by Joy Dettman
‘I won’t be a moment, Andy.’
Jenny eyed the man in the doorway, then turned again to Wilfred. ‘You’ll have to report that your car was stolen, won’t you?’
‘Given my personal situation, the police will have little sympathy.’ A year ago she may not have understood. This morning she understood. Men who lived with other men were jailed for it. ‘My concern is for you. They . . . they took advantage . . .’
They’d taken every advantage. They’d used her like she was a dog on heat. Her hand shook as she drew again on that cigarette, needing that smoke this morning.
‘They took my earring too,’ she said, then turned to Jimmy, who was still sucking the peppermint. ‘Spit it out if it’s too hot, darlin’,’ she said. He wouldn’t spit it out. She turned the stroller around. ‘I’m relieved that you found my bag.’
‘Forgive me for putting you in danger,’ he said.
That had been Norman’s trick, always wanting someone to give him absolution. She’d given it too, time and time again. No pain in giving it one last time.
‘It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t mine either. I hope you get your car back.’
Wilfred’s car was found parked down near the docks. The front fender was dented, one of the headlights had been broken, but it was otherwise intact. While he was cleaning it, he found Jenny’s missing earring jammed down behind the rear seat, and that evening he drove to the boarding house to return it.
It was gold, he said, and quite old, no doubt of monetary value. She didn’t care about its monetary value; to Jenny it was beyond price. She put it back in its box in her drawer. She’d tossed the taffeta dress into Myrtle’s incinerator and later regretted the impulse. It was gone now, turned to ash like Sissy’s daffodil dress. She bought a new suspender belt, new stockings, new pants, needing to replace what they’d taken, to get back to where she’d been. She couldn’t get all the way back. Jim was dead. She knew it now. Those bastards had killed the flight of butterflies. Couldn’t let them kill all of it. Wouldn’t. That night she removed the backing cardboard from the photograph of her, Jim and Jimmy, and she inserted her talent quest envelope and money into the frame. It belonged with him. That part of her would always belong to him.
She went to work. Her shoulder was painful but its pain became her focus. She could massage it, even complain about it. She didn’t tell her Yank story in the lunch room. She listened to Norma and Barbara’s stories, and massaged the ache. It was getting better. She told herself that when that ache went away, she’d be fine.
On 17 January 1944, the rationing of meat began, which was of no concern to Jenny. She never bought meat, rarely fried sausages. On that same day, Brenda, a pretty kid of sixteen who worked as a presser at the factory, said she was dead meat, said her parents would throw her out, said she was going to throw herself off the bridge, said she’d sat for an hour in a scalding bath then taken a whole packet of laxettes and it hadn’t shifted it.
Jenny massaged her shoulder, listening while a few offered advice.
‘My aunty swears by a dose of quinine,’ Selma said.
‘Where the hell do you get quinine unless you’ve got malaria, and who is going up to New Guinea to get it now?’ Barbara said.
‘Remember Lois Matthews? She had to get married then lost it a week later.’
‘You could lose it, Bren.’
‘Where’s your boyfriend?’
‘He’s only seventeen, and Dad hates the sight of him.’
‘How far along are you?’
‘I’ve missed twice. Mum is going to murder me.’
‘That should get rid of it,’ Barbara said.
‘Shut up, Barbara!’
‘There’s an old doctor I know who’ll do it for enough money,’ Norma said.
‘How much is enough?’ Brenda said.
‘Ten quid.’
‘Ten quid!’
‘He’s a real doctor. He does all of the society dames — and their daughters . . .’
‘Where am I going to get ten quid from?’
‘Tell your boyfriend he has to pay.’
‘He’s only an apprentice, and he has to give most of his pay to his mother.’
It was like a radio serial, the ongoing drama of Brenda, who on payday managed, with her boyfriend’s help, to raise five pounds. Barbara, the only child of elderly parents who didn’t pay a penny in board, gave her two pound. Norma put in ten bob. Jenny put in a pound note and seven and six in change. All Lila could manage was five bob. The rest was raised in sixpences, in two-bob coins.
Norma made the appointment for Mrs Molly Mullins, on a Tuesday. She delivered Brenda to the doctor’s surgery and took her home when it was done. Norma, the hay-band blonde, her roots as dark as Lila’s at times, may have been as tough as old boots, but she had a good heart.
By Thursday, Brenda was back at work, the weight of the world gone from her shoulders and Norma giving her advice on how not to get caught again.
In February, Jenny returned to the club. She stayed away from that dark lane. Wilfred drove his car to the corner to pick her up, and as they drove through the night streets she gripped a four-inch hat pin in her hand. She’d go for their eyes with it, gouge out their eyes, push the four inches of that pin into their brains. Fear of Sydney was in her now, and something more than fear. Hatred of every Yank was in her, of every baby-faced boy with an accent, every thick-necked, battle-wearied mongrel.
But she took their tips. Once money was in the bank it became a clean number. She sang through February and March, and when April began she told Wilfred she was going home.
‘Forgive me,’ he said.
Jenny sighed, fed up to the back teeth with forgiveness. Sighed again and sought a reply.
‘You let me think I was a famous singer for a while, Mr Whiteford, and I loved every minute of it.’
Out of the car, she looked down the street, dark and unknown tonight. Everything had changed. Even Myrtle’s safe street had changed. She closed the car door and walked up the drive. She didn’t even wave her hand to him, didn’t want to see him or that car again. Every time she sat in it, she smelled them, smelled them on her for hours afterwards. Her shoulder was better but she was far from fine.
After next week she’d be fine, after their countrymen had paid for Norma’s doctor friend. That would be her revenge, knowing that every pound note she placed into the abortionist’s hand would come from the Yanks. They’d murdered her life so let them pay the cost of murdering what they had left inside her.
Norma made the appointment for Mrs Molly Mullins, on a Tuesday, and it was like a huge signpost stuck in the middle of a road. TUESDAY. She had to get around it, get to the other side of it, that’s all. Had to get to Wednesday, then it would be over.
Jenny had tried to keep it a secret, had asked Lila to get the doctor’s address from Norma, had said she had a friend who was in trouble. But Norma wouldn’t give it up. She’d said she had to make the appointment herself. Barbara, factory clown, Norma’s bosom buddy, knew about the Tuesday appointment. She’d had one herself. All three girls would deliver Jenny there and, when it was done, they’d take her home to Lila’s boarding house.
Party time, babe.
They rode a train, then took a tram, walked half a block north from the tram stop — not too far to walk back when it was done, if Jenny was still walking. She could barely walk up there. Shaking, scared of bleeding to death, and she couldn’t get Granny out of her mind.
But Brenda was at work this morning. She’d lived through it. And Barbara had been here a week before her twenty-first birthday party.
‘It’s no different to going to the dentist. You just open your legs instead of your mouth,’ she said.
‘Are you two his agents?’ Lila said.
Norma and Barbara laughed. Just four girls walking in the sunshine, walking to a neat little house joined to other neat little houses set a few feet back from the street, an inner city street, to a gate with a brass plaque fix
ed to it. Dr Gerald Archibald.
Jenny hung back reading that plaque while Norma and Barbara went to the door to rattle the knocker.
He opened it.
And Jenny stepped back, stepped back again. She knew him. His hair was shorter, but not short. His white beard had been trimmed to a neat point. He was wearing a striped suit and dark-rimmed glasses. But it was him. Long black overcoat and beard or not, she knew she was looking at old Noah. She’d studied him too often, had spoken to him. He’d given her the earrings and pendant.
She ran.
Lila, who had been holding the gate open, let it slam and took off after her. Didn’t catch her until Jenny was around the corner, leaning against a paling fence and lighting a cigarette.
Norma and Barbara found them there. ‘What do you think you’re doing, you raving idiot?’ Norma said.
‘She knows him,’ Lila said.
‘What’s that matter?’
‘He knows me!’
‘What are you going to do then?’ Norma said, helping herself to one of Jenny’s cigarettes.
‘Find another one,’ Lila said.
‘I don’t know another one, you pair of raving idiots.’
‘They don’t grow on trees, girl,’ Barbara quipped, in a fair imitation of Mrs Crump.
‘I’ll go to the Salvos,’ Jenny said.
‘They won’t do it,’ Barbara said.
‘Shut up, Barbara,’ Norma said. ‘What have you got against him?’
‘He knows where I come from. He knows the people I know.’
‘No one’s ever heard of Woody Creek, and he’s been up here for almost two years that I know about. Come back and get it over and done with,’ Norma said.
But Jenny was walking.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Work.’
‘Old Crumpet won’t keep you on. She gave Trina the boot as soon as she found out she’d got caught.’
‘Then don’t tell her.’
‘She’ll boot you out when you start showing.’
‘Then I won’t show.’
They went to work and told a collective lie. They’d spent the night in Newcastle, had gone up there because Lila’s twin sons were in hospital, and they’d missed the early train back. Norma worked the big buttonholing machine, Jenny worked one of the big seamers, Barbara and Lila were on the inspection table.
‘You’re not indispensable,’ the forewoman said.
In May Jenny bought a corset, and material to make two straight skirts with elastic waistbands. Sydney was winding down to winter. The black cardigan Maisy had given her was long and bulky. It covered her. She knitted a long bulky sweater.
In June, the Allies went in for the kill.
‘Four thousand ships, several thousand smaller craft and eleven thousand first-line aircraft launched an attack on Hitler’s Europe today . . .‘
It was on Myrtle’s wireless, on the factory wireless.
By mid-July a few of Hitler’s own officers knew he was a madman and attempted to assassinate him. In late July the forewoman approached Jenny’s machine and assassinated her — or murdered her plan.
‘Do you intend dropping it on the factory floor, girl?’
‘Dropping what?’ Jenny said.
‘Finish up on Friday.’
‘I’ve got a little boy to feed.’ Having a little boy to feed had got her a five-minute trial. Maybe it would buy her another month. All she needed was another month or two. The Salvos had a place where she could go for the last weeks, and a place where she could leave Jimmy. Mrs Molly Mullins had called them last Friday.
‘It’s factory policy. Your job will be here when it’s over.’
‘What am I supposed to live on until it’s over?’
‘You got yourself into that state, girl. Friday. Maureen will be taking over your machine. You can give her a run-through on it today.’
And that was that. Maureen was sitting at the big seamer and Jenny was back on the bench, back where she’d started, filling in time until Friday.
She should have got rid of it. Should have told Myrtle the morning after it had happened. Should have told that taxi driver to take her to the Harbour Bridge and jumped off. What was the use of trying when God had it in for you?
She finished work that Friday. On Saturday she claimed Jimmy early and took him shopping, took him to a movie, needing to dodge Myrtle, whom she’d been dodging for the past month — and when she couldn’t dodge, lacing her corset tighter and covering her bloat with a bulky sweater or an overcoat.
She shouldn’t have taken Jimmy out all day. He had a cold, and on the run home from the station they got wet. Myrtle was waiting at the door, her eyes disapproving, as if she was the mother and Jenny one of her recalcitrant kids.
‘You could have left him with me if you were going to be out so long, Jenny,’ she said, lifting Jimmy from the stroller. Jenny tried to reclaim him, tried to get away. ‘It’s too cold upstairs today,’ Myrtle said. ‘Stay for dinner.’
It had to happen sooner or later. Myrtle would know on Monday that she had no job to go to. Their coats were wet. Myrtle had taken Jimmy’s off and hung it on her coat rack in the passage. Jenny removed her own and hung it. Pulled her sweater down, sucked in her stomach, which had gone beyond hiding.
But Myrtle had her back turned. Jenny sat, allowing the kitchen table to conceal the bulge. They spoke of the rain until the meal was being served. She had to move then, had to spread a cloth, set the table.
Big brown puppy dog eyes confused. Disgust taking the place of confusion but not a word spoken, other than by Myrtle’s shoes whispering their disgust as they hurried towards her bedroom. She closed the door and didn’t come back.
Jimmy emptied his plate. Jenny emptied her own.
‘Where Myrtie gone?’ Jimmy said.
‘Myrtie’s busy.’ Jenny washed the plates and cutlery, left Jimmy playing with his cars, and knocked on the bedroom door.
‘It’s not what you think, Myrt. I was raped on New Year’s Eve.’ To her own ears it sounded like a lie.
She tried the door. It was locked. No use knocking. Jenny picked up Jimmy and went upstairs to a room as cold as a tomb. Jimmy immediately started coughing. She put him into bed and crawled in with him, held him until they shivered themselves warm.
He was coughing the next morning when Myrtle came to their door. ‘You are paid up until Thursday, Mrs Hooper. I’ll expect you to be out by ten on Friday morning.’
‘I’m still Jenny.’ Shoes hissing down the passage. ‘I’ve got nowhere to go, Myrt.’
They ate Weet-Bix for breakfast then went back to bed to keep warm. They shared a tin of tomato soup for lunch and all afternoon snuggled in bed, Jimmy like a little koala clinging to her, a coughing snuffling koala, but he slept for much of the day, and by nightfall he seemed better.
At five, Jenny knocked on Myrtle’s private door. It didn’t open. They ate fried bread and plum jam, and Jimmy wanted Myrtie.
‘We’ll see her tomorrow,’ Jenny said.
They found her in the laundry and bailed her up there.
‘I was raped, Myrt, on New Year’s Eve, by five Yanks. I should have told you then but I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened.’
Disgusted, defiled by the close contact, Myrtle pushed by her, left her washing soaking in the trough, under the sign stating that washing must not be left soaking in the troughs.
‘Myrtie, where you going?’ Jimmy called, but Myrtle, who yesterday had jumped to his every command, was today inured to his charms.
Jenny knocked at the rent hatch on Monday, once the workers had left the house. Myrtle knew who was knocking. The hatch remained closed. On Tuesday she took Jimmy to the phone box on the corner and placed a telephone call to the boarding house. Myrtle hung up when she recognised the voice. On Wednesday Jenny started packing up number five.
Every garment she’d accrued had been hard fought for. She threw nothing away. A skirt too country bumpkin for Sydney would look f
ine in Woody Creek. Worn out shoes could be repaired in Woody Creek. Her case wouldn’t hold half of what was in this room, but, like Gertrude, she’d saved her brown paper bags, saved her string.
She wrapped her three dozen napkins in another, tied the white parcel with string — and she shouldn’t have had three dozen napkins . Had they bred in the dark of her wardrobe? Myrtle must have bought them, probably had another dozen downstairs. Jimmy’s clothes stuffed into a large brown paper bag, her makeup and shoes tossed into another. Jim’s letters she placed in the corner of her case with her bankbook. She glanced at the final numbers. Like a squirrel hoarding nuts for a hard winter, since New Year she’d been stowing away every spare penny. She’d manage. It was just a case of finding someplace to manage in, that was all, just for two months, two and a half months. She wasn’t desperate for Myrtle’s charity — desperate for her friendship, for her support but the Salvos would support her. Good old Salvos. They’d find a childless couple to take the baby Yank. That’s what Granny would want her to do. Maybe that old bloke hadn’t been Noah. Maybe Gertrude had got into her head and made her see what wasn’t there.
The Salvos wouldn’t allow her to keep Jimmy with her at the unmarried mothers’ home, but they had places where he’d be well looked after. He mightn’t like it, but for a week or two it wouldn’t kill him. It wouldn’t do him any good either. He’d grown accustomed to two mothers pandering to his every need. How would he survive with no mother?
What she needed was a room where she could stay until it was time. There was no need to be away from him for more than a day or two then. She’d got over having Margot and Georgie fast, and the Yank had been squashed small by her corset, worn small by worry, starved small through lack of appetite.
She picked up the handbag that would forever remind her of Laurie. The shoulder strap, worn through, had been knotted, the clip would barely hold, the coin pocket was worn out. Last week’s wages were in a little red purse with a ten-bob note and coins. She had sixty-three pounds in the bank. She’d get a room somewhere.
She looked at the watch she’d never wound. The hands had stopped at twenty to four. Sad-faced watch now. Guilty watch. Probably worth a bob or two. She tossed it into her case with her alarm clock.