by Joy Dettman
‘It’s rubbish,’ she said, stepping onto the solid ground of the passage. ‘It deserves burning down not fixing.’
He wanted to show her the cellar, to tell her its history. She wanted to go home.
‘Why do we have to live out here anyway, when that house in town belongs to you?’ She shouldn’t have said that. She probably wasn’t supposed to know. Margaret had told her in confidence. Maybe he’d think her grandmother had told her.
‘It’s Pop’s for his lifetime, and I don’t want it anyway. Since I first saw this place as a kid, I’ve wanted to live in it. You won’t recognise it when it’s done up, when we get the garden going again.’
‘What’s wrong with living in your house?’
They live in it, Jim thought. He’d had a dose of living away from them. It had given him a craving for his own space.
That was one of his reasons for marrying: to have his own space, his own house. He wasn’t too certain he’d recognise love if he tripped over it, but being with Sissy was like being with Margaret. He’d been tagging around behind her and Margaret since he was sixteen — which was the second reason why he’d decided to marry her.
Until Vern had suggested that his squiring her around had kept other blokes away, he’d never considered it. But it was probably true. Sissy had been slimmer, better looking, less demanding at sixteen than she was at twenty-one. If she’d been going to find a husband, it would have been at sixteen or seventeen.
The third, and most convincing reason why he’d put his mother’s ring on her finger, was her size. Jim’s great-grandfather had gone through four wives and produced three kids. His grandfather had gone through two and produced two sons. Vern had gone through three. Lorna’s mother died in childbirth; they’d cut Jim’s mother open to get him out, and he’d never known her to be well. She’d died when he was six years old. He had no intention of letting his kids kill anyone. Sissy Morrison had the build to birth a dozen Hoopers.
She got on his nerves at times, but out here he wouldn’t have to live in her pocket. The house had eight bedrooms. It had an acre of neglected garden and seven hundred and fifty acres of sheep and wheat surrounding it — and today every acre of it clinging tenaciously to its green. Sissy was seeing that land at its best. Give it another month and the green would be gone.
‘It’s beautiful out here at this time of year,’ he said.
‘Hmph.’ Sissy waved away a fly and looked down at the poop-splattered verandah boards.
A perfect grass-perfumed spring day, the barest feathering of cloud, one of those days you know you’ve lived before, you know you’ll live again, a day for long bike rides — an ice-cream day . . .
The two babies in Elsie’s pram, Jenny pushed it towards town wishing she had the guts to push those kids into town and buy an ice-cream. She didn’t. She didn’t even have the guts to push them down bush tracks. Too many headed out to the bush on fine days.
She stood a while where the forest road ended, wishing she could push on over the bridge and out Three Pines Road. Norman used to take her riding out there. He’d always found something interesting to look at.
And speak of the devil — or think of him — just as she was about to leave the shelter of the trees, she sighted her father rounding McPhersons’ bend, heading towards the bridge.
She backed the pram into the trees and watched him stop, lean his bike against the bridge railing. It brought back a rush of memories. He used to strap her into a little wooden seat he’d fixed to the back of that bike, and always lifted her down at the bridge to look at the birds. He could name every one: the spoonbill, the blue heron, the musk duck and crane, the dab chick, kingfisher.
She wished . . . wished Amber had never come home. Wished there was a tablet available from Charlie’s shop that would wash memories out of the brain. Wished she could stop feeling sorry for him.
She watched him until he mounted his bike and rode on, until the kids started trying to climb out of the pram. They wanted more walking and less trees. And why not? She swivelled the pram around and pushed on towards the bridge.
No sign of Norman on the road. He’d probably ridden down one of the bush tracks. No sign of anyone.
Jackass laughing at her, a few waterbirds playing, a white heron looking for a fish. She could have stood all day at the railing watching birds but she had to get over the bridge before he came back or someone else came.
Almost across, one of the pram’s front wheels jammed in a gap between the bridge boards. She should have lifted it out, not tried to drag it. The pram moved forward but the wheel didn’t.
‘Hell. Hell and damn it!’ She kicked it, and the wheel dug in deeper. She cursed it, kicked from a different angle. The wheel jumped free, and rolled merrily towards the railing, Jenny behind it, desperate to catch it before it dived overboard.
The kids, now sitting at an angle, watched with interest as she lifted them level and pushed the wheel back onto the axle. With no split pin to hold it on, it wobbled for a yard or two, then clunk!She stood searching the bridge for that pin, knowing it had probably fallen through a gap and was in a fish’s gullet — or maybe back on Granny’s road where she’d swivelled that pram around.
Dust in the distance, a car coming, she tried tilting the pram, running it on two wheels, and almost lost Georgie overboard. The car was close enough now to recognise. It was Vern’s green Ford, and Jim would be driving it. And he was the last person on earth she wanted to see her pushing two kids in a pram. Or maybe not the very last person on earth. The very last person on earth was sitting in the passenger seat.
Helpless, she stood with the wheel in her hand, expected the car to run over her, to flatten her and her kids like frogs on the road. She almost hoped that car would flatten them and be done with it, but it stopped a few yards short. Jim got out while Sissy leaned on the car horn.
‘Are you thinking of moving sometime soon, Jen?’ Jim said.
‘Not in the near future,’ she said. She hadn’t seen him in two years. He was thicker around the shoulders, thicker in the neck and face, more like Vern, though also nothing like him, not around the nose, the eyes, maybe the jaw. He’d grown into his goblin ears.
She stepped back as he lifted the pram to study the wheel’s mechanics, its contents tilting to the side but clinging on.
‘It would have had a split pin in it,’ he said.
‘I don’t need a diagnosis, just a cure,’ she replied, and he showed a flash of his teacup teeth. He hadn’t grown into those teeth.
‘I’ll have something in the car,’ he said.
‘Just help me lift it off the bridge and I’ll use one of their napkin pins.’
‘It might get you home,’ he said. The axle dropped back to aged boards, the kids flopped back to their original tilt, chortling, enjoying the game.
‘Twins,’ he said. From his great height maybe they looked like twins.
‘Sounds logical to me,’ she said. She’d clad them today in identical pink frocks and sun bonnets, which hid some of Georgie’s hair and all of Margot’s, which made Georgie look like a little old-fashioned lady and made Margot look like George Macdonald wearing a sun bonnet. They looked nothing like twins, though she preferred him to think they were.
Car horn beeping, McPherson’s old dog adding the base notes, kookaburra laughing.
‘I’ll put the pram in the boot and drive you home,’ he said, and he walked back to empty his rear seat of papers and sweaters, to place them at Sissy’s feet.
‘You’re not putting them in this car,’ she said.
‘Her wheel came off.’
‘You’re not putting them in this car, I said.’
‘She can’t push it back out there on three wheels. Be reasonable, Sis.’
Sissy had never been reasonable, and those kids were coming towards her, one under each of Jenny’s arms. ‘You put them in this car, and I get out, Jim.’
‘Wait over at McPherson’s. It will only take me a couple of minutes.’
‘As if I’m standing around waiting there while you play good Samaritan to the town slut.’
If Jenny had had a free hand to grip, Sissy’s well-dressed hair may have lost some of its curl. She had no free hand — but Sissy hadn’t had the last word since Jenny was eleven years old.
Jim was holding the car door open. Jenny placed both kids on the seat and got in to hold them there.
‘Try not to breathe, kids,’ she said. ‘Your Aunty Sissy has got terrible BO.’
A CHANGE OF PLANS
Jim drove down on Monday morning with a selection of split pins. The pram was back at Elsie’s, its four wheels intact, but Gertrude thanked him for his thoughtfulness. Jenny remained inside.
On Thursday night, while Gertrude was writing her list to take into town, she brought up the subject of prams. ‘I’ll ask around while I’m in there and see if someone wants to sell one,’ she said.
‘Why not advertise in the Willama Gazette? Pram wanted by town slut.’
‘I told you not to use that expression.’
‘Tell Sissy that. Tell Vern, too. Tell Bobby Vevers. Tell everyone.’ There was a freedom in being herself, in saying what she was thinking.
‘That’s enough.’
‘Then it’s enough of you talking about prams, too.’
‘Your father is still sending me money for you.’
‘Give it back to him to pay for the wedding.’
Gertrude had considered it. She’d burned his first few cheques, thinking he wouldn’t find out. He had, and he’d started doubling the figure. She deposited his remittances into her account now. Ten shillings a week wasn’t a lot, but Jenny had been home for over a year and those ten shillings mounted up.
She raised the subject of prams again when Elsie’s new son was born and the old brown pram back in full-time service.
There is little more heart-stirring than the lusty wail of a newborn child, though Gertrude hoped it might be the last of them. Her land was overrun by accidental grandchildren, and not a dribble of her blood running in any one of them — yet she felt more for the smallest of them than she felt for Sissy.
At night, when she sat alone in the moonlight, she wondered how she might feel about Sissy’s children. They’d be hers and Vern’s grandchildren. Maybe that could be excuse enough to wed him — or to put his ring on her finger. She’d be sure of getting her hands on her blood grandchildren — maybe the only way she could be sure. In time she might even form a relationship with Sissy. Becoming a mother matured most girls.
She didn’t consider the possibility that Sissy wasn’t pregnant. Why else the rushed wedding?
Not so rushed, as it turned out. The postal department delivered the box from the Sydney bridal wear store ten days before the proposed wedding date. It was a beautiful gown, but never trust a friend to take an honest waist measurement. Depending on the nature of that friend, they might add two inches, or deduct two. The frock didn’t come within four inches of doing up at Sissy’s waist. Amber repackaged it carefully. Norman posted it back, and that night, while Sissy howled on her bed, Norman prayed for a refund.
‘Dress or not, it will still go ahead won’t it?’ Gertrude asked.
‘In February. She’s having a frock made by Margaret’s dressmaker. The woman says she’s run off her feet until January,’ Vern said.
‘The sooner it’s done the better, Vern.’
‘That’s what I said. But I don’t think that boy has worked out what a woman is for yet — I’ve got my doubts that he ever will,’ Vern said, and Gertrude thought no more about wedding rings.
Christmas came. They ate homegrown chicken at Gertrude’s house, homegrown vegetables, soggy plum pudding, two threepences poked into every slice and more threepences required each year. They ate the festive meal in Gertrude’s kitchen, which was larger than Elsie’s, though the Halls’ chairs and kitchen table made the trip across the paddock. Always controlled bedlam, Christmas Day at Granny’s house. Worse when Gertrude tested her present from Harry and Elsie, a small whistling kettle. It boiled fast and screamed its success.
They were washing dishes, stepping over and around kids and building blocks, when Maisy arrived with a knitted gollywog for Margot and scented soap and rose water for Jenny, Gertrude and Elsie.
Her own house was full, she said. She’d popped out for a breather. ‘Patricia and the kids and Rachael are staying in with us until New Year. They want to see Gone with the Wind.’
‘Up here?’ Jenny said. ‘Up here already?’ Hiring new movies cost the council too much money, so Norman used to say. They never hired any of the good shows until they were worn out.
‘They’re showing it in Willama this week. The council made some deal with the theatre.’
‘Are you going?’
‘I’ll be looking after the kids, love.’
‘Would you come in with me, Granny?’
‘I haven’t seen one of those ratbag things since the projector chap almost burned the old town hall down.’
‘How?’
‘Before we had electricity,’ Maisy said. ‘A travelling chap used to come up here on the train with his light thing.’
‘Limelight,’ Gertrude said. ‘Dangerous stuff. It burned a few theatres down. I remember once when Archie was —’ She closed her mouth.
‘What?’ Jenny said.
‘It was some sort of a cylinder they filled up with lime, then burned it by blowing oxygen or some sort of gas mixture onto it. It gave off a good light.’
‘I meant what about Itchy-foot?’ Jenny said. She liked hearing stories about Itchy-foot. Knew she looked like him — probably was like him — which was probably why Amber hated her.
‘He was fond of the limelight,’ Gertrude said.
‘Come with me, for my birthday. Please.’
‘Joey will go with you.’
Joey had grown a moustache. He looked like a Spanish pirate, but knew he wasn’t — as did most in town. He worked in the bush, was happier in the bush.
‘You can sit with my girls,’ Maisy said.
As if they’d want to sit with her. The subject was dropped though not forgotten by Jenny. She’d read about that movie. Clark Gable was in it.
Then, on the Saturday it was showing, Vern came down talking about it. Jim had been staying out at the farm, but he was coming in to see it. Margaret and Lorna were going.
Everyone in Woody Creek would be at the town hall tonight and Jenny didn’t have the guts to go.
She spent the afternoon with Elsie, watching Vern’s car, listening for its motor. It didn’t move from the yard. She fed the kids at Elsie’s, gave them a bath, clad them in borrowed napkins, borrowed nightshirts. She ate at Elsie’s table, but by seven both kids were whingeing for their bed. She and Joey carried them home.
Vern eyed them as they walked in. He asked Joey how he was enjoying being a working man. Joey said he liked the money, then he left. Jenny got the kids down, gave them bottles and disappeared into the lean-to. No lamp to read by. Nothing to do but sit all night while he sat.
And she wasn’t going to sit in there all night listening to him. She wasn’t going back to Elsie’s either. She was going to see that movie.
It was almost dark when she got to the station, where she waited until the crowd filed into the town hall. She waited five minutes more then ran across the road.
Mrs Olsen sold the tickets. Jenny couldn’t see if she sneered or not, but she took the money and Jenny slipped into the hall.
The newsreel was playing. She stood, her back to the wall, watching a crippled plane come in on a wing and a prayer, watching soldiers, thousands of them, marching across the screen, and thousands more being offloaded from boats. She saw Winston Churchill get into a car somewhere in London, bombed London, men digging through rubble. She’d heard Churchill’s voice on Elsie’s wireless and it had given her goose bumps. We will fight them on the beaches. We will never surrender.
Was it better to surrender your city to the
enemy than to see it bombed into oblivion? Maybe. Paris had surrendered. It would still be standing when the war ended. But what would it feel like to walk the streets of your own city saying ‘Heil Hitler’? Did the French walk around with their heads bowed in shame?
The newsreel was her first sight of war, of its destruction. She had read bits and pieces in the newspapers, just facts and figures, the number of casualties. Tonight she knew the newspaper’s casualties were boys, those same boys marching across the screen.
There were a few empty seats scattered around, if she was prepared to squeeze past people’s knees to get to them. She considered the long wooden bench seats at the front of the hall where the kids sat, where she’d sat in another lifetime. Everyone would see her, stare at her. Better to stand near the door, be first out at interval.
Then the movie began, the screen lit up with colour and the music swept her away from the town hall to Tara.
She didn’t want an interval, didn’t want to move, but she had to. She got out the door before the lights came on and ran across to the park where she sat in the shadows of the bandstand as the crowd poured out onto the street, and a stream of the younger moviegoers ran across the railway line to the café. Mrs Crone always stayed open late on picture nights.
Hiding in the park was a mistake. It was a popular place. She watched one couple kiss, wondered what it might be like to be kissed like Rhett had kissed Scarlett, Atlanta burning behind them. Laurie had looked a bit like Clark Gable; he’d kissed her, but not like that, not a waited-for sort of kiss. It was more a warning that she’d be having a bath sort of kiss.
She was sitting, head down, remembering her walk across this park on the night of the ball, thinking about the twins and mouthing ‘bastards’ when another one crept up on her.
‘I thought I recognised that hair,’ he said.
Jenny sprang to her feet, sprang away from him. Bobby Vevers, but alone tonight. And she wasn’t. Maisy’s house was on the far side of the park fence. There were two hundred people at the hall. She’d been scared of him when she’d come on him and Johnny Lewis setting traps. She wasn’t going to be scared of him tonight.