by Joy Dettman
‘Sissy said they’d found cancer in it.’
‘I was hiding behind a door when forgiveness was handed out, Maisy,’ Jenny said. Forgiveness, forgetfulness, motherliness, wifeliness.
She’d given up nagging about the stink of Lorna’s furniture. She never looked up when she walked through the entrance hall – she’d stopped vacuuming it. Stopped vacuuming the dining room – her room once, and a beautiful room. Her dining room setting, now relegated to the small sitting room corner, looked like the modern junk it was. Its chairs were comfortable, though. She’d chosen it for its six comfortable chairs, and Jim had been at her side when she’d chosen it – on her side.
Didn’t know what was going on in his head lately. He’d become obsessed by his family. She’d known him as a boy who had called his father ‘sir’. Had known him as a young man dominated by Vern Hooper and Lorna. Knew as much as Nobby knew about his missing years in psychiatric clinics after the war – next to nothing. Since she’d got back together with him he’d had nothing to do with his family. Lorna hadn’t let him know that Margaret was dead. His cousin had passed on that piece of news, after the funeral.
Maisy was still talking. Maisy never stopped talking, and Jenny drew her mind back to the kitchen.
‘. . . terrible photograph in Saturday’s paper?’
‘I saw it,’ Jenny said.
The Grinning Granny business settled down for weeks at a time. Her breast had returned her grin to the headlines. Jenny knew it well, Amber’s snake-getting-ready-to-strike smile she’d named it as a kid. She wanted her convicted, not for Lorna’s murder but for Norman’s.
‘She’s been on pills for it,’ Maisy continued.
‘Pills for cancer?’
‘Sissy. For her nerves. She’s living with one of your cousins in Hamilton, and she said that the cousin puts an eggtimer on whenever Sissy picks up the telephone.’
‘I was born without compassion for the great human horde, Maisy – and I don’t count Amber and Sissy amongst them anyway.’
‘You were raised as sisters,’ Maisy said. ‘She took Amber in when she had no place to go, and that friend of hers too when she had to get out of her unit, and because of what Amber did, Lacy won’t even talk to Sissy on the phone.’
Jenny leaned, elbow on the table, face supported on her palm, her mind searching for a safe place to go. It found Molly Squire. Jim had written her death scene. His Molly had died alone in her bed, but Jenny liked her and didn’t want her to die alone.
‘She phoned Lacy before she phoned me last Sunday, to tell her that she’d been given a two-bedroom unit and to ask her to move into it with her. All Lacy did was bawl. Then her sister-in-law came on the phone and demanded that they be let into the Doveton house to pick up her mother-in-law’s furniture before Sissy moved, like she was scared Sissy would take off with it.’
‘Where was she going to put Cousin Reg?’
‘He’s with some other cousins. Sissy said that they can keep him if Lacy changes her mind. She’s going to write to her.’
‘Poor old Cousin Reg,’ Jenny said.
‘The new unit wouldn’t be any good for him anyway. It’s close to a big shopping centre with a hotel, and it’s got a bus stop at the front door, Sissy said.’
‘If I had to live with her, I’d drink too.’
‘Don’t let life make you hard, love.’
‘You’re too soft, Maisy.’
‘It stops me getting wrinkles,’ Maisy said.
*
By July Trudy had flown away, the pups had moved on to new homes and Ray’s insurance money account had paid for a concrete drive. Pups dig. They’d dug up bulbs, dug holes beneath the side fence, excavated beneath the gate, tormented their parents when they wanted to sleep and scuttled around the veranda when Jenny had wanted to sleep.
She’d sat Vern down the day the last of the pups was driven away and told him in no uncertain terms what she’d do to him if he ever did it again. Hoped he understood castration. He understood everything else.
Most dogs will heel when told to, they’ll sit, even stay. Old Joe’s kelpies would stay until ordered to move. Ask ‘Where’s your bone?’ and they’d run to retrieve it, ask ‘Where’s the cat?’ and they’d scare that cat up a tree in the blink of an eye. ‘Bad dog’ meant ‘Go to your chain’. ‘Good dog’ meant ‘Have a good time’, and the more Jenny and John laughed at their good time antics, the better time the dogs had. Mention ‘Walk’ in their hearing and they’d run to the gate. ‘Where’s your lead?’ or ‘Get your lead’ and they’d run to the shed where their leads hung and return with both, or arguing over the one they’d managed to unhook.
At times they behaved like pups, but John, the dog expert, put their age at around six. All things being equal, Jenny could expect to be a dog owner for another five or six years – as could Jim, and he didn’t want them defiling his lawn, and they knew it. They kept their distance from him, except when Jenny asked ‘Where’s Jim’s gammy leg?’ at which point they’d approach him warily, sniff his plastic leg, then move away, the fur on the back of their necks standing on end.
From time to time they barked at a passer-by, but only if the passer-by was too slow in passing. They barked at Amy’s garden pixies, her leadlight winged butterflies which had found new homes in Jenny’s garden.
Spring would come, it always did, but not to Amy’s garden. Jenny knew its fate. She’d seen land developers at work before. They’d arrive with their bulldozers. They’d level that old house and garden, then cut those two and a half acres up into building blocks, fifty per cent of which would be bought by Melbourne retirees. And who could blame them for getting out of a city where murders had become commonplace, where strikes crippled. Truckies throughout four states had blockaded major highways, protesting about fuel tax and the cost of registering their vehicles. And could you blame them? The cost of living kept skyrocketing, housing prices in Melbourne had gone mad. With what the owners might get for a grotty little weatherboard house in Richmond, they could build a mansion in Woody Creek – and did.
The town’s businesses should have been thriving. They weren’t. Too many of its six hundred residents did their major shopping in Willama. Robert Fulton now ran a one-man business. He could order a television, refrigerator or washing machine and within two days deliver it to your door. He could order any piece of household furniture required, if you were prepared to choose it from one of his catalogues. Catalogues might have been good enough in the old days but they weren’t any more, not when there were two big furniture stores in Willama where a buyer could test the comfort of a chair or bed before handing over his credit card.
Woody Creek’s butcher no longer employed an apprentice. Charlie’s grocery store, now a supermarket, had changed hands twice since the day Jenny handed the keys to N. and B. Wallis. The café cum fish and chip shop did well enough, though the service station out on the highway sold take-away meals and coffee, and had a better range of ice-creams along with clean toilets for travellers. Stock Route Road had been extended through to connect up with Three Pines. It got rid of the heavy transports that had roared through town night and day, but also got rid of the travellers on the way to some place better. They used to break their journey in town, buy a meal, a beer or an ice-cream.
The Taylor couple who’d bought Blunt’s drapery no longer stocked drapery. John Taylor baked fresh bread and rolls on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and every day during the holiday season. Pauline Taylor served tea and light midday snacks three days a week. Some days they did well enough. Some days they didn’t.
The old post office had become a community centre. City retirees pine for their clubs and centres. The city chap who bought Freddy Bowen’s hotel turned the rear section of his backyard into a beer garden with a shade cloth roof. Once a month he brought in city entertainers with their screaming guitars and pounding drums. Closed doors and windows couldn’t lock their noise out. Hooper Street was narrow. Jen, Jim, John and their dogs were e
ntertained free of charge once a month.
‘They’re driving me to drink!’ Jenny moaned.
‘That’s the idea,’ Jim said. ‘Go to sleep.’
Then August, a deathly cold August, and the Grinning Granny was back in the news.
IT WAS A MERCY KILLING, GRANNY CLAIMS.
AMBER MORRISON TO SPEND REMAINING DAYS IN SECURE HOSPITAL WARD.
Staring, whispering people.
‘They say that she’s that woman’s daughter.’
‘Where does she get the nerve to walk around town the way she does?’
Wouldn’t – if I had a face like yours, Jenny thought. Wouldn’t if I had a choice.
GRINNING GRANNY ADMITS TO DEFRAUDING SOCIAL SECURITY DEPARTMENT
A spokesman today told reporters that prior to her arrest, Amber Morrison was collecting pensions in her own name and in the names of Elizabeth Duckworth, Maryanne Brown and Margaret Hooper . . .
Even the Grinning Granny’s underwear was big news in August. There was a photograph of her girdle on page two. She’d been examined by a doctor shortly after being charged. He might not have found the lump in her breast but he’d found four rectangular bulges in the hip and buttock region of her girdle. In excess of eight thousand dollars was removed from those pockets.
The Royal Doulton vases and the two statuettes taken by the police from the Doveton house now belonged to Trudy. Jim knew where vases belonged. Pretty things, Jenny was admiring while standing close enough to the open fire to burn.
‘Jen!’ Jim said. ‘She’s on the news.’
She turned to face the flashing screen – and there she was, filling the screen, the rounded shoulders, the flat round face, the bulge of floral frock.
Sissy?
Knew that mouth, that heavy jaw. Knew that heavy brow. Remembered Sissy’s parrot beak nose, her eyes. Didn’t know her red-rimmed glasses.
She wrote to Lorna almost every week for years and years even though Lorna kept posting those letters back, Sissy said. I still think there was something like . . . something romantic going on between them before she moved in with us. I think that’s why she did it.
The interviewer asked why, being aware of her mother’s past, Sissy and her husband had taken Amber into their home.
‘The Bible tells us that we need to be . . . to be charitable to people who aren’t as well off as us. I’ve always been a good Christian woman, Sissy said, and Jenny escaped to the kitchen.
Sissy was on the front page of the morning newspaper. They’d printed her television interview. And there was a promise of more Grinning Granny on page two.
On page two, Jennifer Hooper, Woody Creek jumped out and hit Jenny in the eye.
Then the phone started ringing.
You can kill a phone by leaving it off the hook. She killed it.
Then the dogs started barking.
‘Good dog,’ Jenny said, and if that day it translated into Climb that bloody gate and dine on bloody cameramen, who was she to interfere with their game?
The newspapers didn’t get a shot of the Grinning Granny’s second daughter, so they recycled the Grinning Granny in the weekend supplement, with a photograph of her elasticised girdle, its pockets enhanced by an artist’s hand. And below it:
My dear Miss Hooper,
How can I ever repay you for your kindness to a stranger in her time of great need? I fully understand your response on Sunday. Your shock was no doubt as great as my own. Had the deception been a conscious ploy for your sympathy, I would not beg your forgiveness now, but until yesterday I was unaware of my cruel deception . . .
. . . As you are aware, my Royal Doulton vases have great sentimental value to me. I thank you for not placing them at risk with my other belongings. I can only assume that one of the young street louts vandalised my case’s contents. As to my Waterford crystal bowl, I am sure it and my vases will be safe in your care until I can arrange to collect the last of my belongings . . .
In closing, I bless you for your kindness to me when we met as strangers and I hope that one day you can find it within your heart to forgive my accidental deception.
My very best regards to you always,
Elizabeth
That was the day winter hit Jenny’s soul, the day she removed Amber’s vases from the sitting room mantelpiece, wrapped them well then packed them into a box and hid them in the storeroom, behind John’s boxes of negatives – and that room colder than a tomb, as was the entrance hall where that cockroach-eyed old sod glared at her and told her to crawl back into the gutter she’d crawled out of.
She walked to the door of the sitting room, vacated by Jim for the winter. He was warm in her kitchen. Tappity-tappity-tap-tap-tap. Bang! Zing! Tappity-tappity-tap-tap-tap.
Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold enough to light the sitting room fire, then to enter the dining room and light a fire in there. The dining room chimney must have been blocked. Smoke billowed into the room. She didn’t kill it. She closed the door, allowing that smoke to fumigate Lorna’s furniture.
There were five open fireplaces in Vern Hooper’s house. By mid-afternoon three were burning and she had a full-time job carrying wood to feed them.
Jim watched her enter with another armload. ‘Give it up, Jen. You’re wasting wood,’ he said.
‘I’m a fighter,’ she said.
‘Are we eating today?’
‘The take-away place sells fish and chips.’
Before Christmas he might have followed her, put his arms around her, kissed her and told her that all things pass. Today he turned back to his tappity-tappity-tap-tap-tap.
John opened a can of baked beans. He made toast and tea while Jenny phoned the wood man, who told her that everyone wanted wood yesterday, that he couldn’t deliver before next Wednesday. She put the phone down and, aware she was fighting a losing battle, went for bigger guns. Dialled Robert Fulton’s number then, without need of a catalogue, she ordered a briquette heater, his biggest, his best.
‘I need it installed yesterday, Robert.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said.
THE FIRE GOD
A Willama chap installed her metal deity. It ate a bag of briquettes in a day, but before the day ended the sitting room was an oven and heat was trickling through into her sewing room.
For years she’d spoken to Jim about installing a heater. He’d liked the old fireplace as it was. He wasn’t happy. He was so unhappy, he refused to learn how to open its door to stoke it.
Black things, dusty, dirty things, briquettes; a briquette stoker’s hands turn black, as do their fingernails. Robert delivered a dozen bags of briquettes on Saturday – and his bill. Jenny placed his bill on the hallstand and told him to dump the briquettes in the hall, which would save a good portion of her day walking out to the shed and walking back in. She’d made a start on Maisy’s frock.
Jim came from the kitchen to take charge of the bill, and to countermand her order. Robert stacked the bags in the shed while Jim wrote a cheque. Jenny clad herself in an overcoat, beanie and gloves then spent two hours opening bags, and wrapping briquettes four at a time in newspaper. She wrapped four in the Grinning Granny’s letter and took pleasure in it. She turned Bob Hawke’s face black – apologised to Hazel, then changed her mind about apologising to her and told her that if she wanted to pose with him, then she deserved what she got. Loaded the briquette gifts into the gardening barrow, lost one parcel while manhandling it up the back step, but got it up and wheeled the barrow through the kitchen, through the house and into the sitting room, where she built a pyramid of newspaper wrapped gifts on the left-hand side of the god, the father of all fires, then went out to the shed for more building blocks.
Wind howled through Vern’s pine tree, sobbed in the power wires, but for the first winter night in the years she’d lived in that mausoleum, she wasn’t wearing a heavy cardigan over her sweater.
‘The small dining room is as warm as toast. Take your typewriter and papers in there tomorrow, Jim,’ she said.
‘The light is no good,’ he said.
‘Then have a couple of fluorescent lights installed in there so it is good.’
‘Every wire in the house needs replacing,’ he said. ‘And in a month’s time we’ll be complaining about the heat.’
‘If you want to eat, I need my kitchen to cook in.’
‘I thought it was our kitchen,’ he said.
‘I could work around one. I can’t work around two.’
‘You wanted John to stay.’
‘I want him, and my kitchen.’ Jim rolled out a completed page, rolled in another. ‘What would it cost to have the house rewired?’ she asked.
‘You’ve spent our quota for this month,’ he said.
She had her own money, her sewing money and Ray’s insurance. There was plenty in Vern Hooper’s blood money account, and why not spend his blood money on his house, and get rid of that account which had been haunting her for years?
She drove to Willama the following day and got a park out the front of the bank. The changes I’ve seen, she thought as she joined the tail end of a queue of six waiting for service at a solo teller’s window. Until the mid-fifties most Willama businesses had closed their doors for an hour between twelve and one; there’d been a mass exodus of bike-riding staff heading home for a cooked midday meal. Lunch hours had shrunk to half-hours; staff had become thin on the ground, and what there was of them ate in shifts while the customers queued.
She glanced at the withdrawal slip, made out for eight thousand five hundred dollars. Prior to the crash of ’87, banks had been paying incredible interest. She’d empty that blood money account today, then dig a deep hole in the back garden and bury that book.
The queue moved too slowly. She had too much time to think. She was only one away from the teller when she admitted to herself that the book meant more to her than the money in it – like the five-pound note she’d won at the talent quest. In Armadale, desperate for sixpence, she hadn’t been able to spend the note that had somehow attached itself to Jim’s life. He’d been a part of that talent quest night. He’d stood watching more proudly than Norman when the photographer’s camera flashed. When he’d gone missing in the war, she’d placed that five-pound note safe in the frame of their family photograph. It was still in the frame, on their bedside table.