by Joy Dettman
The kissing couple must have heard him. They broke apart and walked back towards the road.
‘Dora Palmer and Reggie Murphy,’ he said. ‘They’ve been going together for six months.’
He’d been over to the café. He offered her a toffee. She hadn’t had a toffee in ages. She took it, peeled off the paper. She shouldn’t have. He thought his lolly had brought him the right to put his hand on her.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ She dodged around him out of the bandstand and walked to Maisy’s fence.
‘When did you get to be so fussy, Jen?’
Bastard.
She ran along the fence to the footpath, and around to Maisy’s open gate. He didn’t follow. He walked back to join the thinning crowd out front of the hall.
She shouldn’t have come into town. She’d go home as soon as the crowd cleared.
But she didn’t want to go home — she wanted to see the rest of the movie.
The town hall lights dimmed, and Jenny ran — and almost collided with Dora and Reggie Murphy, who had been standing in the shadows of a clump of bushes. There was enough light for her to recognise Dora, who must have recognised her, though she pretended she didn’t. They’d been best friends. For the longest time, they’d been best friends.
The music was playing when she entered the hall and took her place against the back wall.
She could see the Hoopers, sitting side by side four rows from the back, Lorna in the aisle seat beside Margaret, Sissy beside her, tall Jim the other bookend.
Then the last light went out and the movie started and Jenny forgot about the Hoopers, forgot about Dora Palmer. That movie got better and better.
And right when Scarlett had just shot a thief who deserved shooting, Bobby bastard Vevers came in to stand beside her.
She moved along the wall. He moved with her.
She had to go.
She’d probably be the only person in the world who had ever walked out of Gone with the Wind. And she was not walking out. Hitler could drop a ton of bombs on Woody Creek tonight and he wouldn’t blast her out of this hall — and slinking, greasy Bobby Vevers wouldn’t drive her out of it either.
‘Get the hell away from me,’ she hissed.
A hiss is loud in a crowded hall. Eyes turned to identify the hisser, and who cared? Who cared who saw her? She walked fast down the aisle to the front row, down to the kids’ hard seats.
‘I don’t know how she dares to show her face in town,’ Sissy whispered loudly.
‘If I had a face like yours, I wouldn’t,’ Jenny tossed over her shoulder.
Sniggers, a murmur of tut-tuts, a giggle or two, but Jenny squeezed in between two kids and returned her attention to the best movie ever made.
POKER FOR PENNIES
The kids pushed out through the side exit, Jenny behind them. Dozens of adults were streaming out through the front door. She cut across the grass to Cemetery Road, then across the road to the post office, walked fast past Norman’s house and down through the railway yards.
And that mongrel was leaning against the fence waiting for her.
‘Are you scared of me, or something, Jen? I won’t hurt you.’
‘Stop following me!’
‘I was here first. You’re following me.’
She wheeled around and ran back to Norman’s side gate. It squealed open, squealed as it closed. She waited behind it, watching him through the hand-hole where the gate latched. The Vevers’ house was behind the park; she hoped he’d go home. He didn’t. He walked over to the currajong tree, leaned against it and lit a cigarette.
She’d have to go the other way, up past Charlie’s and over his crossing. She ran down the eastern side of Norman’s house, past his junk room window, knowing she was closer to him than she’d been in a year, and knowing too that if she knocked on his door and told him Bobby Vevers was hanging around out there ready to rape her, he’d probably think she’d asked for it. She wasn’t asking Norman for anything, not tonight, not for as long as she lived. Anyway, he probably wasn’t in the junk room; he was probably in Amber’s bed, doing what he’d read about in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
And she couldn’t get out the front gate. Jim and Sissy were out there. She stood and watched him kiss her — or her kiss him — and it turned her stomach, turned her footsteps back the way they’d come.
She hated her life. Hated it. Hated Sissy for having everything. Hated Vern Hooper for spending half his life in Gertrude’s kitchen. Hated Dora. Hated everyone.
Her eye to the latch hole, she searched for Bobby Vevers. He’d disappeared from the currajong tree. He’d probably gone on ahead, would be waiting for her down near Macdonald’s mill. She looked towards Maisy’s house. Maisy would drive her home.
She’d be making supper for her daughters.
Mr Foster?
No lights showing in his house.
I’m signing those kids away tomorrow, she thought. I’m getting out of this town. I have to. She still had one of Mr Quinn’s five-pound notes and her talent quest money. I’ll go to Melbourne. I’m old enough to train as a nurse. The army needs nurses. I’m signing those kids away tomorrow.
A family group had taken the short cut through the railway yard. She opened that squealing gate, closed it as gently as she could, and tailed the family over the lines and down past the hotel. They went left and, her protection gone, she ran. Past the Hoopers’ house, past King’s corner where the street lighting stopped and the dark was darker because there had been light.
She wasn’t afraid of the dark, just scared stiff of Bobby Vevers coming out of the dark. She glanced over her shoulder, glanced down side lanes.
There were dark buildings at Macdonald’s mill. Too many buildings. Anyone could be hiding in there. Knew he’d come slinking out from behind the piled logs, the stacked timber. Knew he was down there somewhere.
She should have known what would happen. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
And Dora Palmer . . . Dora Palmer now working on the telephone exchange, and smooching with Reggie Murphy in the bushes.
I hate my life. Bastards. Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards. How many times can you mentally repeat a word before your tongue feels the need to spit it out? She was near the McPhersons’ gate when she glanced back and saw him coming.
‘Bastard,’ she hissed and ran to their gate, knowing she dared go no further, knowing that if he caught up to her in the bush she could scream ‘Bastard’ and no one would hear her.
Heart racing, she watched the road, or the walker, aware that she’d have to knock on the McPhersons’ door. Miss Rose, the infant schoolmistress, had married John McPherson. They’d let her in, even if they did think she was the town slut — except there were no lights showing in their house. They would have been at the town hall; they wouldn’t have missed that movie.
But whoever was coming down the middle of the road was walking too tall to be Bobby Vevers. She squinted at the shape, at the walk — and recognised those long swinging strides.
With a moan of relief, she walked back to the road. ‘You just scared the living daylights out of me, you drongo.’
‘Sorry,’ he said.
No chance to say more. John McPherson’s old brown kelpie didn’t approve of people messing around near his master’s gate. He came under the gate snarling, and Jim Hooper, never fond of dogs, took off towards the forest road.
‘He’ll be laying in wait for you on your way back,’ Jenny said, following him to the trees.
‘He bit one of the Dobson kids a while back.’
The dog, having hunted them, lost interest.
‘If he bit anyone, his teeth would fall out,’ Jenny assured him. ‘He’s as old as me. What are you doing down here in the middle of the night?’
‘You used to be scared of walking through the bush.’
‘I used to be scared of a lot of things.’
‘It’s good sense sometimes to have a bit of fear, Jen.’
‘Th
en you haven’t got much sense, have you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I spent fourteen years living with your fiancée. If I were you, I’d be scared stiff of spending the next fifty with her,’ she said and walked on, expecting him to turn back.
He didn’t.
Shoes scuffing through the dust, they’d walked a hundred yards in silence before he spoke. ‘I’ve been thinking about joining up.’
‘Getting shot would be faster and a lot less painful.’
‘You’ve got a mouth on you these days, Jen.’
‘I haven’t got much else, have I? I can’t even go to a movie without some mongrel trying to pick me up.’
‘I . . . you don’t . . . I’m not.’ He stopped walking. She continued on for a yard or two.
‘I didn’t mean you, you drongo.’
‘Vevers?’ he said. ‘We saw him.’
‘That’s why you’re down here! You’re playing Sir Galahad.’
He didn’t deny it. ‘What did you think of it, anyway?’ he said.
‘Brilliant.’
‘The book is better,’ he said.
‘You’ve read it?’
‘I bought it. Borrow it, if you like.’
‘Really?’
‘Margaret says she’s going to read it but she’ll take six months.’
They spoke of the book, of the movie, until they reached the boundary gate. She was on the other side of it before she asked him when he was getting married.
‘We’ll wait until the house is done up now. They’ve started on it.’
‘Granny says it’s a mansion.’
‘It’s been let go. A house needs people living in it.’
‘You’ll fix that — if the dog doesn’t eat you on the way home.’ She backed away from him. ‘Thanks, Sir Galahad,’ she said, then ran down the track.
And that was that. She’d seen Gone with the Wind and now she was home, and she was still going to sign those kids away tomorrow and go to Melbourne and train to be a nurse.
Georgie changed her mind on Sunday afternoon. She’d been pulling herself up to her feet for weeks. On Sunday she took off running, and she wasn’t even ten months old.
Jenny was bathing the kids on Tuesday evening when Vern’s green Ford drove into the yard, Jim behind the wheel. He had a big old cane pram roped onto the drop-down trunk lid.
‘It’s been hanging around the shed rotting for years, Mrs Foote,’ he said. ‘I thought Jen might get some use out of it. It needs a good scrub but it’s got a decent set of wheels on it.’
‘It’s a fine pram,’ Gertrude said.
Jenny waited until he’d left before she came out to look at the pram. Inside it was the book. She pounced on it and started reading while Gertrude worried about finding space for the overly large cane relic Jim Hooper had once ridden in.
They got rid of the cobwebs the following morning, scrubbed the dusty cane white. They moved a few things around in Gertrude’s bedroom, stacked boxes on trunks, newspapers on boxes, and the pram came inside to live.
On Sunday night, the kids asleep, Jenny sat close to the lamp finishing the last pages of Gone with the Wind. Gertrude was preparing to go over to Elsie’s to bathe and wash her hair when they heard a car coming.
‘Who wants me at this time of night?’ Gertrude grumbled, watching the car lights bouncing into her yard.
‘Sorry to disturb you so late, Mrs Foote. I was . . . was wondering if Jen had finished the book yet.’
‘Last pages,’ Jenny yelled.
Gertrude invited him in, then she went out with her towel and her nightclothes.
Her finger marking her place, Jenny looked up at him. ‘I’ve got three pages to go. You’d better sit down if you want to wait for it.’
Minutes later, she closed the book. ‘It’s brilliant, but they should have cut out those last words — the After all, tomorrow is another day bit. Everything has been said. That’s excess. It sort of . . . sort of steals the power of it a bit.’
They’d been friends since she was four years old. She’d been older than her years, he’d been younger. They’d sat for hours on the station platform, on verandahs, discussing the world as seen through the eyes of kids, discussing books, discussing wireless valves. He’d never seemed older, had never been one of Bobby Vevers’s pack — never been part of any pack.
He took the book but didn’t rise to leave. She fetched two mugs of water from the Coolgardie. He emptied the mug, then he started talking.
Like a bottle of home-brewed ginger beer when the cork is popped, he spilled words. He told her about his military training, about the mushrooms growing in the corner of the old dining room, of rotted floorboards, of the bathroom.
‘You should have seen it before they gutted it, Jen. I’m keeping the tiles. And there’s this big old fireplace in one of the rooms that would look at home in a castle; you could burn four-foot logs in it. Hogan isn’t touching that room. I’ll do it my own way when I’m ready.’
‘Why did you let them gut your bathroom?’
‘No floor,’ he said. ‘Half the tiles were off. I spent most of today cleaning them. You wouldn’t believe them. They’re all the same but side by side they’re all different. They must have been hand painted.’
‘I bet you’re putting in an indoor lav.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Fourteen years’ hard labour,’ she said.
Mozzies buzzing, the kids breathing in harmony, night birds calling. Big hands playing with the book, hands identical to Vern’s. He had Vern’s jaw, maybe his mouth. Hard to tell with those teeth.
‘We’re putting in a septic system. Not in my bathroom though.’
‘Told you so.’
He reached for a packet of cigarettes, lit one. She found him a saucer for an ashtray, watched him draw on the cigarette and wished he’d offered her one.
‘I’ve been thinking a bit about what you said.’
‘I say a lot of things.’
‘The fifty years . . .’
She laughed, and she shouldn’t have laughed. She never laughed. Had nothing to laugh about. But she laughed until she started coughing.
‘It’s not that funny,’ he said.
‘It is. What made you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Decide to marry her, you drongo?’
‘I’m not saying anything against her, Jen.’
‘You are so. You said you were thinking about fifty years of her.’ And she laughed again.
‘I didn’t mean it like that. She’s all right. We get on all right.’
‘People get on all right with the McPhersons’ dog as long as they walk on the far side of the road.’
‘He doesn’t like me.’
‘He knows he can bluff you.’
So strange to sit in this kitchen, to see Jim sitting in this kitchen. So strange to be treated like she was Jenny. Strange, too, to laugh at this table. Almost bliss. It was like he’d given her leave to be normal, to talk about normal things.
Then Gertrude returned, in her dressing gown, hair wrapped in a towel, and it was over.
Jim picked up his book and said goodnight.
But it wasn’t over. He came down with How Green is My Valley and The Grapes of Wrath the following Sunday night. Harry was there, checking the level of Gertrude’s water tank. He had the water carrier coming in the next day to fill his tanks so he might as well fill hers, he said. Jenny and Joey had been playing poker for matches. The books ended the game, but one way or another, Jim sat down, and all five ended up playing poker for matches while Gertrude questioned Jim about Monk’s house, and Jim questioned her about the wallpaper hanging in Monk’s house when she’d known it in its heyday.
They spoke of the wedding, now planned for May, and about Norman. They drank tea and Jenny stole a drag of Joey’s cigarette and she gambled wildly, never glancing at the clock until it struck midnight.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Foote,’ Jim said, rising
too fast, knocking his chair over in his haste to be gone. ‘I’m so sorry to keep you all up so late.’
‘We enjoyed the game,’ Gertrude said.
And when he was gone and the door closed, while the matches were being settled back into their boxes, Gertrude looked at Jenny.
‘What’s going on with that boy? I doubt he’s been inside this house more than half a dozen times in his life.’
‘He’s going to be your grandson-in-law. He’s getting to know you.’
The following Sunday he drove down armed with a bagful of pennies and a new deck of playing cards. Jenny called out to Harry and Joey and the game was on again, Jim’s pennies shared into five equal piles.
It became a game of high finance, IOUs written by those who borrowed pennies to stay in the game. It became a loud game. They disturbed the kids. And when the old clock told them they should all be in bed, the pennies were scooped into a jam jar with the IOUs, and the jar placed beside the bottle of medicinal brandy on top of the dresser, Jim’s cards placed in the dresser drawer.
‘See you next Sunday,’ he said.
There was no harm in it, and it was good for all three of those boys. They were of an age. Gertrude knew she ought to mention Jim’s visits to Vern. She almost told him when he drove down on the Tuesday following their third poker night — until he referred to Joey as ‘young Darkie’. That’s what they called him in town, Darkie Hall. She kept her mouth shut. He wouldn’t want to know how well those three boys got along.
THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER
Vic Robertson ruined their game on the second Sunday in February. He arrived while Jenny was washing up the dinner dishes. His wife was getting ready to pop her eleventh, he said.
‘An inconvenient time for her to choose,’ Vic said. ‘I hate to take you out at night, Mrs Foote.’
Gertrude smiled. ‘Babies don’t have a lot of regard for clocks.’
Ten minutes later, they rode into the gloom, Vic on his bike, carrying the basket, Gertrude on horseback, clip-clopping at his side.
Kids are creatures of habit. Jenny’s two sat on the table while she washed hands, faces and feet, while she clad them in matching nightgowns. They shared a big old iron cot down the bottom end of the kitchen. It was barely wide enough for two. She tried topping and tailing them, but the kids considered it a game, long aware that their heads belonged on the same pillow.