Thorn on the Rose

by Joy Dettman

  Dear Jen,

  Please find enclosed a well-travelled fiver. I’ve got it on paper now and two witnesses to prove you said you’d marry me. Lorna writes a fiery letter.

  It looks as if we might be going south. There’s talk around that they’re moving us. If it’s true, I should get some leave . . .

  Dear Jim,

  Enclosed, one photograph, now leave me alone.

  Jenny

  Dear Jen,

  He’s beautiful. I know I should write handsome, but he’s beautiful. He looks like you. You told me you loved me on that last night, and until my dying day I won’t understand why you kept him from me. You must have known I’d be home like a shot if you’d told me he was on the way. I was in Victoria for months after I left home. I would have gone AWOL . . .

  Dear Jim,

  Stop writing to me. I’ve got three kids. Would you like a photo of all three? I’ve got a good one.

  Jenny

  Dear Jen,

  If you ’d stop wasting blank paper and stamps, and write to me, I might know what you were thinking — or are they rationing ink down there now . . .

  Dear Jim,

  Herewith, the last of Granny’s watered down ink, just so you’ll know exactly what I’m thinking.

  I received a letter two days ago from your father’s solicitor, telling me a court date would be fixed for some hearing before a judge which will prove me an unfit mother. Granny says she’s got ten accidental grandchildren. I’m an accidental mother so of course I’m unfit. Then, this morning, two strangers turned up at Elsie’s door wanting to see her kids’ living conditions, and when they’d finished with her they came over here and stuck their noses into Granny’s house.

  What’s going on between me and your father has got nothing to do with Elsie. She’s a quarter black and she’s scared stiff. Two of her kids belong to her sister and even Granny says that the authorities are going to try to take them away from her.

  I’m more scared than Elsie, and I hate your father for what he’s doing. He knows that we’ve got warm beds, and that we eat better food than half the people in town, but all he cares about is getting Jimmy any way he can.

  You also asked me why I didn’t tell you I was having Jimmy. Hating your father and sisters is why, and having two other kids is why.

  If I could go back and undo every single thing that has happened to me since the talent quest, I’d go back and undo the lot. I’d be at a Melbourne school now, learning to be something, or I would be training to be an army nurse like Gloria Bull. One day, if you hadn’t married Sissy, we might have even got together, got married and lived happily ever after. But I can’t undo one single thing that happened to me, and if you want to know the truth, I wouldn’t even want to undo Jimmy and Georgie.

  Right now, right at this moment, it would be so easy for me to say, yes, I’ll marry you, even if it was just to get out of this mess, except I know that when the war is over, you’ll come home and start seeing me as your family see me, as dirt beneath your feet. I’ve already lived for most of my life with people who hated the sight of me. Even at the hospital, a few days after Jimmy was born, my mother tried to stab me with a blunt knife, and if you think for ten seconds that I’m going to spend the rest of my life living with people who hate the sight of me, then you’re wrong.

  If you want to do one single thing for me and Jimmy, then get your father and Lorna off my back or I’m going to lose him, and Georgie and just for good measure they’ll probably take Lenny and Joany away from Elsie, too.

  Jenny

  Dear Jen,

  I sent a telegram to the solicitor demanding he ignore Pops’ instructions. I’ve written to him, too, and told him that we’re engaged, and getting married as soon as I get back down south. He was Mum’s solicitor before he was Pops’, and he’s holding a lot of her money in trust for me. He’ll do what I ask.

  You, dirt beneath my feet? Moon dust maybe, sprinkled down from a moon far too high above my head for me to ever reach. Think back for a minute, Jen. While you were winning talent quests, having your photograph in newspapers, I was the town drongo, tagging around behind Margaret and Sissy and pleased to have someone to tag around behind. I wouldn’t wish on anyone what happened to you, but it put the moon within my reach.

  I’ve been giving a bit of thought to how I might have felt about that photograph of your other kids, and all I can say with any honesty is that they are half you, they’re Jimmy’s half-sisters, and they’d probably grow on me — and even if they didn’t, I promise I’d always do the right thing by them. There’s one sure way to put a stop to Pops’ plans, so stop putting up your barbed-wire fences, and say you’ll marry me.

  You told me that you’d loved me since you were four years old and since I taught you the right way to eat an ice-cream. Just try for a second to imagine what that must have been like for me, Jimmy Hooper, town drongo, hearing that, and being able to write that on paper today. It makes me a bigger and better man . . .

  Rainy days through August, tank overflowing into the yard and turning it to mud, then Joey turned eighteen. The army didn’t mind his winter suntan. They took him. He was missed. And the rain kept pouring down.

  Wet napkins draped all over the shed, the kitchen.

  ‘I’m marrying him, Granny.’

  ‘Your mother said those words to me and regretted them twelve months later.’

  ‘Did she ever love him?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Why does she hate me?’

  ‘She’s got her father’s head and something very wrong going on inside it.’

  ‘She loved Sissy.’

  ‘Sissy was her . . .’ Gertrude started, then shook her head and completed packing a row of eggs into a small carton. ‘She was her firstborn. She wanted to be a mother.’ She spread sheets of newspaper over the eggs and began a second layer. ‘Had those two little boys lived, things might have been very different. She got over the loss of Clarence, but never the second boy. Then the little girl, Leonora April, was born. We thought she’d live. She was born strong.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Who knows, darlin’. We got her down to the hospital but the doctors didn’t know what was going on. A city doctor said it could have been caused by some blood incompatibility between Amber and your father.’

  ‘Two babies died when I was at the hospital. The sisters said they’d stopped breathing in the night.’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘If it was Norman’s and her blood at fault, why did I live?’

  ‘You were made of stronger stuff.’

  ‘She must have had one a year. How much space was there between Clarence and Simon?’

  ‘I can’t recall,’ Gertrude lied.

  ‘Between Simon and me then?’

  Gertrude shook her head and spread more newspaper. Charlie White’s son-in-law would be knocking on her door this morning, wanting those eggs.

  ‘Does she hate me because I look like Itchy-foot?’

  ‘I doubt anyone knows how her mind works. I gave up trying to work it out years ago,’ Gertrude said.

  She hadn’t laid eyes on Amber since she’d come home from the Melbourne hospital. She hadn’t expected her to come home, but according to Maisy she was well. Sissy had been home for a month or two. Gertrude hadn’t seen her either.

  Alfred Timms arrived for the eggs and only one arm to carry them with. Gertrude carried the carton out to his car, and as he drove away she saw a second visitor at the boundary gate, a bike rider.

  ‘Telegram for Miss Jennifer Morrison,’ he said.

  ‘Burn it,’ Jenny said. ‘It will be Vern’s court date.’

  Gertrude opened it.

  WILL BE IN SYDNEY SEPT 19 to 26 STOP HAVE TO SEE JIMMY STOP WILL NEED TO BOOK RETURN MELB SYDNEY IMMEDIATE STOP LETTER FOLLOWING LOVE JIM

  ‘What is that boy thinking of? Expecting you to go traipsing halfway across the country with a nine-month-old baby,’ Gertrude said.
/>   ‘It’s only five hundred miles from Melbourne.’ ‘If he wants to see Jimmy he can come home and see him — and see his father.’

  *

  Three days later, Jim’s letter arrived, a ten pound note inside it.

  Dear Jen,

  It’s official. We’re going over to have a go at the Japs and we’ll get a week’s leave before we go. I know I’m expecting a lot of you, but you always said you wanted to see Sydney. You’d have to get the train to Melbourne, stay somewhere for the night then get the Sydney train. If you can’t, I’ll try to get home — which will mean spending most of my leave travelling and the rest of it arguing with Pops. I want to spend it with you and Jimmy . . .

  ‘Jimmy deserves to have a father,’ Jenny said.

  ‘You might have thought of that sooner rather than later, my girl.’

  ‘You don’t wish we didn’t have him.’

  Gertrude had no reply for that. He was her beautiful boy. Everything he did pleased her. A new tooth was a miracle. When he pulled himself up on the cane couch to stand on sturdy legs, the world stopped to applaud. His gabbled ‘Nan-na’ delighted her.

  A second letter arrived, hot on the heels of the last.

  Dear Jen,

  Nobby just heard that his sister has got him and his wife a room at a boarding house for the week we’ll be in Sydney. He said to tell you that you and Jimmy can stay with his wife and we’ll bunk down where we can . . .

  ‘I’d be staying with his mate’s wife, Granny.’

  ‘He’s not taking you up there to share a room with his mate’s wife, and his mate isn’t taking his wife up there to share with you. Use your God-given brains, Jennifer. Those boys have been living for months in camps with a lot of sweaty men. They probably haven’t seen a white woman since they’ve been up there. You’re not a fool so stop talking like one.’

  ‘Would you at least talk to Norman and see if I can get a return ticket?’

  ‘No, I won’t. Now that’s enough about it.’

  It wasn’t. Jim wanted to see Jimmy and she wanted it too. She wanted to get away from Vern, wanted to see Sydney — and wanted to see Jim. She knew she shouldn’t, but you can’t help what you want.

  Maisy asked Norman to book the ticket. She paid for it, offered to take Margot into town for a week.

  ‘I know you’re against it, Mrs Foote,’ Maisy said. ‘But she’s eighteen years old. She needs to see something other than kids. I had two kids when I was her age and by God, if someone had offered me a week’s holiday, you wouldn’t have seen my heels for dust.’

  ‘If she comes home pregnant, Maisy, I’ll drop her on your doorstep and walk away,’ Gertrude said.

  ILL-EQUIPPED

  Two days of travelling with a crawling baby on a crowded train. Two days of changing napkins on railway benches, train seats, lavatory floors, of hauling her case, Jimmy and a string bag full of wet napkins, and when she got there, Jim wasn’t waiting.

  Anyone can be late — ten minutes, even half an hour late. She’d been searching the crowd now for over an hour. He’d changed his mind, or his father had changed it for him. He’d probably sent another telegram after she’d left.

  There were uniforms everywhere; khaki, navy, white. Everyone was in uniform; station people, Salvos, Red Cross. Even the women who weren’t wearing uniforms looked as if they were. And there she stood in her best blue and green floral frock and black cardigan, looking like a bunch of week-old wilting flowers but not smelling as sweet. She mightn’t be able to find Jim in this crowd but he’d find her. Every napkin she’d packed for Jimmy was now stuffed into her string bag, and smelling worse by the hour. And he was wet again and not a thing she could do about it except soak it up with her hip.

  Jim had said in his last telegram to wait at the station, that he’d find her, but anything could have happened. The Japs could have landed up the top of Australia for all she knew about the last two days.

  An elderly woman and her husband, waiting an hour for their daughter-in-law, shared their bench seat with her, bought her a cup of tea and a slice of station cake, but then their daughter-in-law found them and now she waited alone, with their newspaper, their half a bottle of flat lemonade and a fractious and sopping wet Jimmy. He needed a dry napkin and his nap.

  She poured lemonade into his bottle, placed her handbag and cardigan down for a pillow and lay him down on the bench. He didn’t argue about the lemonade or the bed.

  The newspaper, the Melbourne Sun, was three days old, though its news wasn’t old to Jenny. She hadn’t seen a paper since she’d boarded the train in Woody Creek. Battle at desert oasis, German campaign stalled at Leningrad — all too distant to be real, though maybe not so distant in this place. The evidence of war was everywhere, and not only the uniforms. There were war posters, urging women to join the Land Army. Keep the farms going while the men are fighting. There was a poster of a nurse playing Florence Nightingale.

  His bottle empty, Jimmy rolled onto his stomach to sleep and she sat turning pages, seeking news of war at the top of Australia where Jim had been stationed. She read of well-equipped US forces fighting in the Solomons, which were somewhere up near New Guinea. They said there had been heavy fighting up there. How far was Sydney from New Guinea? A while back, Jap submarines had come into Sydney Harbour and been sunk. If they’d done it once, they could do it again — and blow up the bridge before she’d walked across it.

  She stood again, scanning the crowd for Jim’s head. He hadn’t come. Sat back down. She was stuck up here with a baby and a return ticket for next Saturday. She’d been crazy to do it. And why had she done it?

  The arguments she’d been putting forward for weeks no longer seemed valid. She shouldn’t have come. She should have known that every plan she ever made turned out bad, should have known that the only place in the whole world where she was safe was in a two and a half room hut with Granny . . . except it wasn’t so safe now, not with Vern Hooper hounding her. That’s why she’d come. And Jim, who kept saying he’d marry her, and why shouldn’t she marry him?

  Some people were born to have everything. Others were born to have nothing — which didn’t stop those others from wanting everything. Which was why there were wars, she thought, which was why cities were bombed, boats were sunk, boys were shot, all because of someone wanting more than he had and someone else determined to stop him from getting it.

  How long am I supposed to wait here? she wondered. Will I be able to get a seat home? Her ticket was paid for. Surely they’d change it.

  Where? This place was too big, too crowded.

  She turned a page, read an advertisement for a corset that would make a fat woman slim, read of headache powders — and wanted ten — read of Clement’s Nerve and Brain Tonic, guaranteed by Mrs Rosenfield, who had bought a bottle of the tonic and after only a week felt so much better.I cured my husband after an accident and gave it to my little boy who had the measles.

  Wish I had a bottle, Jenny thought. Wish I’d listened to Granny.

  She had Jim’s last telegram in her handbag, now Jimmy’s pillow. She couldn’t get at it without disturbing him. And she’d already checked it. She was at the right station.

  Stood again, praying he was there. He was tall enough to be seen above the crowd. No sign of him. He hadn’t come. She’d have to spend two more days on trains and without napkins. Or buy some from somewhere before she left. Where? Where was anything in this place?

  I should have brought the pram. I could have brought it up in the goods van.

  The immensity of the station scared her, the strange faces scared her. She wanted Jim’s familiar face to come walking through that crowd.

  Closed her eyes and breathed, breathed in strangers, breathed in Sydney. The smell of trains, the smell of cigarette smoke, the smell of Jimmy’s wet napkin. She breathed, knowing that she had to stay calm. There was always the Salvos. That’s what Laurie used to say. She had to stay calm, wait, and remember there was always the Salvos.

/>   Laurie could have been up here somewhere or still in jail. They might have let him out to join the army. She smiled at the thought of him shooting Japs with his water pistol — his leaking water pistol.

  September ‘39 when she’d gone home. Three years ago. The papers had said he’d been sentenced to three years. She’d followed that story. They’d used the same photograph of him each time. She saw the photograph face now when she thought about him, not the flesh and blood face.

  She flipped newspaper pages, flipped pages until she came to what was on at the theatres. War or not, they were still showing films, people were still dancing.

  She’d packed the red dress Laurie had bought for her; it was the only thing she owned that looked expensive, looked city — it was the only thing she owned she could wear with her red sandals. She hadn’t had them on her feet since that day at the station.

  Never would she forget the expression on Norman’s face that day. She hadn’t dressed for him. She’d dressed for Amber, sure she’d be there waiting.

  Red didn’t seem to be in fashion in Sydney. Dark brown was in fashion, navy, black — and huge shoulder pads. Women, now doing the work of men, were trying to look like men.

  She frowned at one slim woman wearing a dark brown frock, with shoulder pads that made her look like a champion wood cutter. She looked at the woman’s shoes and knew that red sandals were out of fashion.

  Her gaze fixed on passing shoes, she saw Jim’s oversized army boots before she saw him.

  ‘You’re hiding from me,’ he said.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said, springing to her feet, spilling her newspaper. ‘I thought you’d changed your mind.’

  ‘We got held up at Newcastle.’

  Like strangers, hardly daring to look each other in the eye, they looked at the one thing they had in common, on his stomach, wet bum up, and sound asleep.

  ‘God almighty,’ Jim said.

  ‘He thinks he is.’

  ‘God almighty.’ Standing, hands not daring to touch, looking at her, then back to the tiny boy, his cheek on the snakeskin handbag. ‘He’s fair like you.’