take old Dave’s place. Jim’s secateurs continued snipping. Jenny’s stilled.
‘How about joining us, Jim?’ Walter said.
‘Not my cup of tea,’ Jim said.
‘Your old man was on the council for years,’ Joss said. ‘You’d get in.’
‘I’m not my old man, Joss,’ Jim said, easing a thorny twig from his gardening glove.
‘If we can’t get a local bloke to stand against him, Wallis will get in unopposed. His wife runs him and will end up running the town,’ Robert Fulton said.
Jim suggested they try John McPherson.
The councillors had no luck there, and that night five men met in Robert Fulton’s sitting room, all local councillors.
‘Who else is there?’ They’d tried three out of town farmers. They’d tried two Dobsons. Hadn’t tried Weasel Lewis, but old Shaky Lewis would have had a better chance of getting votes than Weasel.
‘How about sounding out Bernie Macdonald?’ Joss said.
‘I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole,’ Robert said.
‘His old man sat on the council for fifty years. He’s off the grog. He employs more than any other bugger in town. Who’s got more right?’ Joss asked.
‘He wouldn’t do it.’
‘If we don’t put it to him we won’t know if he will or not.’
‘He’s a mongrel. He’s always been a mongrel, and he’ll die one,’ Robert said.
‘Better him than that henpecked Wallis bastard and his missus,’ Walter said.
‘Who’s for sounding him out?’ Joss asked.
‘I’ll give you ten to one that he won’t do it,’ Robert said.
‘Tell his mother the Wallis coot will be elected unopposed, and she’ll make him do it,’ Walter said, and the men laughed. Maisy’s waving of her basket at that beeping door was a town joke.
Joss mentioned it at the dinner table on Sunday night.
‘No bloody way,’ Bernie said.
‘You will so do it,’ Maisy said, and Jessica seconded the motion.
‘You’ve got the gift of the bloody gab. You do it,’ Bernie said.
‘If Joss will nominate me, I will,’ Maisy said.
Joss didn’t bite.
Maureen always phoned on Sunday night. She got around Bernie on the phone.
‘Dad would be so proud to think that one of his sons was taking his place on the council,’ she said.
Poor old George; his sons had never given him a lot to be proud of. Maureen said more, but Bernie wasn’t listening. He was thinking about making a bloody fool of himself in front of the whole town.
Joe Flanagan’s kelpies would have got more votes than Wallis. Bernie Macdonald got in with a massive majority and, two weeks later, all but half a dozen roses pruned, the Wallis duo placed their store on the market.
It was big news in Woody Creek. It was the best news, the only news, until Saturday afternoon when Joe Flanagan’s Jap car pulled into Jenny’s driveway and Joe wasn’t driving it.
TOBACCO SMOKE
Shock can paralyse. Jim had his secateurs in hand, he could have fought her off. Instead, too late, he attempted to dodge claret lips. The lawn edge was six inches higher than the surrounding brick path and it didn’t take a lot to upset Jim’s balance when his artificial leg was doing the supporting of his near six and a half foot height, so when his foot hit the edge he landed on his backside on the lawn. She got him while he was down, planted her kiss on his mouth and told him to congratulate her.
Jenny came with her own secateurs. She’d seen the car and noticed its colour but maroon was becoming a popular shade for cars, there were a lot of similarly shaped
cars on the road and Jenny was unable to tell the difference between any of the imported models. She wiped at Jim’s lipstick-smeared mouth with a gardening glove, her back turned to Lila and her vehicle.
Jim, born in the horse and cart era, had never trusted horses but given his trust early to his father’s motorised vehicles, and as a twelve year old had learnt to drive a big black Hudson. He could still put a model name and year to every car in town.
‘That’s Joe Flanagan’s car,’ he said, wiping his own mouth with the handkerchief he never failed to carry.
‘Nice to see you too,’ Lila said.
Jenny was walking away when Jim repeated his words. ‘It’s Joe Flanagan’s car, Jen.’
‘You wouldn’t give me a bed,’ Lila said, and Jenny turned, ripped off her gardening gloves and tossed them at her visitor, not because she’d taken old Joe’s advertised job but because she’d lit a cigarette.
‘Put that out,’ Jim said. ‘Jen has given up.’
‘That’s why she’s got a bee up her arse,’ Lila said.
Tobacco smoke wafting on the air of a winter afternoon – is there a smell like it in the world? That old desire slowed Jenny’s footsteps and, halfway across the lawn, she turned to face her nemesis.
‘He’s had three housekeepers we know of. One lasted for two hours, one for two days,’ Jenny said. ‘I wish you joy of him – and how come he lent you his car?’
Lila’s reply was a gush of smoke then the flash of her left hand, and be it new or one of her vast selection, there was a wedding ring on it. Jim stared at the hand, decided he’d done sufficient pruning for the day and escaped towards the shed. Jenny turned towards the house, then back, her legs refusing to walk her away from that sweet scent of burning tobacco.
‘You didn’t marry him?’
‘He’s got money coming out of his ears,’ Lila said.
‘You bloody fool! How do you think he got his money?’
‘Cows. You should see the size of the cheques the butter factory gives him for his cream,’ Lila said.