Thorn on the Rose

by Joy Dettman

  Miss Blunt had made it up in a similar style to the green, and Jenny loved it, though blue frocks had always been her nemesis. Its skirt would probably get caught in his bike chain, or he’d rip it when he dragged her off the bike to rape her.

  She slipped Norman’s blue earrings into her lobes, had trouble doing up the matching necklet, but she got it done up and loved it anew. She was sliding her feet into her black high heels, unworn since Sydney, when Granny invited Ray into the kitchen.

  ‘She’s still making herself beautiful,’ Granny said.

  ‘Sh-she’s already that, Mrs F-foote’ he said — and his stutter made Jenny’s heart ache, when she didn’t want it to ache for anyone but Jim. She was going to a dance, that’s all. She wanted to dance and she couldn’t dance alone, that’s all. And he probably couldn’t dance, and she’d be stuck with him treading all over her feet all night and end up with her skirt caught up in his bike chain, ripped to shreds in the dirt and Norman’s earrings lost — when he raped her.

  The hall was crowded, as crowded as it had been on the night of the ball; the music had changed little. And he was a brilliant dancer, better than her, and he could jitterbug better than the Yanks. She danced with him all night, refused an offer from Billy Roberts and three more. Why dance with less when you could dance with the best?

  She saw Sissy at ten, sitting near the supper room door, saw Amber stuck like a flea to Sissy’s side. Saw them murdering her with their eyes when Norman spoke to her, his poor old face near swallowed in a smile at the sight of his necklet at her throat. She saw Sissy’s mouth snarling ‘slut’ near midnight, when she and Ray took over the centre of the dance floor and showed Woody Creek how the jitterbug was done.

  It was the best night. It was the absolute best night she’d ever had in Woody Creek bar none. As nights go, she could only think of two in her life which may have been better: the talent quest night and that night at the club with Jim.

  She told Ray about the factory in Sydney, about her landlady who’d looked after Jimmy. She kept her mouth shut about the girls. She told him how Jim had been engaged to Sissy, how he’d broken it off and joined the army. She told him that she’d been engaged to Jim for six months before he’d gone missing.

  He didn’t drag her off the bike and rape her in the dust; he didn’t even try to kiss her goodnight. Apart from when they danced, he didn’t touch her.

  ‘If I c-come up again, w-would you —’

  ‘There’s things you’ll find out about me, Ray. Tonight has been perfect and I don’t want it spoiled.’

  ‘I w-won’t spoil it. W-will you?’

  ‘Petrol is still rationed, isn’t it?’

  ‘B-bikes don’t use much. W-will you?’

  ‘I’m not who you think I am.’

  ‘Y-you’re not saying you won’t,’ he said.

  She went to the pictures with him the following Saturday night. They walked into town and walked home in the moonlight, holding hands.

  ‘N-next S-Saturday,’ he said.

  ‘It’s too far for you to keep on coming up here every weekend.’

  ‘M-m-marry me and I w-won’t have to keep on c-coming up. I’ve got a h-house.’

  ‘Now you’re being crazy. You don’t even know me.’

  ‘You r-remembered me. I 1-1-love you f-for that.’

  She ached for him, wanted to cry for him. She’d had four kids — three; she had to forget about Cara. She’d had a week or two of love but no courting, and here he was, travelling for hours, wasting his petrol, sitting at her side through a lousy picture show, telling her he loved her.

  The moon was peeping over the walnut tree when he drew her close and kissed her. She felt shy, felt sixteen, felt embarrassed, but not much else.

  ‘Marry me,’ he whispered.

  ‘You don’t ask people you don’t know to marry you just because you’re missing your wife.’

  ‘I know you,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t. I’ve got three kids, not one. I can’t ever marry anyone.’

  ‘M-me, you can. I’ve g-got none. N-no one.’

  She didn’t have the heart to push him away when he kissed her again, just waited until he was done then stepped away, aware she’d let him think there was some chance for them. There wasn’t.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like you. You’re probably the most decent bloke I’ve met since Jim, but there’s no future in it, Ray.’ She opened the gate, stepped through and closed it between them.

  ‘I’m n-not giving up,’ he said. ‘N-next S-Saturday.’

  ‘Stop wasting your petrol on me.’

  ‘I’m n-not w-wasting it. I love you.’

  She sighed and turned back. ‘I was raped by the Macdonald twins when I was fourteen. I got myself into strife again at fifteen. I had three kids before I was eighteen and I’m never, not as long as I live, having another one.’

  ‘I d-d-don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘Three is enough to f-f-feed these days. S-see you on S-saturday.’

  And he rode away.

  THE TEMPORARY STATIONMASTER

  Sissy had returned to the Duckworths on the Wednesday following New Year’s Eve. They were good Christian folk; they’d always taken in the family widows, the maiden aunts and fallen cousins, the Duckworths with drinking problems. They shared the problem, moved the visitor from house to house, never allowing the problematic one to grow too comfortable in any one residence, thus all visitors could be welcomed with open arms in the sure and certain knowledge that those same arms would, in a month or two, be raised to wave them on their way to the next host.

  Norman and his mother had been shunted between Duckworths for the first sixteen years of his life, as Sissy was now shunted, six weeks here, four weeks there, a few final weeks with the now elderly Charles, the parson, and his alcoholic cousin Reginald — which was usually enough to send Sissy scuttling home. She was with Aunt Olive and Olive’s daughter, Betty, in Hamilton, when Norman went missing.

  He had been at the station on Saturday; several had seen him there. But when the train came in at ten on Monday morning, he wasn’t there to meet it. He’d damn near lived at that station these last years and for the past thirty years had met every train. Norman was, if nothing else, a reliable man.

  Amber said he’d spent a very quiet Sunday, and that he’d left for the station before she’d risen on Monday morning. She’d presumed he’d gone to the station, though occasionally he had taken a quick constitutional before going to work.

  No one had seen him out walking on Monday morning, and on Monday afternoon Denham came to Gertrude’s door to ask if Jenny had seen her father.

  She hadn’t, not since New Year’s Eve. Gertrude had. He’d ridden down on Saturday night while Jenny was at the movies with Ray. He’d stayed for a cup of tea, had mentioned speaking to Jenny at the dance, but said little more. He’d left around nine with a dozen eggs and a few tomatoes.

  Some in town thought he could have been in church on Sunday. Others stated that he definitely had not been seated in his normal pew. This was unusual for Norman, though not unheard of. In the past six or eight years he’d been missing from that pew two or three times.

  His bike was in the washhouse. Gertrude’s eggs and tomatoes were in the icebox at the station, with three sausages, butter, milk and half a loaf of bread.

  By six that evening, Denham was walking the stretch of bush beside the creek which Norman had been known to frequent. He liked birds, had spent some time down by the creek with his binoculars. He found no sign of Norman.

  On Tuesday morning, Denham contacted Charles Duckworth, who said he had not heard from his nephew in ten days. He and Reginald informed the rest of the Duckworth clan that Norman was missing.

  Aunt Olive and Betty informed Sissy, who was not overly concerned; she had no intention of going home so soon.

  ‘He’ll turn up.’

  A railway department chap arrived to look after Norman’s station, and his face was enough to frighten kids, tho
ugh a few came to stare at him while their fathers searched the bush for Norman, poked around in the creek, dodged snakes in the reed beds. A lost child might remain lost for days in that forest, if he wandered in deep enough, but a man who had lived in Woody Creek for thirty years wasn’t going to wander off and get himself lost in the bush. A man of Norman’s years was more likely to have gone walking and suffered a heart attack. Denham expected to find him lying dead behind a log.

  They hadn’t found him by nightfall and searching in the dark for a dead man would achieve nothing. The men went home.

  ‘I reckon he’s taken off on her,’ they said.

  ‘And about time, the poor simple-minded bastard.’

  ‘He’s gone out walking on Sunday and kept on going. I’ll bet you any money you like.’

  ‘He wasn’t the type to take off on her. That poor fool stuck by her through thick and thin.’

  ‘Who’s to say what type he was? I know him no better today than I did when he landed in this town back after that first war.’

  ‘Speaking of which, have you seen the bloke they sent up to replace him? He’s been shot up bad somewhere.’

  ‘He’s got a wife, too. How does a wife look at that for the rest of her life?’

  ‘They say Jim Hooper is a mess.’

  ‘Jim Hooper is dead. He died two years back.’

  ‘Not according to Gloria Bull.’

  ‘Horrie’s girl?’

  ‘She’s nursing at one of those veterans’ hospitals in Melbourne. Her mother writes to Madge. Her last letter said young Gloria was nursing Jim Hooper.’

  ‘She’s got him mixed up with one of the other boys.’

  ‘Could be.’

  The temporary stationmaster with the shot-up face opened Norman’s side gate at ten past eight on Tuesday night. He’d brought Norman’s supplies from the station icebox. It was out of ice, had been out of ice since he’d arrived at ten that morning. The eggs felt warm, the butter in a screw-topped jar had melted, the four sausages, wrapped in brown paper, would go off fast without ice.

  Amber, on her way back up from the lavatory, didn’t see him on her dark verandah until it was too late; she’d already opened the back door.

  He asked if there was news on her husband. She stepped inside before she told him how her husband had left for work before she’d risen.

  He mentioned the icebox being out of ice and offered a small carton containing Norman’s foodstuffs. And those sausages must have been off. He hadn’t noticed any smell about them when he’d opened the icebox, but they smelled bad now. Or something did.

  He stepped forward to hand her the carton and Amber slammed the door in his face.

  You ill-mannered bitch of a woman, he thought, then he stepped back suddenly.

  The temporary stationmaster had been through a long war. His nose was telling him where Norman Morrison would be found. He placed the carton on a cane chair and went for reinforcements.

  Denham and the temporary stationmaster found Norman Morrison on his bed, buried beneath blankets and a feather quilt, a slim-bladed carving knife buried up to the handle between his ribs, his face mashed to meat, the cast iron frying pan used to cause the damage buried with him beneath the bedding.

  There must have been blood. They held their breath and looked for blood. There was no sign of it. Not a splatter on the wall, on the window. Nothing, other than what had leaked into the bedding, to the mattress, sprayed the curtains. Brown, rusty blood. The house smelled like a charnel house but it looked immaculate. They glanced into the parlour, the bedrooms, the bathroom.

  Amber was in the bathroom, standing on a chair, cleaning out a small bathroom cabinet, carefully wiping each box, each jar and bottle.

  ‘I’d like you to take a walk over the road with me, Mrs Morrison,’ Denham said.

  ‘Wait in the parlour,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be done shortly.’

  GOODBYE NORMAN

  Someone had to make the decisions. Sissy was too distraught, which left Jenny, who was too shocked to cry. Numb. Walking in circles dry eyed, cursing her mother to hell. She walked until Maisy and Gertrude took her to Willama to see him.

  She saw his gentle old hand, all they’d allow her to see, all Gertrude would allow her to see. She held it and howled her heart out.

  Someone had to choose a coffin. She howled when she spoke to the undertaker, when she spoke to the minister, when she told him where she wanted Norman to sleep. Twenty-two years ago, Norman had chosen his mother’s tombstone with its three chubby angels. One had lost its nose and a wing, one head had been knocked off and cemented back on, but she’d grown up loving those angels. He’d sleep beneath them. The funeral would be on Friday, at eleven, which would give Sissy plenty of time to get home.

  Sissy didn’t make the trip. Only eight Duckworths arrived on Friday’s train: the three Box Hill cousins, Aunt Louise, her husband and unmarried daughter, and Charles and alcoholic Reginald. Aunt Olive and Betty couldn’t leave Sissy. She was out of her mind with grief, Aunt Louise said.

  The hotel was full of Duckworths and newspaper men. Murder was big news. For two days it made the front page of every Melbourne newspaper. With the war over, newspaper men were scratching for any news they could get.

  AMBER MORRISON JAILED IN ‘32 FOR KNIFE ATTACK ON BOYFRIEND. OLD INVESTIGATIONS REOPENED.

  Police have reopened investigations into the deaths of two Woody Creek schoolgirls. The brother of Nelly Abbot, a ten-year-old girl slashed and battered to death in 1933, told reporters today that there is little doubt in the minds of Woody Creek residents that his sister was the brutal killer’s first victim. The parents of a second victim, Barbara Dobson, were not available for comment.

  The city police left town before the funeral. There was no mystery to solve here. They had the killer in a city jail.

  old mystery solved, Friday morning’s newspapers screamed, and beneath those black headlines they’d printed archival photographs of Nelly Abbot and little Barbie Dobson.

  Vern Hooper read every word. He’d spent half an hour on the telephone with his city solicitor, Lorna and Margaret at his elbows.

  They’d bided their time; now their time had arrived. They were going after Jimmy with their pockets full of ammunition and their solicitor was convinced they’d get him. The boy’s maternal grandfather had been murdered and his maternal grandmother charged with his murder. That snake-eyed bitch of a woman had as good as handed Vern his boy and if she hadn’t, then Jimmy’s soldier father would.

  Vern didn’t want to go to Norman’s funeral. He’d been keeping his distance from Gertrude; she could read him too easily. And there had been whispers in town about Jim. She would have heard them.

  Maisy drove Jenny and Gertrude into town. She sat with them in the front pew. The coffin, flower bedecked, was too close; Jenny couldn’t look up without seeing it. Thank God she’d made her peace with him. She wished she’d made a greater peace with him, wished she’d put her arms around him, held his face between her hands, kissed him.

  So many people in that church, Duckworths and newspaper men, farmers in town to do their weekly shopping, just in for a look. Norman would have liked the crowd.

  Jenny sat head down, wanting it over. She didn’t hear much of the service. She’d told the minister to talk about how Norman had loved playing poker on Friday nights, how he would come home happy and fry cheese sandwiches in the kitchen. She’d told him to talk about how he used to ride his bike out of town to pick mushrooms, to pick bunches of wild daffodils, about how he’d loved watching the birds down at the bridge, how he could name every type of bird in Woody Creek. She’d told him too that she didn’t want Uncle Charles standing up there talking about a Norman the people in this town didn’t know.

  When it was over she didn’t know what he’d said about Norman.

  She stood while the six pallbearers carried the coffin out, while the organist played something morbid and knew she was going to howl, and Vern Hooper and his daughters wer
e not going to see her howl, and those newspaper men were not going to feature her tears on tomorrow’s front page.

  Chin down, she gripped Granny’s hand.

  He was leaving. He was halfway out and they wanted her to move, to follow his coffin out. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t let him be carried away like that. She knew what she had to do. Sometimes there’s no choice.

  She lifted her chin, sucked air in through her teeth, stared at the stained glass window, and opened her mouth.

  She sang him from that church, sang him on his way with the Twenty-third Psalm, because he’d loved it, because he’d told her once that her singing had made him proud. Shuddering and shaking, but she sang it loud, sang it strong for Norman, and the organist gave up on her morbid melody and followed Jenny’s voice. She sang her heart out for Norman, holding her tears inside, holding them in until the song was done, until Gertrude put her arms around her and stopped her from shuddering apart.

  They walked out hand in hand. Mr Foster was outside. She released Gertrude’s hand to grip his, then to grip John McPherson’s. Miss Rose kissed her cheek. Miss Blunt kissed her cheek. Charlie patted her shoulder. There was no pat on the shoulder from Vern, no offer of his hand. He couldn’t look at her. Margaret glanced her way, her fishbowl eyes blinking. Lorna sneered.

  Gertrude and Maisy walked with Jenny behind the coffin. The walk to the cemetery was good, the placing of one foot in front of the other was good. Eight Duckworths walked beside and behind her, Cousin Reginald eyeing her like a good brandy he’d love to taste but knew he couldn’t afford.

  The bank manager spoke to her at the graveside. Denham chased away two men with cameras then stood behind her, protecting her back. A good man, a good cop. His wife was there. She nodded. A few nodded. A few shook her hand, kissed her cheek. There was no sign of the Hoopers at the graveside. She looked for them. Maisy saw her scanning the faces.

  ‘He’s got a good crowd, love,’ she said. ‘He would have liked that.’