by Joy Dettman
As I hold back the tears, to make a smile appear . . .
They sang it loud enough to scare those old crows from the trees, sang it loud enough for Gertrude to hear. She came at a near run, met them at her boundary gate.
A noisy greeting that one; a hugging, kissing greeting, a laughing greeting, Jimmy clinging to Jenny’s skirt, not remembering the tall stranger clad in trousers and wearing knitting needles in her hair.
‘You’ve grown into such a big boy,’ Gertrude said.
‘Woodycweep stinks,’ he said.
‘What have you been teaching that little boy?’
‘That Woody Creek stinks,’ Jenny laughed.
A SORRY BUSINESS
The lavatory pit stunk more than she remembered — Amber’s wedding dress still rotting down there somewhere. The kitchen had grown narrower, grown darker. Same old washstand and basin, same enamel bucket beneath the washstand. Same bar of Velvet soap in the same old dish. No more soft towels, just a worn and washed-out rag of towel hung where it had hung two years ago, on a bent nail hammered into the side of the washstand.
Two little girls stood staring at the visitors, the redhead looking like a long-handled rag mop, the other one looking like a Macdonald after the vampires had sucked their fill.
‘G’day,’ Jenny said, and Jimmy hid his face against her skirt, afraid of the dark house, threatened by the two small girls.
He didn’t want a drink of milk. He didn’t want a biscuit. He wanted to go to a proper house, but Jenny’s shoes were off which meant that she was staying for a while. She sat at the table. He climbed up to her lap and buried his face against her when Elsie came with more kids to stare.
‘I want Myrtie’s house, Jenny,’ he wept.
‘This is Granny’s house. This is where we used to live before we went to Myrtie’s house.’
Tea was made and poured, the biscuit tin open on the table, half a dozen kids were sitting in a row on the cane couch eating biscuits when they heard the car. Jenny lifted her head to listen. She’d forgotten the way cars announced their arrival long before they reached Gertrude’s gate, forgotten how the trees, the creek funnelled the noise down to this land.
Gertrude went to the door to listen. ‘It sounds like Vern.’
‘Damn him,’ Jenny said.
‘Th’ee th’wored,’ Margot said.
‘What?’
‘You swored,’ Georgie translated. ‘Why did you bring that boy for?’
‘That’s Jimmy,’ Gertrude said. ‘You’ve seen photos of Jimmy.’ She stepped outside to get a better view of her boundary gate. ‘It’s Vern,’ she confirmed. ‘Did he know you were coming home?’
‘How could he?’
‘Maisy gave your address to Margaret back when Jim first went missing.’
‘Why? So they could kidnap Jimmy?’
‘Vern’s half-brother is dying from the legs up. Vern and his daughters have been spending a lot of time with him in the city. I dare say Margaret might have got in touch with you had there been news of Jim.’
‘You’re pipedreaming, Granny.’
Elsie herded her kids out the door. She’d seen too much of Vern Hooper in her youth and had no desire to continue the association. ‘We’ll pop over again when he’s gone, lovey,’ she said. ‘Good to see you home.’ Margot went with her. Georgie thought about staying, but not for long.
‘One of them must have seen you walking by,’ Gertrude said. ‘I didn’t know they’d come home.’
‘I thought you’d made up with him.’
‘He’s been in and out of hospital, down and back to a city doctor, I haven’t seen a lot of him.’
‘I can’t face him, Granny, and Jimmy doesn’t need it today.’
‘He’s got his daughters with him.’ Gertrude’s expression suggested she was less than pleased to see them at his side. She cleared away the biscuit tin and Elsie’s mug, and gave the table a quick wipe down.
‘Tell them I’ve got smallpox. Tell him I came home pregnant,’ Jenny said.
‘You’ll go straight back to where you came from if you are.’ Gertrude made no comment on smallpox.
Her shoes back on, Jenny carried Jimmy to the door to do her own staring. Vern had his legs out of the car but not the rest of him. One hand on the car door, one on the doorframe, he rocked himself to his feet.
‘He was never that bad.’
‘He’s gone downhill this past year.’
Lorna, a totem pole in black, looked as if she’d stand forever. Margaret wore floral. She looked like one of Beatrix Potter’s mother rats, complete with her bustle, or bustle buttocks, on show as she bent to remove something from the car boot.
‘They’ve got Norman spying for them, Granny! They’ve brought my cases down.’
Gertrude walked out to greet them, and to carry one of the cases inside. Vern, on his feet now, appeared to have his work cut out in carrying himself. Lorna carried nothing but her sneer.
Jimmy had had enough of strangers. He howled.
‘It’s all right,’ Jenny lied. It wasn’t. It was all wrong.
‘I don’ want dis house,’ he wailed.
She carried him to the lean-to, wanting to drop him through the window hatch and climb out after him, to run. ‘Look at the pretty flowers,’ she said. Faded, worn wallpaper, stained by small hands, split where the wood behind it had moved. ‘Be a big boy for Jenny.’
She heard footsteps in the kitchen, chair legs scraping, creaking as one of the chairs took Vern’s weight. She couldn’t hide from them. Gertrude wouldn’t let her hide. She brought the cases through to the lean-to, signalling with a nod for Jenny to go out and face her visitors.
Better to face them today while she and Jimmy were clad in their Sunday best. She followed Gertrude back to the kitchen, pulled up a chair and sat.
‘A big boy,’ Vern said.
‘He’ll be three in December,’ Jenny replied.
Margaret’s protruding eyes stared at Jimmy, Lorna sneered down her eagle beak nose, Vern looked from the boy to Gertrude, who was rattling around in her cupboard looking for matching cups and saucers.
‘Have you heard anything definite from the war department?’ Jenny said.
They’d heard nothing. Lorna’s scowl said very clearly that Jenny had no right to ask.
She’d always had a beaked nose. It had grown longer, or the spectacles she now wore accentuated its size. Her eyes were close set, small, black, near hidden beneath heavy dry lids. Her ears were huge, her jaw long, her cheeks sunken. She was a caricature of a woman.
Margaret hadn’t changed in the face, hadn’t changed in the years Jenny had known her. A little heavier, breasts a little larger, maybe more a rotund Mother Chihuahua now rather than Mother Rat. She had a chihuahua’s eyes.
Tension was growing in Jenny’s back, in her neck, in the arms holding Jimmy. She’d been travelling for two days. She needed to sit back and relax.
Gertrude carried the conversation. Good manners and tea got them through the first fifteen minutes. Jenny hoped they’d go when their teacups were empty and when they didn’t, she stood.
‘We’ll go over and get the girls home, Granny.’
There was a point to Vern’s visit. He got to the point.
‘We’ve been staying down in the city,’ he said. ‘We’ve had some legal advice from a chap down there.’
‘I’ve had my own legal advice, Mr Hooper.’
She’d spoken to Basil, from Wilfred’s band; he worked for a solicitor and knew a lot about the law. He’d told her to hang onto Jim’s letters, in particular the letter stating that he’d asked his family to take care of her should anything happen to him.
‘No doubt you have,’ he said with meaning. She didn’t understand his meaning, or maybe she did. Jim’s mother had left him a fortune. She walked to the open door and stood looking out.
‘He made a will when he joined up, before his boy was born.’
‘As if I care about his money!’
‘How do you thin
k you’re going to raise that boy without his money?’
‘I’ve been working to raise him.’
‘There’s no singing clubs up here, girl.’
‘We won’t be staying here.’ They’d be getting out of here tomorrow, that’s what they’d be doing.
‘As far as I see it, we can do this decently between ourselves, or we can do it the other way. There’s no court in the land that would refuse my claim.’
‘My legal adviser told me that any grandfather who had lost one wife to childbirth and nearly killed another one, and who wouldn’t even take me down to the hospital when his grandson was being born, hasn’t got Buckley’s hope in any court of taking a three-year-old boy away from his mother — not when the mother was engaged to his son.’ Basil had thought she’d been married to Jim, but engaged was almost married.
That hit Vern where it hurt. He stood, determined to intimidate her with his size, and Jenny stepped back to the table, no taller than when she’d left, as slim, a little older, but much, much stronger, strong enough now.
‘My boy would never have gone near that war if not for you. His blood is on your hands, girlie.’
‘That’s enough, Vern,’ Gertrude said.
‘Don’t you take her part in this —’
‘I’m taking our grandson’s part. He doesn’t know where he is, and he doesn’t need this — not after travelling two days to get here. Sit down and calm down, Vern, or leave.’
‘If she had one skerrick of feeling for my boy, she’d do the right thing by him.’
‘I did the right thing by him when he was alive — which is more than you ever did for him.’
Jimmy was afraid of the giants in that house that wasn’t a house. He rarely cried. He was screaming now.
‘Take him over to Elsie’s,’ Gertrude said.
He didn’t need more strangers and Jenny was past doing what she was told to do. She carried him into the lean-to and got the old green curtain between him and the strangers, but Jimmy liked the lean-to no more than that kitchen full of giants. He clung to Jenny’s neck and screamed for Myrtie.
She sat on the bed, rocking him and staring at the weather-stained wallpaper beside the window, which wasn’t a window, just a flywired hole in the wall with two warped shutters to keep the weather out. She shouldn’t have brought Jimmy here. She should have known this would happen as soon as she hit town. She should have booked in to that Melbourne hotel for a week, looked around for a live-in job.
Vern and his daughters didn’t leave. She couldn’t hear what was said above Jimmy’s wail. Rocked and soothed him, kissing his hot little face until he buried it at her breast and sobbed out the last of his tears. Then she heard them, or heard Gertrude.
‘They’re home, Vern. Be content with that.’
‘You haven’t got a bed for him. You haven’t got room to swing a bloody cat in this place.’
‘I’ll find room. And you and your girls can find room in that little boy’s life if you don’t make him the meat in your tasteless sandwich.’
‘We won’t have Jim’s boy raised by a little trollop who can’t keep her pants on,’ Lorna said.
Jenny couldn’t let that pass. Couldn’t and wouldn’t. ‘You’re just jealous that no one ever wanted to get your pants off,’ she said, quietly, but loud enough.
‘Jennifer!’
‘Jim was a decent, God-fearing boy until you seduced him with your wiles.’ Lorna liked the last word.
‘God-fearing and Lorna-fearing,’ Jenny replied. ‘I’ve got a letter in that case from Jim telling me how you told him he’d be better off blowing out his own brains rather than marry me.’
‘Stop it, Jenny!’ Gertrude said, and her rafters rattled with the stamp of her boot. Jimmy clung tighter, but lifted his head to see if the roof was falling in. ‘Take your girl home, Vern. She’s not welcome in my house.’
‘House?’ Lorna scoffed.
‘My house, and you’ll leave it now,’ Gertrude said. ‘Out with you, you evil-minded, evil-mouthed . . .’
They left the kitchen. Jenny got Jimmy’s head onto a pillow and lay with him, holding him close, stroking his skinny little-boy neck, kissing his hair. She heard the car start, heard it leave, heard Gertrude walk down to lift the curtain, and like Norman, Jenny lifted a hand for silence. Jimmy’s eyes were closing.
Once he was asleep, she eased herself away and rolled carefully from the bed.
Gertrude was peeling potatoes. ‘You’ll need to step lightly around them, darlin’.’
‘I’m through with stepping lightly. You just get stepped on. What right has he got? Jimmy is strong, he’s healthy, he’s well dressed. Anyone can see he’s been well looked after.’
‘He’s a man, darlin’, and he thinks he’s got the right. What decided you to come home?’
Jenny couldn’t tell her the truth, couldn’t even tell her that Myrtle had her own baby to care for. She’d written too much in her letters about her la-di-da landlady. Lie number one coming up. ‘I’ve got a week off.’
‘Those little girls don’t know who you are.’ Little girls peeping at Jenny from either side of Gertrude.
‘They’re better off not knowing me.’
‘You’re the only mother they’ll ever have.’
‘As far as the Hoopers and most in this town are concerned, I’m the town slut. They can do without knowing that.’
‘They can do without hearing that sort of language coming from their mother.’
‘They’ll only hear it for a day or two. If I stay here, the Hoopers will keep hounding me.’
‘He’s got no more right to that little boy than I have, than your own father has. As long as he’s well fed and has a warm bed to sleep in, Vern hasn’t got a leg to stand on in court. He knows it, too. And if he didn’t before today, then he does now. What’s that on your dress?’
Jenny looked down. Her left breast still leaked at times. Here came lie number two. ‘Jimmy must have dribbled on me. It needs a wash,’ she said.
‘It’s a lovely frock. Take it off and rinse it out before it stains.’
‘What’s one stain more or less? This is Woody Creek and I’m Jenny Morrison.’
ADAPTABILITY
The following afternoon, Vern came with Jim’s Willama solicitor. Gertrude was out with her chooks; Georgie was halfway out the door to stare at the visitors when Jenny grabbed her skirt, drew her indoors, closed the door then slid the old slide bolt, stiff with lack of use.
Myrtle had packed Jimmy’s fleet of wooden cars. He’d spent half of his life vrooming them around in Sydney and was pleased to have them back in his hands. As was Jenny. With his hands full of cars, he couldn’t hold onto her skirt. He wasn’t yet vroom-vrooming, but he’d found a garage for his fleet beneath the bottom shelf of Gertrude’s washstand.
Vern and the solicitor were hammering on the locked door.
‘Little pig, little pig, let me in,’ Jenny whispered. ‘Oh, no, not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin —’
Jimmy wanted more, so she told him the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ while those outside demanded to be let in.
‘Why did you shut that door for?’ the redhead asked.
‘I don’t like visitors,’ Jenny whispered, finger to her lips.
‘Why?’ Georgie whispered conspiratorially.
‘Because I have to make them cups of tea.’
‘Why?’
They were squatting between table and door, Jenny urging Jimmy to give his car a push. It wasn’t leaving his hands.
Margot stood back from the trio. She didn’t like that closed door, or Granny not being let in.
‘Show me if it still goes,’ Jenny said to Jimmy. ‘Push it. Georgie will push it back.’ Having no kids to share with at Myrtle’s house, he hadn’t learned the art.
‘Has he got uver things?’ the redhead said.
‘What other things?’
‘From Syndey.’
‘Sydney,’ Jenny corrected. ‘He’s got
some books.’
The books had accounted for much of the weight in his small case. Myrtle had bought him three picture books. Jenny had purchased one, secondhand, though whether for him or herself she was uncertain. She’d found it a year ago, at a street stall run by a bunch of kids doing their bit for the war effort, and the instant she’d seen its cover, she’d recognised it. She’d turned the pages of an identical book at Norman’s station when she was four or five years old. Jim may have grown out of fairies, but he’d known she’d believed in them. He’d brought it with him to the station and she’d sat for an hour turning the pages. A magical book back then and it still retained a little of its magic. Glossy fairies, perched amid apple blossoms and in roses, cheeky pixies hiding behind a bunch of cherries, using a bluebell’s stem as a slippery slide, peeping out through windows cut into their mushroom houses.
She fetched it now and stood at the table turning the pages for the girls, who stared at it wide-eyed and silent. They recognised its magic. Jimmy had seen it too often, but he came to get his share, or his share of Jenny. They were still turning pages when the car motor faded in the distance.
‘Open this door, you ratbag of a girl,’ Gertrude demanded.
‘Give me the password,’ Jenny yelled back.
‘Open this door now!’
‘Incorrect. Try again.’
‘I’ll have a piece of your hide when you do.’
‘Incorrect. Last try.’
‘They’ve gone! Open this door!’
‘Lucky. We were just about to shoot you as another Hooper spy.’
They let her in, Jenny and Georgie wearing identical smiles. The locked door hadn’t pleased Granny or Vern, but it had won Georgie over, got Jimmy shooting his car across the floor to Georgie and she shooting it back.
She was a talking machine. ‘Why did you and him live in Syndey for and not here wiff us for?’
‘Sydney,’ Jenny corrected. ‘I had to make some money.’
‘How did you make some?’
‘On a sewing machine.’
‘Money can’t get sewed on machines!’ Georgie scoffed.
‘I made shirts to sell and got some money for the shirts.’