Pearl in a Cage

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Move over, Sissy.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ Sissy hissed and kicked.

  ‘I’m sick, sick, sick of sleeping with you. Get over your own side or I’m calling Daddy.’

  Sissy kicked again, Jenny retaliated with her heel. Sissy belted her with her forearm, so Jenny grabbed a handful of her hair.

  Norman’s room was a wall away. He opened their door. ‘This is not fitting behaviour for young ladies. Apologise to each other.’

  ‘She started it.’

  ‘You started it. You kicked me because you weren’t allowed to wear my necklace to the pictures.’

  ‘It’s not your necklace —’

  ‘It will be claimed,’ Norman said.

  ‘Mr Denham said it would have been already, and finders keepers,’ Jenny said.

  ‘You probably pinched it from someone anyway,’ Sissy said.

  ‘Then why did I hand it in?’

  ‘Apologise, Cecelia. Apologise to each other.’

  They apologised, but didn’t mean it. He went back to bed. Sissy wanted the last hit. It wasn’t much of a hit, but tonight Jenny wasn’t going to let her win. Even a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist will take up arms to fight for what she believes is a just cause. That Alice Blue Gown was such a cause, and probably the Gazette with her photograph in it; six inches of bed was a just cause too, and that pendant she wasn’t allowed to wear until she was old — and everything.

  Norman came again. He rolled a blanket into a long sausage and placed it down the centre of the bed. ‘Your mother will leave tomorrow. I have had enough of this hoyden behaviour.’

  Sissy didn’t like that threat. She moved over to her own side of the bed.

  Vern Hooper gave Norman respite from decision. He invited Sissy to accompany his family to the beach for a fortnight. Amber didn’t want Sissy to go. Norman, always pleased to be rid of that daughter, gave her a five-pound note and told her to behave herself. She left with the Hoopers on the Thursday train, and Jenny had that entire bed to herself for fourteen days.

  And she had her mother to herself.

  On Friday evening, Norman took up his coin pouch and walked across the road to play poker. By seven thirty, Amber was sitting in the parlour, working on her embroidery, Jenny sitting half a room away, turning the pages of a city catalogue and attempting to think of a way to start a conversation with her mother. If Sissy was home, she would have been sitting beside Amber, showing her things in that catalogue.

  Maisy said that Amber was shy with Jenny because she’d left a baby and come home to a big girl. Maisy said that Sissy and Amber had been close before Amber had become unwell. Maisy said that if people made the first move with Amber, she met them halfway. Tonight Jenny was determined to make that first move.

  It took a while, but she finally found a page of shoes, some with heels that looked about four inches high; she took the open catalogue to the couch and sat. It was a long couch. She didn’t touch Amber, who, so busy with her embroidery, didn’t notice Jenny had moved. She sat flipping the pages, like Sissy flipped pages, and when she got back to the shoes, she took a deep breath and said: ‘Have you seen people walking in shoes like those, Mummy?’

  Amber glanced at the page, then made another stitch. Jenny sat watching that needle diving in and out, in and out, the silk thread following it until the silk grew too short and Amber had to place her embroidery down to rethread the needle. She was aiming that thread at the eye when Jenny reached out a finger to touch, not her mother, but a near-completed silk rose.

  ‘It’s like magic,’ she said. ‘That rose looks as if it would even smell like a rose.’

  Amber’s hand was shaking. She snipped a little from the thread, moistened it between her lips and lined it up again. This time the thread went through the eye.

  ‘I could thread the next one for you —’

  And Amber struck, like a single-fanged snake.

  A cat has springs in its legs. In the blink of an eye, a cat can place six feet between itself and danger, then land facing the enemy. Jenny was unaware of how she’d covered the distance between couch and passage, was not immediately aware of the needle stitching her frock to her thigh, or not until she pulled on the dangling maroon thread and pulled the needle out.

  The shock of the attack masked the pain, but that needle now on the hall table, her leg stung. She rubbed it, eyes wide with disbelief, mouth open. Her mother wasn’t even looking at her, or looking for her needle. She’d found another and was threading it with the same maroon silk.

  Jenny lifted her skirt, looked at the bead of blood, wiped it with her finger.

  ‘You’re . . . you’re a mirage.’

  Amber ignored her.

  ‘You’re like . . . like mirage water in the desert that looks so real people die of thirst trying to get to it. And they . . . they just . . . end up drinking sand.’

  ‘Bedtime,’ Amber said.

  Maisy’s twins said Amber had gone mad, hadn’t got sick. Maisy’s twins said . . . But Amber was getting to her feet so Jenny ran. Out the front door, out the gate and down to the post office.

  Didn’t know why she’d run that way, except there was a light at the window, and the post office door was recessed and dark, a good place to hide and keep watch from. She knew she should have gone to Maisy, but then Norman would have had to leave his game, and it was probably her own fault anyway. She should have stayed away from her, stayed in the kitchen, gone to bed. Granny knew about Amber’s invisible Do not touch sign. She didn’t try to get near her.

  She peeped around the recess. Amber wasn’t coming, and even if she did come out that gate, Mr Foster was in his office. She could hear a thump, thump, thump, almost like her heartbeat, then his thumping would stop but her heartbeat didn’t.

  The bottom half of the post office window had been painted so no one could see in, but if she stood on tiptoe she could see a bit through the top window. Keeping close to the wall, she crept down to see what he was thumping.

  Mr Foster was a twisted little gnome man, not often seen on the street. Behind the counter, or limping off to the Methodist church, he was always dressed in the same brown suit or maybe he had two suits cut from the same bolt of cloth. The kids at school made fun of him. They copied the way he walked. He wasn’t walking tonight, and he wasn’t wearing his brown suit either, just a shirt and waistcoat, with gold bracelet-like armbands to make his shirtsleeves short enough. People were more interesting when they didn’t know they were being watched, and even more interesting when you could see one small part of that person. She could only see his head, shoulders and arms tonight and he didn’t look twisted. And he had a moustache. Had he always had a moustache? He was thumping envelopes with his rubber stamp. Around Christmas and New Year, his pigeonholes were always full of mail.

  Shouldn’t be spying. It was bad manners to spy on people. She turned again to Maisy’s house, hoping Norman would lose all of his threepences fast and come home early. Most Fridays he didn’t get home until midnight.

  She walked back to the doorstep, felt with her hand for where a dog might have been, then sat. She shouldn’t have leaned back, because that door rattled, and when she took her back away from it, it rattled again. Up then, fast. He was coming. He wore a funny brown boot with a six-inch sole and heel that made him clunk when he walked. Always and forever she’d known that sound. Always and forever she’d known that he wasn’t dangerous, even if a lot of the kids at school said he was.

  She was standing, her back at his verandah post, when he opened the door. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you, Mr Foster.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed, lass?’

  ‘Daddy’s playing cards at the Macdonalds’.’

  He didn’t ask what her mother was doing. She thought he’d ask. And his open door was letting too much light out and it was shining right on her. She moved to the shadows of a tree growing over the fence between Norman’s yard and Mr Foster’s, and perhaps he saw her peering at her father’s house.

&
nbsp; ‘What time are you expecting your father home?’

  ‘Sometimes he comes early.’

  The lights were on at the police station. There was a streetlight out front of the town hall; it lit the road, lit a pale circle to Norman’s gate. And they saw that gate open, saw Amber step out, glance up and down the street.

  ‘Jennifer. Jennifer, I want you inside now,’ she called.

  Jenny didn’t move.

  Amber saw her neighbour and approached. Jenny broke cover and ran back to the post office step.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Morrison,’ the postmaster said.

  ‘Get home,’ Amber said.

  ‘I’m staying here,’ Jenny said, stepping up and into the post office. The little postmaster followed her and stood like a sentry guarding the door.

  ‘Get out of my way, you perversion of nature,’ Amber snarled.

  ‘There are perversions, Mrs Morrison, then there are corruptions, and given our history, perhaps we should not stoop to name-calling in front of the child.’

  ‘You like them young, do you? Or just take what you can get, you twisted ape.’

  ‘Twisted ape I may well be, Mrs Morrison, but I was never so wise as my three cousins. When I see evil, when I hear evil, I speak loudly of it.’

  He turned to the child who stood behind him, big eyes brimming. ‘The constable is still showing a light. Will you walk with me across the road, Jennifer?’

  ‘I want to just stay here with you,’ she said.

  An unmarried man of his appearance needed to step lightly. He chose not to that night. He closed the door on his neighbour, locked it against her, then took his little visitor down to his sitting room where he poured lemonade and offered fancy biscuits. And he had a wireless. Jenny visited with him until ten thirty, when he walked her home, and waited at the open door until she had ascertained that her mother was sleeping. Once Amber had swallowed her pills, she wouldn’t move until morning.

  RIPPLES IN THE CREEK

  If Mr Foster had one friend in town, it was Jean White. A busy woman, she was, like Norman, on every committee, but still found time most mornings to pop her head into the post office to pass the time of day. He waited for her on the Saturday morning, desperate for her advice on what he ought to do concerning his evening visitors. He was standing at his door at ten fifteen when the Fulton girl ran bawling from the grocery store, dodged Mick Boyle’s horse and dray, then ran into the constable’s yard. Seconds later, Denham ran ahead of her back to the grocery store. Something was amiss.

  Something was very amiss. Jean White was dead, dead behind the counter where, for the past thirty years, she’d spent most of her days. Dead, and nothing anyone could do about it. And Charlie, sitting on the floor, cradling her in his arms and howling.

  The Fulton girl ran home bawling. She told Alfred, Jean’s son-in-law, who came running, his wife behind him, to find Charlie refusing to release his first love, his only love, and old Charlie White howling was a sight to behold.

  Denham closed the store that morning and the town went into shock. Jean White had been in her mid-fifties. She’d never had a day’s illness.

  Not a soul complained when those twin green doors remained closed on Monday morning; if folk needed sugar, they borrowed from a neighbour. Most in town expected those doors to stay shut until after the funeral.

  A big funeral, half the town was there. Half the town saw tough old Charlie looking ten years older than his age and still bawling like a baby, holding on to his hysterical daughter, while Alfred attempted to hold both of them up with his one arm.

  A few expected those twin green doors to open on Tuesday. They didn’t, and folk who had lent their neighbours a cup of sugar had now run low on it. Tea canisters were empty, and how were you supposed to feed your kids when you had no flour? During these bad times, fried dough filled a lot of kids’ bellies. Those on susso were feeling the pinch. They lived from hand to mouth.

  Norman was out of butter, and he had a crate of it melting at the station, along with other grocery store stock. He and his station lad walked around the growing pile until more came in on Wednesday, when Norman took it upon himself to knock on Charlie’s door, express his concern for the family, and also for the perishables.

  Alfred contacted Mick Boyle. He delivered the stock from station to storeroom, and Alfred made the mistake of leaving the front doors open — and was near knocked down in the rush. He knew nothing about groceries. He hadn’t paid for a pound of butter since he’d wed, had no idea of the price of a packet of tea. Susso coupons meant nothing to him. He didn’t know where his in-laws kept their change drawer.

  ‘If one of you can go and get the Fulton girl, we might be able to serve you,’ Alfred said.

  Someone got Emma Fulton, who didn’t know where Charlie hid his change drawer, but knew the price of things, so they started writing dockets, which began an even greater rush in through those doors. Charlie wasn’t known for his charity. Word that he was giving tick got around fast.

  Around two that afternoon, Hilda noticed people walking by with full shopping bags. She told Charlie, who told her that the one-armed mug of a man she’d married could burn the bloody place down for all he cared. He could still see Jean lying on the floor behind the counter frothing at the mouth, could still feel the life draining out of her. Stroke, they’d diagnosed, massive stroke, vein burst in the brain, they said. He didn’t care what they said. She was gone and he was never again setting foot inside that bloody shop.

  ‘You’ve got responsibilities to the community, Dad,’ Hilda said.

  ‘Bugger the community,’ Charlie said and he turned again to stare at the passage wall, watching for shadows. Ten, fifteen, twenty times an hour he saw Jean’s shadow walk by to the kitchen, hurry into the bedroom. He knew she was gone, but here, in her house, he kept catching glimpses of her. He could hear her too, not that she said much that would have importance to most, but to him, her voice was a melody.

  ‘Charlie, how much did you put on that baking powder?

  What do you feel like for dinner, Charlie?

  Charlie is me darlin’, me darlin’, me darlin’ . . .’

  She was out there somewhere, clinging on like hell to the life they’d shared, and maybe waiting for him to come. And he wanted to go to her.

  On the Friday evening, while Charlie sat watching shadows, twenty-odd kids were swimming down at the bend behind Clarry Dobson’s place. Nelly Abbot was there with her big brothers. The day had been hot and the evening wasn’t cooling down. The older kids skylarked, dunking, diving, swinging out over the water on a rope; the younger kids stayed out of their way when they could, and yelled when they couldn’t.

  Nelly was small for her years but could swim like a fish. She was last seen waiting her turn to swing on the rope. No one noticed whether she’d had her turn or not. No one noticed she was missing until the light was almost gone. The crowd at the creek had thinned out. Her brothers thought she’d walked home with someone. One of the girls said she’d seen her running off into the bush. No lavatory down at the creek but plenty of trees. She’d probably come back, the girl said, though she couldn’t say for sure.

  ‘Nelly! You’d better not still be down here, because we’re going home,’ her brother yelled. They had been told to get home before dark.

  The Abbots lived on the north side of the lines, a couple of houses west of the hotel. The boys were home in minutes and Nelly wasn’t there.

  ‘Who was she with?’ Grace Abbot asked, not too concerned. ‘What were you thinking of, letting her walk off by herself?’ Ten minutes later and still no sign of Nelly, she was becoming concerned. She walked out to the street. ‘Nelly! Nelly!’ Kids coming from many directions. Nobody had seen Nelly — not after she’d run off into the bush.

  Panic then. ‘Get the constable. Go and get your father.’

  A dozen men were raised quickly from their parlours, a dozen lanterns lit, a dozen more joined them before they got to the creek.

&nb
sp; A pretty sight: lights glowing all along the curve of that creek, lights reflecting in the dark water, though there wasn’t much that could be seen by lantern light. Too many clumps of reeds took on the shape of a missing child. And logs too, logs creating ripples as the creek flowed around them.

  A hundred searchers, men and women, were down there by ten, shining flashlights into the forest alongside the creek, and that eternal calling, calling.

  ‘Nelly! Nelly!’

  Two dozen or more searched through the night, and were thankful for the dawn — and afraid of it, afraid they’d see that red bathing costume.

  ‘She wanted red,’ Grace Abbot said. ‘It was brand new this year. She could swim like a fish. She could swim when she was two years old. I tell you she wouldn’t have drowned.’

  The boats were put in the creek at dawn. They concentrated their search downstream from the bend, following its twisted way, following it down one side then pulling hard back up on the other side, prodding around every snag, searching every reed bank. No sign of Nelly.

  They looked further afield. A middle-aged swagman had passed through town two days ago. He could have been holed up in that patch of the bush, waiting his chance. The Willama police were in town. Gertrude saw their car drive by, no doubt heading out to Wadi’s camp. There were a couple of strangers known to be staying out there with him and his women, living black.

  At sundown on that Saturday, Gertrude’s tank dry, she harnessed Nugget up to her water carrier — a forty-four-gallon water drum her father had fixed up with a set of wheels and shafts. Joey went with her. Water-getting was an easier task with two, one to pump, the other to stand out on that log keeping the end of the hose in clear water.

  They were backing Nugget up to their log when they saw what was beneath it, saw that hair, blonde, long, curling like Jenny’s curled.

  ‘Go home, Joey! Run home, darlin’, and stay there.’