by Joy Dettman
By early November, the jacarandas were a barrier of blue guarding the doors of Templeton’s old shed, closed now, locked fast. No wool waited on the shelves, no more polyester filling popped like snow from its bales. The thriving clown-doll business had been moved on to the storeroom behind the church hall. By the same spring, Stella Templeton was bursting out all over. Her waist was lost, and her breasts, once small crab-apples, had ripened into plump peaches.
Bonny had taken her shopping for maternity jeans when they went to Dorby for the tests. ‘Too baggy,’ she’d said to the shop assistant, just as she had so many years ago. ‘Show us a size smaller,’ she’d said.
She’d driven to the hospital, held Stella’s hand while the amniotic fluid was drawn, then she’d prayed with her until the tests came back.
Safe. The tiny being was safe.
They’d watched the ultrasound together, prematurely viewing a new life. Small perfect fingers. Tiny profile. Small mouth opening, closing.
Stella had wept then, wept for a long time, and she wept hard, but Bonny had held her, kissed her, wept with her. Then they’d taken the video home to Bonny’s place and since had replayed it over and over.
Bonny was certain it was a girl. Having produced five boys, she knew exactly where to look for a small penis and she hadn’t sighted one. They both agreed that the infant had a feminine look.
‘Was he handsome, Stell, or ugly? Was he tall, or short?’ Bonny wanted to believe unreservedly in the tale of the American lover who Stella said she’d slept with at the Penrith Motel after a night of drinking peach cooler, but she couldn’t quite see it happening. Also, she had her own very good reasons for doubting this tale, though she never expressed her doubts. There had been something going on in the shed the day Tommy Spencer went missing, on the day Bonny had arrived with her apple cobbler. She hadn’t told a soul, except Len, but he didn’t count because she told him everything, and he had a mouth like a steel trap.
‘I peeped in through that knot hole in the side door, and for a split second, I sighted Stell against the light from the side window. She was as naked as the day she was born, Len. Then she sort of smiled – you know that secret Stella smile, and she put on a man’s shirt. A big blue shirt.’
‘So what?’
‘So Steve Smith’s a big bloke, and he wears a lot of blue. That’s so what.’
Mrs Morris also knew about Stella’s lover, but her version differed. She’d gleaned her information in the doctor’s waiting room, and from Parsons’ own mouth. Her voice low and conspiratorial, she was passing on some gossip to Mrs Murphy. Her husband and six or eight neighbours could hear her well enough to get the gist of it.
‘I’ve known since July, Mrs Murphy, but for my own good reasons, I’ve kept it under my hat.’
‘She’s flaunting it around town. Do go on, Mrs Morris.’
‘Well, you see I went down to the surgery for my blood-pressure prescription on the Monday, early, and I saw Stella Templeton coming out. Parsons had his hand on her shoulder. “You won’t think about it, lass. You’ll have those tests and no argument,” he says to her. Then he sees me, and she sees me, and she scuttles off.’
‘Oh, the poor girl. Is it cancer, I’m thinking. Remember how he sent Mrs Carter over to Dorby for her tests? Dead in six weeks, she was.’
‘I do, dear.’
‘Yes. Well, I was thinking that Stella had been looking too pleased with herself to have a tumour, so I asked him, and he says to me, “I know I can rely on you not to mention this to anyone, Mrs Morris.”
“‘Of course you can, Doctor. Is it cancer?” I say. “We’re all so fond of Stella.”
“‘She’s pregnant,” he says. Comes straight out with it too. Well, my dear, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Then he takes out my card and walks me into the surgery and he tries to change the subject. “So what can I do for you this morning?” he says.
“‘Me?” I say. “Don’t you worry about me, Doctor. Just give me my pills. I’m more worried about our Stella. I mean, who could she have done it with? Was it Steve Smith?” I thought of him first off, of course – after that night they spent in Dorby.
“‘Shame on you for asking,” he says, and he scribbles out my prescription, his mouth sealed.
“‘I wouldn’t tell a soul, you know me, Doctor,” I say to him, and he says back, “That I do, Mrs Morris. That I certainly do. I have always been impressed by your discretion.” He passes me the prescription, but I can see he wants to talk about it, so I keep sitting there. I won’t budge.
“‘It was that Steve Smith, I’ll give you ten-to-one odds,” I say. “Why hasn’t he married her? Is he going to marry her?”
‘He shakes his head and looks at me, real serious. “This is for your ears only. You realise that,” he says.
“‘Of course it is, Doctor,” I said. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”
“‘Stella came to me, saying she’d had a strange dream, of a visitation from God. Well, her being a maiden lady, as you know they can be prone to flights of fancy.”
“‘Oh yes, yes indeed I do,” I agreed. Menopause can be that hard on an unmarried woman, I said to him. Then I remembered her telling me about a strange dream that I was in, so I tells him that and he says: “Good Lord. You mean, you are to be one of the chosen?” He comes around the desk and he starts taking my blood pressure, and putting his stethoscope on my stomach. “It’s got me beat, Mrs Morris,” he says. “I examined her of course. She’s intact as I expected, but undeniably pregnant. Never yet in all the years I’ve been practising have I diagnosed pregnancy when the hymen is intact – though a few of my patients may have claimed to be virgins. Have you had any dreams yourself? Sexual, I mean?”
‘Well I didn’t like doing it, but I had to, you see. So I tell him that dream I was telling you, the one I blamed on the prawn and avocado pancake that we had down at the coffee shop . . . the one about me and young Roy Thomson. Well, did Parsons go off then. He hits his head with his hand. “Good God,” he says. “Good God. Go into the examination room, Mrs Morris. There are eleven pregnant women in town all due around Christmas, and it appears that you are to be the twelfth.”
“‘Be buggered,” I said to him. “Be buggered to that. I’m not going into any bloody examination room. I just came down here for my blood-pressure pills.”
“‘Be it on your head, Mrs Morris,” he says, “But I’m warning you now, keep your eye out for symptoms. In the dream, Stella said there were to be twelve, plus her own. Perhaps I’ll just do a pregnancy test, while I’ve got you here.”’
Mrs Murphy’s eyes were wide behind her bottle-top spectacles, her jaw was sagging as Mrs Morris’s voice rose.
‘Well, my dear, I said to him in no uncertain manner, “I’ll remind you Doctor Parsons, that I had a hysterectomy at fifty-five, as you well know – seeing as you did it.”’
“‘Could be ectopic. God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform,” he said. “And young Roy. I always thought he had an uncanny resemblance to Jesus. That long blond hair. You are certain that it was he, and not – ”’
‘Oh, my God!’ Mrs Murphy took three steps back. She covered her mouth as she stared at her neighbour’s sagging stomach. ‘Oh, my God. He does look like him, Mrs Morris. He does. I’ve always said it. You’ve always said it – ’
‘It was young Roy, I tell you. I’ll stake my life on it, but it gave me a funny feeling, I can tell you straight. I got myself home in a hurry and took an extra blood-pressure pill and two migraine pills, just to be on the safe side.’
‘My God.’ Mrs Murphy’s eyes were wide.
‘You said it, Mrs Murphy. I’m willing to swear that it’s our own immaculate conception. God has chosen Maidenville, and by the sounds of it, there’s a whole clutch of women involved.
‘Young Kelly, Spud’s girl. She’s due around November. She could be the twelfth.’
‘God wouldn’t impregnate a little slut, Mrs Murphy! He’d be a bit mo
re choosy than that. But Stella. Didn’t I always say to you that Stella was halfway between saint and martyr? Didn’t I always say it?’
‘You certainly said she was a martyr, Mrs Morris. My word, and her an Anglican too. Did he say what religion the other eleven were?’
‘No. I didn’t think to ask him. But imagine what a thing like this will do for the town. It will put Maidenville on the map, Mrs Murphy.’
‘Won’t it be a real slap in the eye for the Catholics?’
Martin Templeton felt as if he’d been slapped between the eyes with a lead-weighted cosh. He was now keeping his head down, and no longer nagging to return to the big house where he must each day confront his own confusion, plus a ballooning daughter, who was showing no shame or remorse at all.
But there were moments in each day when he felt tremors of excitement at the very thought of . . . of it. Then there were the other times, the times of acute embarrassment when in town, people looked at him oddly, spoke behind their hands. It was all he could do to get himself away from the smiling faces that had once been so subservient.
Too much on my mind lately – too much and still growing, he thought. Growing bigger daily. Looking at her growth last Sunday, he forgot where he was in the middle of his sermon, and frequently now he found himself in shops or backyards, but couldn’t remember why he was there. Baptism? Funeral? Milk? Bread? At these time he was forced to return to his Packard, and to sit a moment, collect his thoughts.
The Packard was the only stability in his life. Stella had registered and insured it for his eighty-sixth birthday. It was parked each night, half in and half out of the small garage attached to his unit.
Each morning he drove it the three blocks to town to collect his newspaper. It was the one joy, the one bright spark in his life. He felt safe in his Packard, even if other users of the roads felt less secure with him back on the road. Still, in the Packard, they could see him coming a half-mile away and make their early detours.
Mrs Morris and Mrs Murphy never detoured. Together they bailed Martin up in the cafe on a Thursday in early November, and he couldn’t see a way around them. The milk in one hand, his keys in the other, he glared at the duo, willing them gone.
They remained.
‘So you’re going to be a grand-daddy at last, Mr Templeton,’ the one with the bottle-top glasses said.
‘A new little angel in our town,’ the fat one with the starched hair added.
He nodded. He coughed and he muttered, ‘Life happens, Mrs . . . Mrs . . . ’
Life happens. Why did he say that? Because he was seeing too much of Arnold Parsons, that’s why. He was being reconditioned, overhauled, re-programmed by Arnold Parsons and . . . and by the future.
‘Life happens. Seasons change. The world goes on,’ Parsons said.
And it was true. Although Martin was loath to admit it, in some primitive part of his mind, in a place too long denied, there was a small petal of change opening to life. It was smiling ‘grandchild’. It was thinking of a few years without constant burials and weddings. It was thinking of a life where small hands might again beg to comb his mane of hair, where small hands might lay warm in his own huge hand, and small white things might flap again on the clothesline. It was thinking of the scent of new life, and of being able to hold a new life’s warmth to his heart without fear of accusations.
And for the first time in more than forty years he could see a line, a long line extending forward, its unravelled threads, re-woven, re-joined – and by a bloody Yank! Still, there were moments when he wanted to thank, to shake the hand of the unprincipled swine for giving him back a small part of immortality.
A grandson – and a Templeton.
God! What was he supposed to think, to feel? Was he celebrating the fact that his daughter would give birth outside of matrimony?
‘Templeton. Martin junior . . . or John. John Martin Templeton.’
Back in his Packard, he brushed the two women aside as he might two bothersome wasps. It was not minister-like, and he shook his head at his behaviour. Too much on my mind, he told the steering wheel. I will feel better . . . later, when Stella’s damnable traveller returns and makes an honest woman of her – hopefully before the event. He’d have to hurry. The swine. Far better that it had been that long-haired, guitar-playing lout.
But then the child would not be born a Templeton. Peter? John? Paul?
Stella had spoken not one word about her traveller since that day in Sydney, and Martin had not dared to ask.
Damn the nineties. What was left of the world he had once known and understood? He’d had the best of it. What we have left for future generations is not going to be worth much, he thought. Women bearing children out of wedlock, and having the audacity to walk around town as if they were proud of it. His own daughter, and during the years when she should have been well past those sorts of shenanigans. What was the world coming to? It was doomed. Doomed. God help this child. What sort of a society would be left for him/her?
Perhaps it would be a girl. Still, he had always wanted a son, his own lost to Angel’s knitting needle. A son. Yes. A fine sturdy little boy – although a little girl has a sweetness about her, he thought. What did it matter? Children. Small voices tinkling in the old rooms.
‘Papa.’
If she married the swine, then there may be more than one. Angel had been in her late forties when she bore Stella –
What a mess. What a fine mess it has all become. I can no longer reach a decision as to what my own response to this mess should be. I cannot condone it; I certainly do not condone it; however I cannot deny my . . . my own interest in the outcome. I certainly cannot deny that.
‘Papa.’
But she’s spending money like water. What does a woman in her situation want with a confounded computer machine? Three thousand dollars worth of electronics on which to tap out her silly little tales. And what was wrong with the old typewriter? That’s what he wanted to know. She had a perfectly good typewriter at her disposal. Angel had typed his sermons up on it for years before Stella was born. It was still in immaculate condition.
Immaculate? Perhaps he should work on that rumour. Slot it into one of his sermons. Next Sunday. Just a word. Yes. He would speak of Mary, and of Jesus’ birth. After all, Christmas was not far away.
He sighed deeply and pressed the starter. The Packard’s motor hummed into life. Carefully Martin drove away, pleased to escape the town and the stares.
He drove around the back roads for half an hour before making a stop at Jennison’s to fill the tank and talk motors a while. Then it was back to his neat little unit, with its gas heater, and its microwave that could do anything from boil water for a cup of tea, to rid the quite tasty Meal on Wheels of bacteria and other micro-organisms.
Stella no longer came each morning to prepare lunch, but they always ate their evening meals together.
Life had reached out and cut Stella Templeton, cut her deeply, but cuts heal, given time, if the flesh is strong. And some leave the minimum of scars.
The earth over the roots of the old cypress hedge had healed; it was as if it had never been. Replaced now by a neat white picket fence, passers-by came to lean, to admire the riotous garden blooming out of control behind it, and to peep with awe-filled eyes at the gardener’s thickening waist.
Stella often sang as she went about her weeding, and some nights a light baritone blended with her own pure voice. Many walkers stopped a while to listen and to wonder just what had become of the small beige sparrow once trapped in the minister’s cage.
That colourless little bird had flown the coop.
Epilogue
Stella named her first novel Screenings. Steve Smith read the new manuscript. It was he who suggested the name – suggested it as he held her eye.
She flinched, shook her head, then turned her face to the window, and to the jacarandas, and to the shed outside the window. She coughed, stared hard into the dark. ‘I . . . I like it, Steve. It suits
the villain – relates to her addiction to midnight movies, but – ’
He handed the pages back to her. ‘Up to you, Stell. Just a suggestion.’ He reached out and took her hand, shook her hand. ‘I’m proud to know you. Bloody proud to know you,’ he said, shaking her hand for a long time.
‘And I you, Steve.’
‘Just to put it on record,’ he said. ‘There’s something I’ve got to ask you tonight.’
She thought he was about to question her story-line, or the tying up of the plot. She turned her eyes to his, eager for his question.
‘Well, do you trust me?’
‘Of course I trust you.’
‘Completely? Totally? No reservations?’
She smiled, nodded. ‘You are the only one in town I’ve allowed to read my manuscript – which must mean I trust you, completely, totally, no reservations, and that I value your opinion above all others, Steve.’
‘So you don’t reckon that I’m a complete moron then?’
Stella shook her head. ‘What is it? Where Matthew covers up for Seraphini? I’ve been concerned about that, but I believe this is what his character – ’
‘No. No. It’s not about – ’ He tapped the manuscript, then dragged the rubber band from his hair. ‘Do you think I should get my hair cut off?’
‘No. Never. It would not be you.’
‘Okay. I won’t then,’ he said, replacing his rubber band. ‘I want things to be straight down the line with us, Stell. Always.’
‘Such as haircuts,’ she nodded seriously, but could not hold back a smile.
‘Yeah. Haircuts, and some other stuff too. Such as . . . well. That little bloke you’re growing. I mean, as if I, of all people, don’t know you better than to think you’d go jumping into bed with some strange Yank you’d known for a few hours. I’ve fed you a bit of wine in my time. It never did me much good, as I recall.’
She shook her head and stood, her smile wiped away. She walked to the sink where she made much ado about pouring a glass of water, but he followed her to the sink and he stood beside her, his eyes turned to the shed.