by Joy Dettman
‘Elsie broke her arm. Could you find Harry, please,’ she said, and she left, got out of town fast via the short cut through Flanagan’s land which would bring her out behind Gertrude’s orchard, preferring this morning to run headlong into Flanagan’s bull than someone from town.
The garage man was waiting when she got back to Elsie’s and minutes later he drove away, Gertrude and Elsie in the back seat, Margot screaming for the only mother she knew. She wouldn’t have anything to do with Jenny. Then Georgie, who never cried, realised she could, and they screamed a duet. Bedlam.
‘Thank God,’ she said when Harry came home. ‘Thank God.’ Margot recognised him as her father, and for fifteen blissful minutes there was silence.
Gertrude was away for four hours. The Macdonald screamed for three of those hours. Gertrude yelled her news. Elsie would be in hospital for a couple of days. She’d broken her arm in two places and they’d have to give her chloroform to set it. They didn’t hold out a lot of hope that she’d keep the baby.
Jenny tried to silence the Macdonald with a cup of milk. Margot showed how much she didn’t want that cup of milk. Jenny cleaned up the spillage. They tried to silence her with one of Georgie’s bottles. She pitched it at them, pitched a biscuit at them. They tried to settle her in a warm bath. She tried to drown herself. They put her into her cot, and Gertrude stood rocking it while Harry took his lot out for a walk and Jenny took off across the paddock with Georgie.
That kid was a monster. It weighed half a ton and never shut up. It screamed until Elsie came home — still pregnant and with her right arm in plaster, from above the elbow to the tips of her fingers. She silenced the screamer but couldn’t handle her with one arm.
That was the day Gertrude moved the Macdonald across the paddock, the day Gertrude’s house lost its sanctuary status.
Maisy came the next day. She’d raised ten Macdonalds. She pandered to her granddaughter until she got her sucking goat’s milk from a teat. She stayed from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, and there was peace. Then she went home.
Jenny bribed that kid silent with bottles — and it started coming out green from the other end.
‘I’m signing her away Granny.’
‘She’s teething,’ Gertrude said. She cleaned up the green backside; they took her off goat’s milk and gave her boiled water to suck on. She knew the difference. She belted Georgie with the bottle, left her with a lump on her brow the size of a pullet’s egg.
What happened to June that year? Italy declared war on Britain and France in June; Nazi troops occupied Paris in June, just walked in and took it.
‘Why?’
‘I dare say it’s better than seeing a beautiful city bombed.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘Your father liked Paris.’
‘I’m not Amber.’
‘Your grandfather. You knew who I meant.’
He hadn’t liked London — and going by what they wrote in the newspapers, there’d be none of it left soon to like or dislike. Through July, Hitler’s planes tried to bomb London into submission. Through August the battle of Britain, for Britain, raged, while the battle of green napkins was fought in that two and a half room hut.
Gertrude and Elsie blamed Margot’s teeth for her napkins and her tantrums. One of Georgie’s lower teeth came through in August and no one had noticed she was close to teething until Jenny felt it scrape against the feeding spoon. No time to notice anything. Margot stole time.
Australian boys were being sent overseas to fight. The Macdonald twins were overseas, so Maisy said. Soldiers were being killed, planes were being shot down, cities were being bombed, and it was no more real to Jenny than that last morning in Geelong. She wiped backsides, washed napkins, boiled them, hung them on a sagging clothes line, then watched the sky for rain, watched the clothes prop fall down every time a good drying wind blew up, and when she fell into bed at night she was too damn tired to worry about anyone, anything.
Dreamed of war. Dreamed she was carrying that kid into town to give her to Maisy but Maisy’s house had been bombed — and why couldn’t it have been Norman’s house? Woke thinking of Amber, knowing she was in town, laughing about the mess Jenny had made of her life.
Then September again, and it couldn’t be a year since she’d come home. Elsie’s arm was freed of its plaster in September. For a day or two there was hope of an end to purgatory. But Elsie was six months pregnant, and Margot wasn’t her responsibility, so Gertrude said.
She wasn’t Jenny’s either. She’d asked Gertrude to give her away. Elsie had decided to keep her.
‘I don’t even like her, Granny. Elsie likes her.’
‘She’s your flesh and blood, darlin’.’
‘There’s nothing of me in her.’
‘You were as bald at her age.’
‘I wasn’t as fat.’
Almost eighteen months, more than old enough to walk but too weighty ever to do it. Her legs were white rolls of fat to her knees, bent pins from knee to ankle.
‘I’ll be hauling her around until I die of old age,’ Jenny said.
‘She’ll walk when she’s good and ready.’
Charlie White took to riding his bike again in September. He came with his stale and damaged offerings for the chooks and his town news. He sat at the table, drinking tea, dunking biscuits, feeding pieces to the kids, poking Margot’s Buddha belly until she smiled. She didn’t do it often — and when she did, she showed her father’s teeth.
‘I hear your sister is sporting an engagement ring,’ Charlie said. ‘When did that happen?’
‘What?’ Jenny said.
‘Who?’ Gertrude said.
‘The unwed Macdonald girl was telling Hilda that she’s wearing Vern Hooper’s boy’s ring.’
‘I thought he was in the army camp,’ Gertrude said.
‘He is — or was,’ Charlie said.
‘Engaged to Sissy?’ Jenny couldn’t believe it.
‘Don’t quote me,’ Charlie said. ‘I only heard it third or fourth hand.’ He spoke then of another new house going up, out towards the slaughteryards, and they forgot about Sissy, who had probably bought the ring for herself at Coles.
She hadn’t. On the Thursday morning, Elsie came across the paddock with a copy of the Willama Gazette, open at page six, at a photograph of the happy couple: Sissy, her broad chin and brow separated by a self-satisfied Cheshire grin, and Jim, startled into exposing every one of his mouthful of china cup teeth.
‘Vern will be pleased,’ Gertrude said.
‘Why?’ Jenny shovelled a mush of vegetables into baby mouths.
‘The war.’ Gertrude read aloud the report on the happy couple while Elsie stood watching Jenny’s feeding style. The two kids seated on the floor, Jenny squatting between them, spoon in one hand, bowl in the other, shovelling mush, scooping up what oozed out of one mouth and feeding it into the other.
‘He was worried sick about Jim being caught up in it,’ Gertrude said.
‘Does it say when they’re getting married?’ Elsie asked.
‘Not here. It will be soon if Vern’s got anything to do with it. The army won’t call up a married man.’
‘He’d be safer dodging Hitler than dodging her for the rest of his life,’ Jenny snorted.
‘She’s built for it. Hoopers have a bad habit of killing their mothers,’ Gertrude offered.
‘Harry says he’s been courting her for years. He says Jim was taking her around before we got married,’ Elsie said.
‘She’s been courting his indoor lavatory since she was sixteen.’ Jenny shovelled faster, Margot getting two mouthfuls to Georgie’s one.
‘Let her swallow it,’ Gertrude scolded. ‘You’ll get her stomach playing up again.’
‘All the Hoopers have ever been to Sissy is a car to ride in and a lavatory chain she can pull on.’ Jenny scraped the bowl, feeding the last scrape to Margot, who didn’t know much, but knew enough to know that once the spoon was in he
r own hand, there was nothing left in the bowl. She threw the spoon at her feeder and crawled over to Elsie. Next best to food, she liked Elsie, who stooped to lift her to her feet.
Margot smiled for Elsie, crowed when she praised her, screamed when she went home. Gertrude picked her up to soothe her screaming.
No one had been expecting miracles when they’d moved Margot across the paddock. Jenny now referred to her as the Buddha, but she handled her, which was a minor miracle. Gertrude still had hope of Margot’s bald head producing a crop of Jenny’s golden curls, though not much hope. A slight fuzz was visible in strong sunlight and it appeared to be Macdonald white.
Georgie had the curls. Georgie had Jenny’s hands. Georgie wore the pretty yellow dress, the matching yellow pants over her napkin. Margot wore a napkin and Maudy’s hand-me-down brown.
‘She’s always known how to get what she wanted,’ Jenny said.
‘She’s only a baby. All she’s ever known is Elsie and a tribe of kids tripping over her. Her little life has been disrupted.’
‘I meant Sissy,’ Jenny said. ‘Though probably her, too. Some people are born knowing exactly how to get what they want while everyone else learns to accept what they get.’
‘There’s always been too much of Norman’s mother in Sissy. She was a wilful woman.’
‘I wish I’d taken after her.’
‘Don’t ever wish that on yourself.’
‘I didn’t wish this on myself, but I got it.’
‘You could say that about a lot of people.’
‘You mean yourself.’
‘I mean half the people in this town — speaking of which . . . ’ Gertrude walked to the door to look out, to listen. Car motors always announced their approach before they were sighted. ‘I hope they don’t want me in town.’
Her midwifery days were all but over. A few still came for her opinion on whether a pain might be appendicitis or just a bellyache. She’d had her seventy-first birthday. She didn’t look like a woman of seventy-one, didn’t move like a woman of seventy-one, didn’t dress in a grandmother’s garb.
‘It’s Vern,’ she said, placing Margot down and turning to her washstand mirror to tidy her hair before walking out to the yard to meet him.
Margot crawled after her. Jenny hauled her back. Margot clenched her jaw and screamed.
Both kids went down for a nap after lunch. Jenny poured milk into two bottles while listening for the car motor, hoping it wouldn’t die, hoping someone in town had a pain in the belly, that Gertrude would get into the car.
The motor died.
‘We just now saw the announcement,’ she heard Gertrude say.
The car door slammed.
Maybe the kids would nap on her bed. Jenny didn’t want to see Vern, didn’t want him to see those kids.
She heard the wire gate open. He was coming in.
‘She’s been after him for years,’ he said.
Jenny hauled Margot down to the lean-to and dumped her on the bed. She went back for Georgie and the bottles — grabbed Margot before she nosedived off the bed, gave them a bottle each and tucked them in. They eyed her, but sucked in unison.
He was in the kitchen; a chair complained as he sat on it. She knew the sounds of this house, knew by Gertrude’s rattling that she was making him a cup of tea. Knew he’d be in that kitchen for hours.
‘I’m going to do up Monk’s old place for them,’ he said.
‘Does it need much work?’
‘The back section needs re-roofing. It leaks like a sieve. We’ll put in a kitchen. I can’t see her running through the rain to cook him a meal.’
Sissy cooking anything other than toffee was a joke. And the kids thought that being in Jenny’s bed was a joke. Georgie dropped her bottle overboard. Margot was on her feet, rattling the bedhead bars.
Jenny lifted them to the floor and sat with them, her feet propped against the dressing table, her legs forming a barricade across the doorway, behind the green curtain.
‘The front rooms don’t need much,’ Vern said. ‘We’ll need to do the bathroom.’
Bet you’ll be putting in an indoor lavatory, Jenny thought.
Vern spoke of Monk’s garden, of the weeds riddling it, while the kids found shoes to play with and Jenny sat listening, visualising Sissy living in a mansion.
She’d heard of Monk’s house all of her life, heard of the grand parties they’d had out there. She knew that Itchy-foot had been related to the Monks, knew that Gertrude had met him out there, had married him out there.
Margot pitched a shoe at the barricade. She attempted to bulldoze through it. She clenched her jaw and squealed, and when that didn’t get her what she wanted, she got to her feet and for an instant Jenny thought she was going to walk. She flopped to her backside.
‘I’ve been looking around for a car for them,’ Vern said. ‘There’s not a lot around, or not a lot worth owning.’
Sissy driving a car? I can, Jenny thought. Hard to believe it now. Hard to believe any of Melbourne happened. Hard to believe I once came third in a radio talent quest.
Bastards.
And that kid standing there, determined to storm the barricade — and looking more like those twin bastards every day.
Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards.
One day she’d say that word aloud to them. She couldn’t force her throat to say it yet, but chanting it in her head could sometimes dull memory of that night.
Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards.
And their kid took a step! She did, alone and unassisted. One step and she flopped down, but she’d done it. And about time.
If Elsie had been here to see it, she would have praised her. If Granny had seen that step, she would have picked her up, swung her around and told her she was a clever girl.
Goose bumps crawled up Jenny’s spine, wave after wave of goose bumps. They washed up to her scalp, made her hair stand on end. She scratched her scalp and looked Buddha in the eye, looked at the washed-out rag of a frock she wore. Looked at Georgie, so cute and pretty in yellow.
And saw herself too clearly. Saw what she was doing to those kids.
It was herself and Sissy all over again. She was trying to reverse what Amber had done to her by repeating it with those kids . . . like she was getting her own back . . . on Amber and those . . .
Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards.
Not that kid’s fault. She hadn’t been there. She’d had no more say in being born than Georgie. She’d had no more say in who she looked like than Georgie.
There was too much going on in her head to listen to Vern and Gertrude’s conversation — until they mentioned Amber. Her name could still cause Jenny to flinch.
‘She’s offered to help Margaret with the meal,’ Vern said, and Jenny stilled her mind to listen.
‘How is she?’
‘She looks older than you but seems normal enough. She was at the house with the girl yesterday, going through Margaret’s recipe books. You’ll come?’
‘Of course I’ll come. She’s my granddaughter.’
Vern was giving the couple a party on Saturday night, or giving himself a party so he could invite Gertrude. He was pleased to be back in that kitchen. Gertrude was pleased he was back. Jenny could hear it in their voices.
He’d be back every Saturday now. She couldn’t hide in here, hide those kids, every Saturday.
And Margot was on her feet again, and this time Jenny held out her hands to her. Margot took two wobbling steps, squealed and landed in Jenny’s arms.
‘She just took two steps, Granny,’ she said, lifting the curtain and carrying Margot out to stand on her bent pins and show off her new trick.
Kids never perform on command. Georgie followed them out and made a beeline for Vern’s shoes. Margot got down to her knees and followed her.
‘When’s the wedding?’ Jenny asked.
‘December,’ Vern said, giving her a slit-eyed look he might have offered a disease-carry
ing cockroach.
It crushed her, and like the cockroach she was, she crawled back into her hole, or back into the lean-to. The kids would get rid of him.
THE PLANTING OF SEEDS
Fashions come and go in cycles; during the past fifty years Gertrude’s hairstyle had been in mode as often as it had been out. The loose plaits, held in place by crossed ivory pins, once put up in the morning stayed up all day. She dyed her roots every month or two; the silver stripe in her parting disappeared on Friday night. Her black suit hung on the clothes line airing all day Saturday. It only came out of her wardrobe for weddings and funerals.
She had two nice blouses, a pretty blue silk and a black and white stripe, both purchased by Vern many years ago. A blouse never went out of fashion. She dusted off a pair of black shoes with heels, also bought by Vern, in Melbourne, found a pair of stockings. They’d been repaired but no one would be looking at her legs.
‘Will you buy something new for the wedding?’
‘I’ll wear my blue blouse — if I’m invited.’
‘You look about fifty when you’re dressed up.’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ Gertrude said.
‘You’re happier since he came back.’
‘I’ve never liked being on his bad side, darlin’. He’s the only one of my blood that I’m close to.’
‘What about me?’
‘You’re a piece of my heart,’ Gertrude said.
‘What’s Amber?’
‘Another piece of my heart — which I do my best to live without.’
*
Gertrude’s heart was flopping around like a frog in a mud puddle when she entered Vern’s house that night. She looked for Amber, hoping Sissy’s engagement might lead to a reconciliation.
Norman was there, looking like an abused terrier wearing the stretched skin of a bloodhound. It hung on him, folded around him. He informed Gertrude that Amber would not be attending the function. Apparently she had been laid low by one of her headaches.
Maisy was there with Dawn and Jessie. George sent his excuses. Joss, Jessie’s husband, was there. Robert Fulton and his bride and two of Robert’s sisters were there. It wasn’t a large gathering. Nelly Dobson managed the serving. Vern filled the wine glasses — and too often his own.