by Joy Dettman
He got a good crowd but it was over by midday. Norman was gone into the earth by midday, Mr Foster gone back to his post office, the bank manager back to his bank, Miss Blunt back behind her counter and the undertaker on his way home to Willama.
It wasn’t over for Jenny and Gertrude. Norman’s house had to be emptied. The railway department was sending up a permanent replacement for Norman, a married man with three kids who’d require the stationmaster’s house. Someone had to empty it and Sissy was in no fit state, so it was said.
‘That poor girl. I don’t know what is to become of her,’ Aunt Louise said.
Poor, poor Sissy. No more money from Norman until the estate was sorted out — if there was anything left of the estate to sort out. Poor, poor Sissy, her hairdresser locked up in a Melbourne jail. Poor Sissy would have to get a job — or just keep moving forever between Duckworths.
Jenny hadn’t stepped inside the railway house since the night of the ball when Norman had carried her, kicking, through the back door; the night she’d fought the junk room window open, the night her world had gone mad.
Denham had the keys. He unlocked the doors. Gertrude and Maisy entered first, then the three Box Hill cousins, Reginald behind them. Far better the house be full before Jenny stepped inside.
There was a lingering smell of that crazy bitch’s evil in these rooms. And where did you start on emptying her out? You opened the windows, the doors and allowed the wind to blow her evil from this town.
Norman’s window had been left open, his room already stripped bare. The smell of hell and brimstone clung there — or the smell of sulfur. The kitchen shovel used as a tray for the burning of it still sat on two bricks in the centre of the room.
The parlour was unchanged. There’d been good times once in that parlour. Jenny turned on the wireless, and to the sound of modern music, she made a start while Gertrude made a start in the kitchen.
Maisy directed the Duckworth men, who couldn’t get out of Woody Creek until the train went through that night. She had a big shed in her backyard and rooms to spare. She’d store Norman’s furniture until it was needed. Mick Boyle had offered his dray to move the furniture across the road.
The men and Maisy emptied Amber’s room, then moved into Sissy’s. Jenny wrapped Norman’s peacock feathers in an old sheet, wrapped the blue-green vase in newspaper, then piece by piece emptied her grandmother’s cabinet of that prized tea set, wrapping each item in newspaper before placing it carefully into a cardboard carton. The Queen Victoria vase was wrapped, the wedding photograph was taken down.
Jenny looked at Norman and his pretty bride, who had never looked at her. For years, that pretty bride had been the only mother Jenny had known. It was Amber, but it wasn’t. She wrapped it.
Norman’s clothes were folded into a chaff bag. The church ladies would hand them out to the needy. Maisy packed Sissy’s clothes into a case which would return with the Duckworths to the city.
‘What should I do with that wedding frock, Mrs Foote?’ Sissy’s wedding frock, which Norman had paid dearly for, was already packed with tissue paper into a long box.
‘It’s no use sending that down to her. I’ll see if Miss Blunt can sell it to someone,’ Gertrude said.
‘Give it to her,’ Jenny said.
‘What should I do with Amber’s clothes, Mrs Foote?’
‘Burn them,’ Jenny said.
In the late afternoon they turned off Norman’s wireless and carried it out to the dray, rolled up the velvet carpet. Gertrude thought it might cover the uneven boards in the lean-to but Jenny didn’t want it there. It was loaded onto the dray to be stored in Maisy’s shed. Norman’s wireless would move down to Gertrude’s house. Harry might be able to connect it up to a truck battery. Mick Boyle said he’d deliver it, if not tonight then tomorrow.
They loaded sheets, pillow slips and towels into the rear of Maisy’s car with a few pots and pans and the pantry items. Gertrude could use them. A few books were loaded into Maisy’s car too, including Norman’s book on birds.
The Duckworth men left with the train at seven. Jenny stood at Norman’s back fence, watching until it was out of sight. She waved to it, wanting to believe that Norman’s spirit was on it, going home with the Duckworths. She knew she should have wept for him, but not in this place. Too many tears had already been poured into the black hole of that railway house.
They’d forgotten about the washhouse. Norman’s bike was out there; the child’s bike seat was there, roped to a rafter, his tool box was behind the door.
Jenny wheeled the bike out, ran her hands over the handlebars, and told herself that maybe in time Norman would have taken his grandchildren riding, that maybe, in time, he would have told them he was proud of them.
Probably not.
‘Ready, darlin’?’ Maisy and Gertrude were waiting for her on the back verandah. The electricity had been turned off.
Jenny carried the tool box to Maisy’s car. It was heavy but she was strong. Gertrude said so. She untied the rope holding the child’s seat. They loaded it.
‘I’ll ride his bike home, Granny.’
Gertrude didn’t argue. She and Maisy drove away and the house was Jenny’s own, just for a while.
She walked the rooms in the dark, checking the windows, her footsteps sounding hollow in the empty rooms. She touched walls, attempting to find the ghost of little Jenny, who had for a time lived happily in this house with Norman.
There was nothing left of her. Just the rattle of Sissy’s undraped window. She locked the front door, and for the last time walked that passage. Out to the back verandah then, key in the back door lock. She turned it.
Finished. The end.
Constable Denham had asked her to drop the keys back to him when they were done. As she walked over the road, she looked back. Just an empty railway house, waiting for its new family.
The stars were out. She stood for a moment, staring up at a sky ablaze with tiny candles. Norman had believed emphatically in God and an afterlife. If he’d been right, then he was already up there calling God’s meetings to order. If he was wrong . . .
Denham sat on his verandah smoking, waiting for the keys. She crossed the road.
JULIANA CONTI
The lamp was burning when Gertrude and Maisy entered the house, the kettle singing. They’d driven away at ten forty that morning and had told Elsie to expect them when she saw them. Elsie had anticipated their arrival home. She’d lit that lamp and left a casserole in the oven.
There’d been two burials today for Gertrude: Norman’s and Amber’s. There’d be no more fooling herself. She’d lost her daughter many years ago. Today she’d gone into that hole with Norman. It was over.
It was over, but a terrible sadness lingered in her heart, an awful guilt, an aching emptiness.
She dumped an armful of linen onto her old cane couch, worn ragged by climbing kids. She’d looked at Norman’s couch today and considered replacing her own with it, but it would have taken up more space than she had to spare.
Maisy dumped a second load of linen. They went back and forth to the car unloading it.
Jenny had wanted the tool box. Together the women lifted it out and placed it beside Gertrude’s cart, just until tomorrow. Pots and pans, superior to Gertrude’s, were carried in and piled on her table. The child’s bike seat was placed in the cart, just until tomorrow.
‘Off you go now, love, and thanks for everything,’ Gertrude said. The motor had been left running, the car lights left blazing.
‘I know Jenny said to get rid of Amber’s clothes. It’s just . . . her mother will need something for the trial.’
‘There’ll be no trial. Denham was saying today that they’ve got all of her old medical records.’
She’d slashed and smashed that man while he’d slept, and probably on the Saturday night when he’d ridden home with his eggs and tomatoes.
Why had he ridden down? Had he come to speak about Amber, or to get away from her? He’d
said little. He should have — should have cursed Gertrude for bringing Amber back into his life. But that had never been Norman’s way. He’d never blamed her. Hadn’t needed to. She’d been blaming herself for years. It was her fault that those little schoolgirls had been murdered — and maybe those newborn baby boys at the hospital the day before she attacked Jenny. The police were now trying to connect her with their deaths. It was possible — if she’d believed one of them to be Jenny’s newborn. That’s what Jenny believed.
All my fault, Gertrude thought. I should have listened to Vern when Ogden found her at the asylum. He told me to walk away. Norman wanted me to walk away. So many lives lost because of my interference. Jenny’s life ruined because of my interference.
‘It’s so terrible, Mrs Foote. It’s just . . . it’s all so . . . unbelievable. I’ve known her since I was five years old.’
‘I’ve known her longer, love, and it goes beyond finding words to describe it. Go home now and put your feet up. It’s been a long day for all of us.’
‘I just hope Jenny is —’
‘She’s strong.’ Gertrude hoped she was strong enough. ‘She’s had no time alone since they found her dad. She needs tonight.’ As did Gertrude. She wanted to sit out beneath the stars and let the moon wash her soul clean. Maisy didn’t understand that need to be alone. Maybe she’d never been alone.
‘Amber had a couple of nice things. They’d fit Jenny.’
Gertrude released a sigh from deep, deep down. ‘Jenny would go naked before she’d wear any of them — and I’d see her running around naked before I’d let her. If it wasn’t such a waste, I’d tell you to burn the lot.’ She kissed Maisy’s cheek, thanked her again for her help, and finally, finally the night swallowed up those car lights.
The kettle was boiling. The casserole was hot but Gertrude wasn’t hungry.
‘A cup of tea,’ she sighed. ‘A cup of tea and some silence.’
And she heard boards move in the lean-to.
‘Jenny, is that you, darlin’?’ How had she beaten her home? She couldn’t have. ‘Is that one of you kids?’
It wasn’t Jenny, or one of Elsie’s kids.
‘Something a little stronger than tea might go down well, Tru.’
He came out from behind the green curtain, his dark-rimmed glasses a contrast against the white hair, the white well-trimmed beard. He was wearing a dark suit and hat, holding a book in his hand, the book Jenny had been reading when Denham rode down to tell them Norman had been found — one of his own books.
Gertrude dropped her teapot. It bounced across the floor, tea and tea-leaves spraying, the lid rolling.
‘I thought that woman would never leave,’ he said.
Shock, guilt, loss, weariness threatening to overwhelm her, Gertrude grabbed for her mantelpiece and pleaded with her legs not to let her down, not now, not in front of him.
They’d held her up on the day she’d hunted him with her rifle when Amber was thirteen, but she had no rifle tonight. She’d given it to Harry years ago. Her poker was leaning against the stove hob. A good solid poker. She reached for it, gripped it.
‘Get out of my house, you viper.’
And the viper laughed at her. ‘I had hoped we were past the age of combat, Tru.’
How long had he been here? Long enough to find the money she kept in her bottom drawer, to find Jenny’s prized earrings. And the stranger’s brooch! He’d come from the lean-to. That brooch was in a shoe box on top of the lean-to wardrobe. He’d found that brooch —
She took a reflex step towards the lean-to. Took that same step back, closer to her boiling kettle. She’d scald him if she had to. She’d smash his head in with that poker and feel no more than if she smashed in the head of a striking snake.
The table was between them, the open door to her right. She wanted him out that door but was afraid the brooch and Jenny’s earrings would go with him.
If she yelled, Harry and Lenny would come. The last time a snake had slithered into her house, she’d yelled loud enough to bring them running.
Harry and Elsie thought he was dead. Only Vern knew he wasn’t, Vern who hadn’t been able to meet her eyes at the funeral. Vern, who she knew too well, who made every post a winner. He was going to use what had happened to go after Jimmy. She knew it in her bones.
Men and their bastardry.
And that bastard had retrieved the teapot, picked up the lid and placed it on the pot. He held it out and, when she didn’t take it, he placed it down amid the clutter on her table and drew Vern’s chair out — thinking to sit?
‘You won’t sit down in my house.’
‘Have pity,’ he said. ‘The legs grow old and weary.’ He had to be eighty. He didn’t look it. ‘Where is the girl?’
‘Your daughter is on her way to a madhouse for life, where you drove her, like you drove your own sister, you bastard of a man. You’ve ruined everything you’ve ever touched.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I was led to believe I would find Jennifer with you.’ And he sat and placed his hat on the teapot, and had the audacity to smile. ‘You always were one for truth, Tru. There comes a time when the truth must out. I have a vested interest in that girl.’
‘You think I don’t know about your vested interest? You think I didn’t know it every time I cut that little girl’s hair, every time I heard her sing? You think I didn’t see you in her every time I looked into her face?’ She didn’t like the sound of her voice; she had to hold herself together. She breathed deeply as she raised the poker. ‘You’re a greater fool than I gave you credit for being, Archie Foote.’
Her knowledge took him aback. He’d had a very fine tale to tell, and she’d taken the shine off it — but only for an instant. He’d always had the recoil of a striking snake.
‘In different circumstances we may have made a formidable team, Tru —’
‘Who was her mother?’
‘You have brandy.’ More statement than question.
Two bottles stood side by side on top of her dresser, an inch of rum in one, three inches of brandy in the other.
‘Who was she?’
‘A tenacious woman. I attempted to return her to her husband. Alas, she would not go. Just a wee nip for the heart; it’s not all it used to be.’
She could have swung that poker at his head there and then, and kept on swinging it. Could have dragged him down to the orchard by his skinny ankles and planted him. Whatever had gone wrong with Amber, he’d been the cause of it. She hated him as she’d hated no other in her life. She feared him, too, or had once. There was not much left of him now to fear. And he had the answers. For twenty-two years she’d wanted answers. Play her cards right and she may yet wring something worthwhile from that bastard of a man — and from this bastard of a week.
She reached for one of her drinking glasses, then for the bottle of brandy. His aging hand wanted it. She placed the glass down but held onto the bottle.
‘Still withholding your favours, Tru,’ he said. ‘Tut-tut.’
‘That woman died on my couch. Who was she?’
‘What’s in a name? You know me — love ’em and leave ’em wanting more.’ He had the glass. She had the brandy. Again he smiled. ‘Juliana Conti, if I recall correctly — a rich man’s wife I borrowed for a time.’
He’d never told the truth if a lie would do as well, but the name matched the initials on the handkerchief. She poured half an inch into his glass.
‘You had her out to Monk’s place.’
‘No.’ He sipped, grimaced. ‘All water long passed under the bridge, Tru.’ He emptied the glass and, grimace or not, held it out for just a little more.
‘She was running from you the night she died,’ Gertrude said.
‘On the contrary, I assure you.’ The glass was extended but Gertrude wasn’t pouring. ‘Had I the answers, they would all be yours tonight — even for such poor brandy. Alas, the answers are not mine to give, having unsuccessfully attempted to return her to the boso
m of her family, I made a hasty retreat to the sanctuary of my cousin. When last I saw Signora Conti, she was cursing me to hell in a hotel room. I can only assume she took it into her head to pursue me.’
Gertrude gave him the bottle. He poured a good splash. ‘A little water may cut it. Would you have such a thing in this godforsaken hole?’
She wasn’t fetching him water. ‘You knew Jenny was yours when you were up here that time at Duffy’s.’
‘During my blue period,’ he said. ‘I heard her voice at an infants’ concert. Woody Creek hadn’t bred it. I heard her today. She has an incredible range and a unique tone. She wants only for guidance.’
‘Down the same path you guided Amber.’
He sipped. ‘You are speaking to a dead man newly arisen and cleansed of all sin — or too old to sin more. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .’ He sipped again. ‘Were I a believer, no doubt I’d cringe in fear of hell for my most grievous, previous sins. Again, alas.’ Another sip. ‘My dear sister Victoria having so very conveniently gone to her maker, I now find myself in possession of the old bastard’s house and money. He wasted my voice. I’ll take great delight in spending his money on putting his illegitimate granddaughter on the world stage.’
He’d always craved the limelight. He’d had the voice. He’d charmed the natives out of the jungles with it — had charmed an eighteen-year-old fool of a girl with his voice.
‘If you hadn’t spent your life —’ She fell silent and turned towards the door. She’d heard something.
‘Jennifer?’ he said.
It would be Jenny, but she lied. ‘It will be Harry come over to check that I’m home.’
Archie Foote had never been a fighting man. Having no desire to be thrown out, he stood and reached for his hat. ‘For my own satisfaction only, tell me, Tru — was the brooch found on Juliana that night?’
Relief washed from Gertrude’s head to her heels. He didn’t have it. ‘What brooch?’
‘A classic. Quite a spectacular thing. The woman never moved without it. I have walked the path she must have taken many times, combed the area where she was found — during my blue period.’