by Joy Dettman
30 June 1933
Doctor J.T. Waters
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your report of the seventeenth. I am relieved to hear of Mrs Morrison’s continuing improvement and congratulate you. You state in your letter that she is eager to see her daughter. She should be made aware that she has two daughters, sir, both as eager to see their mother, however, at this time, it would not be in their best interests to reopen old wounds. If in time her recovery is proven, I will re-evaluate the situation.
Further to your letter: I am prepared to offer Mrs Morrison a reference stating that prior to her illness she was an excellent pastry cook with good housekeeping skills, certainly sufficient to secure for her a position in some large establishment. Her monetary independence can only be beneficial to her continued recovery.
Your faithfully, N.J. Morrison
6 July 1933
Doctor J.T. Waters,
Please find enclosed cheque.
G. Foote
18 July 1933
Doctor J.T. Walters,
Dear Sir,
Further to our last correspondence, accommodation has been secured for Mrs Morrison at a respectable rooming house in Richmond. Details below. Until such time as she is well enough to find employment, I will cover the cost of her lodgings.
As to suitable clothing, the Reverend Duckworth and his wife have offered to secure for her an adequate wardrobe, which will be delivered to your establishment prior to her release.
Yours faithfully, N.J. Morrison
1 August 1933
Dear Doctor J.T. Walters,
Please find cheque for July’s account, with my gratitude. Yours sincerely, Gertrude Foote
5 August 1933
Dear Norman,
There’s nothing I can say except I’m sorry . . .
There was more, much more, two pages more, though Norman read no more. Had he recognised the handwriting on the envelope, he would not have broken the seal. He felt disgust, revulsion at the handling of the paper, and quickly lifted the stove’s central hotplate, thrusting pages and envelope into the embers. Only when it flared did he think of Gertrude, who may well have been pleased to read it. She had paid for her daughter’s cure in a private sanatorium and clinic at no small cost, but had heard not a word from her.
Maisy was in touch. Her engaged daughter, who travelled each month to the city to spend time with her fiancé, had visited Amber in Richmond. She was not immediately recognised, but seven years is a long time in the life of a young woman. Maureen Macdonald had grown from a shapeless thirteen into a womanly twenty. Maureen reported that Amber looked like hell, but seemed well.
Then in late August, Maisy came to the station with pages of familiar handwriting, addressed to My darling daughters.
‘I’ve read it, Norman. There’s nothing in it that they shouldn’t see.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘They’d love to —’
Norman stepped back, lifting a hand to keep her and that defiled thing at bay.
‘Sissy is fourteen,’ Maisy said.
He did not need to be told his daughter’s age, nor did he require any further disruption to her life. She had been eight when Amber left and remembered her well. He had not been able to keep her mother’s rise from the dead from her, nor from Jennifer, though he had tried. Jennifer had no memory of the woman, but was enchanted by the idea of ‘mother’.
‘I understand how you feel,’ Maisy said. ‘And I won’t go against your decision. But I’m telling you now, Norman, if they find out when they’re older that she wrote to them and you wouldn’t let them read the letter, they’ll hold it against you for life.’
‘So be it,’ he said.
She turned to leave, but changed her mind.
‘Someone has probably told you I was born, as they say, on the wrong side of the blanket. My mother got herself into trouble when she was sixteen. Her aunty raised me to believe my mother didn’t give a damn about me. I didn’t know she wrote until I started working for George and he came home from the post office one day with a birthday card addressed to me, a ten-shilling note in it. She’d sent me a card and money every year, and I’d never seen card nor money. She died the year Maureen was born. I never got to see her. My aunty died a few years later and everyone thought I was terrible because I didn’t go to her funeral.’ She placed the folded page on the station windowsill. ‘At least think about it,’ she said and she left.
A gust of wind blew the thing to his platform. He could not leave it there. He retrieved it and took it into his office, where with fingertips he opened its folds.
My darling daughters,
It has been so long since I’ve seen you. I’ve been very sick but now I’m feeling well again and the one thing that could make me feel better still would be a letter from my darling girls . . .
The letter moved him. He offered the page that night after dinner, and later, the table wiped down well, he offered each of his girls a sheet of paper and a pen.
Few children remained in the schoolroom after their fourteenth birthday. Cecelia did not do well there, had no desire to be there, but her reading was barely adequate and her handwriting was not. Perhaps some good could come from this.
He sat with his girls, watched the pens dip into the well, overseeing each word written.
Dear Mummy,
We are well up here. I hope you are well down there . . .
Then Sissy’s desire to write waned. He suggested she tell her mother of her picnic at Hoopers’ farm.
I went out to Hoopers’ farm on Sunday and Jimmy drove all the way there. I made some toffee to take and put peanuts in it.
She looked at him for inspiration. He suggested a mention of school.
I’m old enough to leave school now but Dad won’t let me.
He suggested she begin again, and to delete mention of school. She refused to begin again, managed two more lines, and finished with, Love from Cecelia XXX.
Jenny’s pen continued to drink at the well. Her handwriting was large as yet, but well formed.
My dearest Mummy,
I wish I could remember you. Granny says I can’t because I was only about the size of a skun rabbit when you first got sick, so in case you can’t remember me either, I will put in a photo that Mr Mcpherson took at the concert last year. I’m the fairy in the middle with the magic wand. I had to touch all of the little flowers’ heads and wake them up so they could dance. Anyway, I asked Daddy if I ever looked like a skun rabbit and he said that I was as bald as a newborn mouse when I was born, which was really very funny because we were having dinner at Granny’s, and afterwards, when Joey and I went out to play in the shed, what should we find but six baby mice underneath some old wheat bags!!! They were about as big as my pointer finger and pink, so I took one inside and opened my hand to show to Daddy, and I said is that what I looked like when I got born? Exactly, he said . . .
She ran out of paper before she ran out of words. Lots of love, Jenny was squeezed into the bottom corner.
He addressed the envelope, included the snapshot taken at the concert of a fine-boned, slim-necked, slim-limbed fairy child with wings and wand and the crown of a princess perched on a mass of crinkling curls.
A shy child, his Jenny-wren, with a voice that charmed the town at the school concerts. She was his pride, his delight. Cecelia, though vastly improved, still had her moments. The walk to and from Gertrude’s property for their Sunday meal with her assisted in keeping the Duckworths’ curse of fat at bay. Cecelia was a solid girl, but hopefully, having passed her fourteenth birthday, had reached her adult height — which was not a lot less than Norman’s and made her occasional tantrums difficult to control.
So August ended and September arrived with its glorious cloud-free days. The girls looked for a reply to their communications but received none, due perhaps to Charles, who had found a position for Amber in a large city laundry, ironing. The wage was minimal, as was her rent at the boarding house. In
the past she had been efficient with the iron; perhaps in time she might become self-sufficient, Norman thought.
Then on a Friday morning in September, three passengers stepped down from the train: the Hooper women from the first-class carriage and a stranger from second class. He didn’t recognise the second-class traveller, a grey-clad, pinch-faced woman, her long straw-grey hair drawn back hard from her face, a grey beret covering much of it. He took the Hooper women’s tickets, reached for the stranger’s —
‘Hello, Norman.’
He dropped the ticket and turned quickly away, walked past his staring station lad and on trembling legs went about his business. She remained, watching him, waiting for him, a cheap hessian shopping bag weighing heavily on her arm. It was her only luggage.
The train, unconcerned that his world had been turned on its ear, puffed off to continue its journey, while Norman stood watching it go, praying that when he turned around she would be gone. Not to be. She was approaching. He could not evade her, but stepped for protection behind the station trolley.
‘Did you throw out my clothes, Norman?’
‘This will not do,’ he said.
‘All I want from you is my clothes — if you’ve still got them.’
‘You were . . .’ clothed by Charles Duckworth and his wife.
He glanced at a grey tweed skirt made for a larger woman, at a grey cardigan that had seen better days, at heavy shoes. Vengeance is mine . . . Charles and Jane had taken their cruel revenge.
‘You jeopardise your position, madam. It was not easily found.’
Found by Charles, guaranteed to steam the starch from her backbone, to wear her ladylike hands down to the bone . . .
‘I don’t work on Fridays.’
‘I have . . . I agreed to cover the cost of your room until you . . .’
‘Have you thrown my clothes out, Norman?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No. I will . . . will have them delivered to your mother.’
‘I’ll be at Maisy’s.’
He turned, walked west towards his house, turned back. ‘You will not come near the house.’
‘Whatever you say.’ And she was gone.
He walked to his side gate on legs unstable as straws. This had not been expected. This he could not deal with. Not on such a day. Better she had come in winter, in bitter weather; or in summer when the red winds tossed their dust over the town. Not today, not on such a glorious day.
He stood watching her cross the road, watching her open Maisy’s gate. The specialist of the mind might well claim to have effected a miraculous cure with his electricity, to have turned a diseased gutter trull into a productive laundress. He did not know the half of it — or knew only the half he had been told. But perhaps she had come for her clothing and would be gone tomorrow. It was not in his nature to discard anything of use. Her clothing was as she had left it, crowding his wardrobe, his drawers. He would gain needed space — and be rid of the last of her.
He drew a breath, lifted his jowls, watched her greeted on Maisy’s verandah, watched several Macdonald girls pour from the house, their colour absorbing her grey. She would not receive that same greeting from many. Woody Creek did not look kindly on absconding wives and mothers.
Maisy’s door closed and, with no more to see, Norman entered his own yard, diverting down to the washhouse for an empty carton. He had a stack of them and chose one of the largest. She had a position to return to, and certainly, with work not easy to find, she would not be fool enough to put that position in jeopardy. Certainly it was her intent to leave tomorrow. There was no train on Sunday.
And if she did not?
Norman shuddered and went inside to attack a task he’d delayed too long — the packing up of his dead wife’s belongings for . . . for charity. She was dead to him. He would be charitable and today all memory of her would be gone from his house — before his girls came in from school. They must not learn she was in town.
But of course they would learn. She was over the road with their Aunty Maisy and half a dozen of her big-mouthed daughters. And if the Macdonalds might be silenced, his station lad had seen her. The Hooper women had recognised her. He cringed and his trembling hands, filled with her light underwear, burned. He dropped the load to his bed and stepped back. His girls must be told, and by him. He would supervise a brief visit . . . tonight. They would deliver her clothing and . . .
He could see no further. He stood staring into the looking glass, attempting to see further. Saw his reflection staring back, saw the hand reaching for the scar on his shoulder, aching again, aching since he had seen her. A mental ache perhaps, but none the less severe. He looked towards his mother’s travelling case, placed many years ago on top of the wardrobe, and as he reached high to lift it down, the box containing Amber’s wedding gown fell, the dust of fifteen years showering him. It stung his eyes and his tears flowed — only to cleanse his eyes of dust, and his nose. He sniffed, shook away the blur, then, jowls trembling, his pudgy hands trembling, he flung drawers open, flung clothing into the case, flung it hard and harder, filling, overflowing the case he could barely see.
They came home separately, his girls, Jenny first. She heard him in the bedroom and came in. An experienced and efficient packer of cases, Norman, but not today. Items had scattered to the bed, the floor. The box containing her wedding dress upended, a froth of satin spilled out.
Jenny squatted beside the box, feeling the satin. ‘Is that Mummy’s wedding dress?’
He nodded, claimed the box, fixed the lid on, and she picked up a brown felt hat.
‘I almost remember that, Daddy.’
Better she did not remember. He claimed it too. The girls would be told, but together. He would speak the necessary words once. He sniffed. Norman was not a sniffer.
Five minutes later a banging door, a school case hitting the passage floor heralded Cecelia’s entrance. A kitchen cupboard opening, slamming. He sighed, left his packing and, with a hand on Jenny’s shoulder, guided her out to the kitchen, where he sat. They looked at him. He was not normally in the house at this time. Cecelia had cut one slice of bread and was working on the second.
‘Your mother is in town overnight. She has come for her belongings.’
‘Where?’ Two voices as one.
‘With your Aunt Maisy. After dinner we —’
They were gone, bread and jam forgotten on the table. They were out the front door and running, Jenny ahead, but not far ahead. He watched them to Maisy’s verandah, sighed for the fine day lost, for the spring sunshine he had been enjoying, then returned to the packing up of his wife, who was not the woman they had run to see. His pretty, laughing Amber was dead and would remain dead.
It took two trips across the road to be rid of her clothing. On his first trip, he carried his mother’s case and the large flat box containing the wedding gown, sealed tightly now with strong twine. On his second trip, he carried a large carton loaded high with shoes, hats, overcoat and jacket, old ballgown and sundry.
He had remained unsighted when he’d placed the case and box on the verandah, but on the second occasion, the oldest Macdonald girl saw him coming. She held the front door wide.
Maisy’s kitchen was a babble. She came from it and directed him to a small room at the rear.
‘She is leaving tomorrow,’ he said, more statement than question.
‘I said she could stay for the weekend, Norman.’
‘Her position . . .’
‘She said she doesn’t work on Mondays.’
‘Nor on Fridays, so it appears. Tell the girls they are required at home,’ he said, and he walked back to the verandah to wait.
They did not leave willingly, but on the third telling, they left.
He saw her on the Saturday, walking with Maisy. He recognised the striped frock, saw her hair; it had lost much of its brightness but refound its curl; her mother or Maisy had been at it with their scissors. From a distance, she looked . . . looked more herself.
&
nbsp; The girls visited with her for an hour on Saturday evening, but he filled their Sunday, walking them early to Gertrude’s to take the midday meal with her, walking them home in the late afternoon, and for once Cecelia led the way, eager to visit again with her mother.
He expected Amber would leave on the Tuesday train. He looked for her to come. She did not. He looked for her on Thursday. She did not leave, and each evening at six o’clock, he was knocking on Maisy’s door to retrieve his daughters.
Gertrude came to the station on Friday. He offered tea, but she’d taken tea with Maisy and her daughter.
‘She seems well,’ Gertrude said. ‘She’s very quiet, probably embarrassed that I saw her at that place. She’s on tablets — Maisy was saying that they’re some sort of blood-strengthening pill. She looks anaemic, thin as a rake, but she seems better than she’s been in years, Norman.’
‘Seems,’ he said. ‘The weather in Melbourne sometimes seems fine in the morning, Mother Foote — Gertrude,’ he corrected quickly. Years had passed since that old name had slipped out. He must not go back. He would not go back. ‘I have seen it change in the blink of an eye.’
‘I’m feeling hopeful, Norm.’
‘Hope can . . . can at times shield the mind from reality,’ he said.
‘Without it, what have we got?’
MIRACLES
The month continued to excel itself, each day brighter, warmer, than the last. Norman had no complaints with September — or perhaps one. Amber had taken root in Maisy’s rear bedroom. But he had never seen his girls happier or more sisterly. They sat at night at the dinner table relaying every word spoken by this miracle, their mother, always missing, always sick, now healed and returned to them — almost returned to them.
‘When is she coming home, Dad?’
‘Your Aunt Maisy has a spare room, Cecelia. We do not.’