by Joy Dettman
‘I thought they’d hang him,’ Vern said.
‘They probably got it right,’ Gertrude said. ‘There’s not much I’d say for him, but I never believed he’d killed those little girls.’
‘He’ll get a few years for the other.’
‘I’ll guarantee the jury got that right,’ she said. ‘He’d charm the pants off a nun and have the choirboys’ off for seconds.’
‘Who knows what he’s progressed to since you knew him.’
‘You didn’t see what I saw, Vern. Those little girls’ faces were cut to shreds, their little bodies mutilated. Rape of a child, I’d believe that, murder maybe, if he was pushed into a corner, but the mutilation of a pretty little girl’s face? That wasn’t in the man. It wasn’t in him. Some things you know.’
Some things you know and you face them, like it or not. Some things you damn near know and you turn your back on them, close your mind to them, shake your head so hard it damn near flies off whenever those thoughts attempt to rise. There’s certain things you have to deny or you’d lose your mind.
Norman’s Aunty Lizzie had lost her mind these past twelve months. Thankfully, she died in June. Norman hadn’t seen her since 1932, but he caught the train down to Melbourne for the funeral, caught up with his relatives and arrived home smiling. Aunty Lizzie had left him four hundred pounds.
The money came through in July, a week before Jim was to pick up his new false teeth. Norman, on the Church of England ball committee for the past ten years, always attended, and this year Amber had agreed to accompany him. She hadn’t worn a ballgown in fifteen years, and the only one she owned was mouldy and moth-eaten. Sissy owned three ballgowns, but Margaret Hooper owned a dozen and she was buying a new one in Willama, so Sissy and Amber were going with her to buy gowns.
Jenny had gone to the ball with Norman last year and the year before. A lot of kids went with their parents. They danced in the supper room or ran wild in the park. Last year, Jenny and Dora had run wild in the park. This year, she was fourteen and a half, and Dora, who had already turned fifteen, was allowed to wear Irene’s lemon ballgown. No chance of Jenny wearing one of Sissy’s old gowns. No mention either of her getting a new dress from Norman’s inheritance. If she’d moved back home, she might have. Norman said from time to time that he wanted her home, but not for a new dress, not for a king’s ransom, was she living with Sissy and Amber again. Maisy’s house was paradise again and would stay paradise while the twins remained in Melbourne.
On the night before the Willama trip, Jenny was visiting in Norman’s parlour, listening to a radio play George Macdonald couldn’t stand but Norman enjoyed, when the broadcaster cut into the play to praise the merits of Pears Soap.
‘Would you care to accompany your mother and sister tomorrow, Jennifer?’
‘She’s got school,’ said Amber.
‘I’ve finished all of my leaflets. I could miss one day.’
‘Jennifer has an unworn frock in her wardrobe,’ Amber said, and said it so nicely.
She looked . . . looked almost nice these days, looked almost motherly, sitting at her embroidery, the light shining on her hair. Jenny watched the embroidery needle drawing the silk thread through, watched it for minutes. That needle was as sharp as it had ever been.
‘Mr Curry has suggested you sit for the bursary this year,’ Norman said.
‘When the leaflets are done . . .’ Jenny started, but what was the use of explaining. She left before the play was over. It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting out of that house.
The following morning, she waved as they drove by, waved to Jim. Sissy in the front seat with him, Margaret and Amber in the back seat. Norman’s house would be empty all day.
The few students who continued on at school after grade six were allowed to work at their own pace. Jenny liked finishing things. If she went to school she’d spend the day helping Miss Rose with the little kids, and today she didn’t feel like listening to five year olds lisping through their first primers. She felt like having Norman and his house to herself, having the wireless to herself.
Someone had hung that brown rag in her wardrobe, and it looked no better than the last time she’d seen it. If it had been a darker brown or a lighter brown, something might have been done with it, but it was muddy. And the style was an old lady’s. It had square floppy sleeves, a floppy collar and a boring gored skirt, which was half a mile too long. It looked worse than she remembered it, because of Dawn’s hand-me-downs, which fitted—with the hems let down.
Jenny spread the brown frock on her bed, considering trims, considering embroidering it all over with white daisies, considering the sleeves, making a decent belt for it. Cancelled that out. She couldn’t make a belt out of the hem of a gored skirt that had been cut from eight pieces. Wished she was brave enough to burn it, or stuff it into the relief bag so some desperate old lady could wear it.
At nine o’clock, she went over to the station. ‘I’ve got nothing to do at school, Daddy.’
‘It’s a great pity you have no access to a secondary education,’ he said.
‘Gloria Bull stays with her aunty and uncle in Melbourne . . .’
‘Had your Aunt Lizzie been alive . . .’
Had Aunty Lizzie been alive, Sissy and Amber wouldn’t have been spending her money on new ballgowns.
‘I’ll make you some dinner,’ she said.
Loved owning that house for a day, loved being able to try on Sissy’s green ballgown . . . which looked ridiculous. Six inches of skirt drooped around her feet, and Dora could have got into it with her.
Amber’s moth-eaten cream was in the relief bag. She dug it out and tried it on. It fitted her. It must have been nice years ago. It had big puffy sleeves and a pintucked bodice, but it was stained and the moths had been picnicking on the skirt. She stuffed it back, found an old book and took it out to the kitchen, where she stoked up the stove then sat before it reading. Good to sit on that familiar chair. Good light for reading in Norman’s kitchen. Good too, when Norman came home for lunch. She fried cheese sandwiches while he spoke of many things—or it was good until he progressed to the brown dress.
‘Your mother chose it for you,’ he said.
She buttered bread and bit her tongue.
‘That frock has become a stumbling block between you. It would please her to see you wearing it.’
‘I’d rather wear the stumbling block, Daddy.’
‘That is a reply worthy of the Macdonald girls.’
Maybe it was. Live with people long enough and their ways rub off—better ways.
‘It’s past time you came home.’
‘Maisy doesn’t mind me living there.’
‘This antagonism between you and your mother must end. She has your best interests at heart, Jennifer.’
‘She didn’t want me to go with them today.’
He wasn’t good at arguing. ‘You will bring your belongings home today and be here when she returns,’ he said, and he emptied his teacup, rose from the table and left the room.
‘I’d rather wear that brown dress to the ball,’ she told a sandwich as she placed it into the pan. That’s what Jessie would have said.
And he heard her. He came back to the doorway. ‘Then wear it you will,’ he said. And he left her frying her sandwich.
She ate it in Maisy’s kitchen. She was poking around Maisy’s washhouse later when she found the dye, two bottles, both half-full, very old bottles, most of their labels were missing, but one had surely held green. Some had dripped onto what was left of the label. The lids were rusted on. She ran with them across the road to get Norman’s pliers. One lid came off and took a part of the bottle’s neck with it; it contained an evil blackish-green liquid. The second one screwed off. It was blue, blue-bag blue, gruesome blue. But not as gruesome as that brown frock, which supposedly was a good-quality cotton. You could dye cotton. Mrs Palmer did it all the time. She’d dyed a bedspread and two faded frocks one day and when they were dry the
y’d looked almost new.
What if I ruin it? she thought.
How can you ruin something that was born ruined?
She took her bottles to Amber’s kitchen, looked at the clock, added more wood to the stove, considered Amber’s biggest saucepan—or maybe her preserving pan. The preserving pan would be better. Got it down from the top of her wardrobe, emptied the boiling water from the kettle into it. Judged it insufficient and added cold water until it looked enough, then stood over it urging that pot to boil while the hands of the clock ticked away fifteen minutes.
At steaming point, she poured in a dash of blue dye, watched it pool then slowly disperse. It wasn’t a nice blue so she added a dash of green, which made the water look more green than blue. Emptied in the last of the blue, gave it a stir with Amber’s long wooden spoon—and before her eyes that spoon turned bright blue.
‘Oh, hell!’
She emptied in the last of the green, stirred again and watched the spoon darken.
‘Oh, hell’s bells in Scotland!’ Jessie said that.
Her brew wasn’t even boiling, and Jim’s appointment was for one thirty, and it was almost that already. They could be home in less than an hour.
Skirt first, she fed the prison brown into the pan, sinking it with the spoon. It sank, apart from a sleeve which blew up and reached for help. She held it under until it stopped blowing bubbles attempting to get out. Noticed she was steaming up Amber’s kitchen. Opened the back door, then the west window, allowing cold air to blow through. Her face was wet, be it from steam, fear or heat from that red-hot stove she was uncertain, but she added more wood and opened the north window.
Pink-faced witch’s apprentice, stirring her cauldron, gazing through the steam at her uncertain brew, unsure if she was performing magic or conjuring up a monster.
Ten minutes later there was little doubt.
She fished the frock out, flopped it into a bucket, attempted to lift the preserving pan, two-thirds full of lying bubbling liquid, which had promised much but offered her a gruesome grisly grey. And why should it turn grey when the wooden spoon was now a very interesting shade of deep blue-green?
‘Something light would have gone blue,’ she told that gruesome grey. ‘Something light.’
Glanced at Amber’s tea towel, then ran for the relief bag and for Amber’s moth-eaten ballgown. Bodice first, she fed it into the now bubbling brew. And in the blink of an eye it turned, at least in part, the most gorgeous bluey-green she’d ever seen in her life.
Forced it down, stirred it, turned it, splashing blue water. Forgot to watch the clock, mesmerised now by the colour. She’d done this. She shouldn’t have done it, but she’d done it now. She’d put water in that pan, added dye and heat and created something that had not been before.
She’d also created a mess Amber’s kitchen had not seen before. A glance around, her glance ending at the clock, suggested she had done enough stirring of that dress. She had to get it over to Maisy’s and clean up.
Time can limp along on crutches, barely making any ground when you want it to run fast. In all of her life, Jenny had never known a day to fly so fast. The rinsing, the hanging, the running backwards and forwards over the road with her bucket. She wasted time on Amber’s wooden spoon, before giving it a fast funeral underneath the oleander tree. It dug its own grave, and serve it right. She’d copped a whack or two from it when she was smaller. Lost the half-hour between three thirty and four, but Amber’s stove was clean, the preserving pan shining and back on her wardrobe. She was closing the windows when she heard the car. Considered taking off out the back door, but saw a splash of blue on the lino . . . then two more drips near the door.
Got them with her hanky as Jim carried the shopping inside. He greeted her with a blinding flash of white china-cup teeth—he’d looked better toothless. She did the right thing, remained a while to admire Amber’s pinkish beige, to be amazed by Sissy’s rainbow taffeta, then off she ran to admire her own ballgown, if the wind hadn’t blown it to shreds.
It hadn’t, and Maisy had hung both frocks properly. They were flapping merrily or the bluey-green looked merry; the brown, now grey, still looked gruesome.
THE BALL
The ballgown was moth-eaten, but it had yards and more yards in its skirt that the moths hadn’t yet sampled. The dying was not perfect, they found a few streaks where the colour hadn’t taken so well, or had taken too well. But the skirt was full enough to hide the faults and the colour even more gorgeous beneath electric light. It was blue, but when the light caught a different angle, it looked almost greenish. And the pintucks had gone a darker shade, which disguised the shadow of stain.
‘You’ve got your mother’s shape,’ Maisy said. ‘Or the shape she had when she was eighteen or nineteen.’
There was no doubting that. The ballgown might have been made to Jenny’s measurements. The skirt was a smidgen long, but Amber had worn heels with it, and Maisy had enough daughters to fix that.
‘Get those old sandals Rachael wore to Maureen’s wedding, Dawn. They could fit.’
They were black, had inch heels. They lifted the skirt off the floor.
‘Get that petticoat you wore under that green voile, Jessie.’
The twins came home on a motorbike, like two hairy bears, one clinging on behind the other; came home on the Thursday before the ball. It could have been worse; they could have come home sooner.
Maisy was always pleased to see them, though not so pleased about their ginger beards. She couldn’t see which one had the chickenpox scar on his jaw.
‘Shave yourselves and have a bath before you come into my kitchen,’ she said. ‘You smell like a pair of polecats.’
They didn’t shave or have a bath, but she fed them in her kitchen. It was the end of paradise, the end of long chats, of peaceful meals. Jessie screamed at them, pitched water at them. Dawn chased one of them with the hair broom and didn’t hold back when she cornered him. George threatened to take to their bike with the wood axe.
Jenny got out, went over the road. She could stand Sissy and Amber easier than she could stand the twins.
She sat in Norman’s parlour listening to the wireless, until the twins started using their bike as a weapon against the town. It howled up one street and down the next, and every dog in town howled at it, chased it, barked at it, or did all three, but with them on the street, it was safe to go back to Maisy’s and have a bath, wash her hair.
They were in bed when she left for school on Friday morning. They were eating breakfast when she came home at three thirty. She escaped to the Palmers’ and stayed until it was Dora’s turn for the bathroom. A nomad, Jenny, a swaggie without a swag, now the twins were home. She went to the station, but Norman wasn’t there so she went to the house. He was bathing, shaving for the ball. Sissy was resting. Amber was ironing.
Jenny stood at the kitchen door, watching that rainbow taffeta skirt spread, watching the iron run up and down the colourful fabric, magical fabric. That gown had cost eighteen pounds.
‘What do they think they’re doing?’ Amber moaned as the bike screamed by.
‘Acting like maniacs,’ Jenny said.
‘Why doesn’t Denham do something?’
‘He’s told the garage not to sell them any more petrol.’
They were having a normal conversation—or almost.
‘Your father said you were wearing the brown. Bring it out and I’ll give it a quick run over,’ she said.
She sounded like a mother, looked like a mother, and Jenny felt her face flush with guilt.
‘It’s over at Maisy’s.’
It was, but it wasn’t brown, and if she could ever forget it had once been brown, she might even wear it. They’d cut two inches off the hem and about six off the sleeves. Jessie had found a photograph of a frock in a Myer’s catalogue, a black frock trimmed with white, and she’d bought three yards of narrow white braid at Blunt’s, which they’d hand-stitched around the collar, on the shoulders and sl
eeves, doing their best to copy the trim on the frock in the catalogue. Jessie said it looked quite smart.
She stood watching Amber fold up her ironing blanket, dodged as she placed it on the chest of drawers in the junk room, wished she could tell her about that old ballgown, how it fitted her perfectly. Wished . . . just wished.
She ate at Amber’s table that night, ate early. Amber needed the kitchen to do Sissy’s hair. Norman went back to the station and Jenny went with him. She watched the train coming into town, its one large light like a great all-seeing eye. She stared at the faces of the travellers, faces just wanting to get where they were going, and that train shunting around while the timber trucks were connected. Then off it went, off into the dark, the one-eyed night monster carrying its load away. One day, one fine day, she’d ride it.
Tonight, she followed Norman home, home to Sissy and Amber who had now taken over the main bedroom with its newly repaired winged mirror. Norman dressed in Jenny’s discarded room. His suit, his dancing shoes, were in that front bedroom. She wondered why, wondered why he called Amber ‘my dear’ instead of ‘Mrs Morrison’.
‘Can you put these confounded collar studs in for me, Jennifer?’
‘Bring that comb from the table, Jennifer.’
‘My spectacles. Did anyone see where I put my spectacles when I came in?’
Jenny found his spectacles. She took Amber’s comb to the front bedroom. She fixed Norman’s collar studs, held his suit coat while he slid his arms into the sleeves, dodged Sissy as she swished by in the passage, dodged Amber when she came to the kitchen for a Bex powder.
Maybe she shouldn’t go tonight. Maisy wasn’t going. The twins weren’t going. They had no suits to wear.
‘A glass of water, if you please, Jennifer.’
‘Have you seen that little purse I bought in Melbourne, Mum?’
‘It’s in that left-hand side drawer.’
‘Answer the door, please, Jennifer.’
Like Cinderella, homeless, but handy. She opened the door. No prince come to take her to the ball, only Sissy’s intended — whether he knew it or not, and his ugly sister.