Why go in the middle of the night – covertly? Again: why not? Secrets were the mainstay of her life in that house. And if you were already, day by secretive day, weary and spent from the toil of keeping secrets, then some of those secrets should be of your own making. These midnight campfire meetings were compensation for the struggle, payment in kind. And Marjorie discovered it was recompense enough. Besides, Marjorie was sixteen. Jesse was seventeen. Both well old enough to be running around in the dark on their own.
So, Jesse and Marjorie met at Jimmy’s place secretly and commonly and in the dark from then on. They sculpted a tiny, secret life for themselves in the middle of the night, hidden inside the reality of their wintry daytime lives. Marjorie’s upbringing helped. She was brought up on the obligations of masquerade – of living a secret – and was used to having to adapt quickly to arbitrary changes to this facade. So she was speedy. She tuned herself in right away to finding Wheat Bag Boy at Jimmy’s place that first time even though there was no time for a proper sit-down tune-up. It was like when you have to fix a tractor breakdown right out in the middle of the paddock. And just like a middle of the paddock tuning can sometimes be, this one turned out to be perfect. Jesse and Marjorie never missed a beat at all these night-time meetings, over all those passing seasons, the two of them together there in that Mallee.
There was a comforting and unusual sameness about their visits. They ate food provided by Jesse. They drank tea made by Jesse. They smoked smokes provided and made by Marjorie. They watched the night-time Mallee and heeded the night-time Mallee. They packed up and left before the second train warning.
Their conversations held the comfort of sameness: Marjorie made statements and Jesse answered. Jesse asked questions and Marjorie answered. Or didn’t. Either way, over time the two of them were knitted together by their conversations and their collusion there at Jimmy’s place. With conversations that lived only at Jimmy’s place – conversations that waited around at his place from one night-time to the next one, so they could be finished off then. Or at the next night-time after that.
*
‘My mother Elise is making a nativity scene out of plasticine.’
‘Why do you call your mother by her name so much? Why don’t you call your mother Mum, like normal kids do?’
‘Dunno. I only do it sometimes. And maybe I’m not normal.’
‘Why is she making a nativity set?’
Marjorie shrugged.
‘It’s not anywhere near Christmas,’ Jesse pointed out.
‘She’s good at art.’
‘It’s not even shearing time. Christmas has only just happened,’ Jesse pointed out.
‘She’s really good.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Dunno.’ Marjorie stiffened.
Jesse waited. Marjorie said nothing more. Jesse had to wait right until the next visit.
*
And then at the next visit:
‘Mum isn’t talking to me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Dunno,’ said Marjorie, poking the fire and clamping her teeth shut – and the conversation shut.
*
And at the following visit:
‘Your mother talking to you yet?’
‘No.’
‘How long will it take?’
Marjorie shrugged. And her shoulders put a halt to the conversation.
*
And at the next visit after that:
‘Sometimes it’s only a few days. Sometimes it’s a couple of weeks,’ she explained as the campfire light reached out and grabbed her emerging from the night-time and dumped her on the old blue bench. ‘But it’s already been weeks and weeks this time. Mum not talking. Elise being angry. Her carrying all her disappointment about me on her shoulders for us all to see.’
‘Why does she do that?’ asked Jesse.
Marjorie looked at Jesse like she used to look at Wheat Bag Boy. ‘Because I’ve done something wrong. Elise will talk to me when I’ve been sufficiently punished.’ Marjorie turned away, and Jesse knew she had said as much as she was going to say about this topic at this visit.
*
All in all, it took about half-a-dozen night-time visits to Jimmy’s place to complete the conversation. Night-time visits that ran up to crutching time. And ran out the other side of crutching time.
And it took Elise about the same time – a season of punishment, much more than a few months, if you are counting time as a linear concept – to deem Marjorie suitably punished. One night after school, Ruby and Marjorie walked into the kitchen. ‘Oh. There you are, Marjorie,’ said Elise. ‘I have been making a nativity set out of plasticine.’ And, as arbitrarily as she had been confined to solitary, Marjorie was arbitrarily allowed out.
Over the years, Marjorie had tried to find a weapon to ward against arbitrary assaults. But any lasting defence seemed elusive. Which was ironic. Because for all her inability to understand and accept the Mallee, Elise was a lethal expert of the most common form of attack wielded by the land – the arbitrary assault. The random deadly willy-willy that crushed the promise of a good harvest. The indiscriminate dust storm that choked and shredded and buried as it raged across the Mallee.
Marjorie should have known better than to think she could escape the effects of the assault. She saw what arbitrariness did to the Mallee. But each one of these random attacks managed to catch her unawares. Each one left her reeling and determined, that this time, it would be the last. And the ending of each punishment was soaked in relief and the belief that it was the last that would ever be.
But it never was. Just like the lurking Mallee stumps, it was waiting. Just like the inevitable drought, it was biding its time.
Marjorie smiled a rich smile of relief and dumped the wheat bags of guilt and disgrace off her shoulders. She glanced at Ruby, who gave her a rueful, apologetic smile. Only one of them could be in solitary confinement. This time it was Marjorie’s turn. Although there were no turns really. Even that was arbitrary.
‘Hello, Mum,’ replied Marjorie. Two words full of pardon. ‘I bet it’s wonderful. I would love to see it.’
‘Of course you may see it, dear girl.’
*
‘Mum showed me the nativity set,’ said Marjorie as she stepped out of the darkness and into the first visit to Jimmy’s place after Elise’s pardon. She paused to untie the jumper from around her waist, and to shake her head at the thought of all that delicate plasticine beauty.
‘So your mother is talking to you again?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why? What’s different that made her want to talk to you again?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Marjorie. ‘Maybe I have done my penance . . . Maybe she couldn’t be bothered anymore . . . Maybe she forgot . . .’
Silence arrived. Jesse moved to throw a couple of stumps on the fire. They sat on the bench and smoked a smoke.
‘What does it look like? That nativity set?’
‘Beautiful,’ breathed Marjorie, remembering the art and loveliness of those tiny plasticine statues. She started talking. She hadn’t intended to say any more about it but, all of a sudden, there she was. Talking her head off. A summer rain storm of talking as she described the tiny beauties made incongruously out of a child’s play stuff. Jesse listened transfixed. And before they knew it, the train was coming across the horizon.
*
A thought came to Marjorie after a number of times and a couple of seasons of campfires and night trains. Marjorie and Jesse hadn’t ever stopped meeting at Jimmy’s. They met there right through autumn and the ploughing, and right through winter and the planting. Right past the beginning of spring and into the lambing.
And Marjorie’s thought was just like the Mallee spring – cautious about emerging in case the rains didn’t follow. But one peerless, starry ni
ght on that old blue bench with Jesse at her side, a tiny part of her weighed up the idea of taking a risk. Of opting to take a gamble on looking out for someone else – not just herself – if she wanted to. And she decided she did want to.
‘You lied,’ she said. ‘You didn’t go over the handlebars, did you?’ Pointing at Jesse’s chipped front tooth.
Jesse shook his head.
‘What happened?’
Jesse watched the fire.
‘Who was fighting?’ she asked.
But Jesse was too busy staring at the fire to hear.
‘Who did it?’
But Jesse was too busy jabbing at the fire to answer.
So Marjorie watched the fire too because she was suddenly scared and couldn’t think of anything else to say or to ask. But the firelight was bright. It showed Marjorie something she hadn’t seen before. She saw something about Jesse. And about herself. ‘Did you cop it at home after I got you kept in after school?’
Jesse nodded and hunched down into his shoulders so he could get a better look at the fire.
‘Why?’
‘There doesn’t have to be a reason why.’
‘Who hit you? Does your dad hit you?’
Jesse just shrugged and stared at the fire. ‘I used to hide them – my mum, my brothers – when my brothers were really little. I’m pretty good at it now – I’ve had years of practice. I know which nights are going to be the bad nights. But I was too late that night. And I knew I would be. I knew as soon as I was kept in and given all that stuff to do. My brothers and I didn’t get home until nearly dark. He had already belted Mum. He started on me and I lost it. I laid into him. He might have split my lip but I flattened him.’
‘Why don’t you tell someone? Why don’t you get some help?’
‘Why don’t you, Marjorie?’
Silence was making a habit of attending their campfires. It turned up now at this one too. So Jesse and Marjorie sat side by side and stared at the flames for the rest of the night. They only moved to put wood on the fire, or to roll another smoke. And that was all they did until the train told them to go home.
Marjorie lay in her bed back at the house and thought for a long time about the night that had just happened. She was not sure whether it was the roast rabbits, or the billy tea, or the stolen and rolled smokes. Or maybe it was just the magic of Jimmy Waghorn living on in the peppercorn tree and the campfire.
‘Does anyone else know about this?’ Marjorie had asked before the silence turned up.
Jesse had shaken his head. ‘Not anymore,’ he said. ‘I tried to tell the teachers once. But they didn’t want to know. Then one day I saw Jimmy Waghorn looking right at me. One of those days when I had a black eye. Looking at me like he knew what was going on. I got up in the middle of the night after that – just like you’ve done now – and came over here.’
‘Does your mother know you come here?’
‘My mum doesn’t want to know much about anything. So, no. She doesn’t know.’
‘What will you do if your dad finds out and tries to stop you?’
‘I’ll flatten him!’ said Jesse.
*
‘My mother isn’t normal,’ Marjorie said the next time they met in the dark. Right after the cup of tea. Even before the first smoke of the night.
Marjorie wasn’t about to mention Jesse’s story about why his tooth was broken or how he could turn up any time with bruised eyes. That was Jesse’s business. But she could let him know her stuff. Marjorie had never talked about her stuff to anyone before except Ruby. So she stared straight ahead at the fire so the flames could help her in the telling and the smoke could help her in the remembering.
Jesse looked at Marjorie and nodded. And looked away again. ‘And how would a fine young lady like you define normal?’ he asked, trying to make it easier for her.
Marjorie switched from being scared to being haughty. ‘I define normal in terms of balance – how a thing balances out in relation to something else.’ She used her hands to demonstrate a set of balancing scales. ‘Bloody hell, Jesse. It’s pure science.’ And they both burst out laughing.
The laughter was what she needed. Her words from then on did speak about balance: the wondrous balancing of Ruby, who seemed to so effortlessly keep Elise on an even keel. And the fragile balancing act of an artist carefully walking between creativity and chaos. Marjorie showed it all to Jesse. Bit by bit. Starting with the easy bits.
‘My mother makes her own clothes out of patterns she thinks up in her head, and out of old curtains. No one else does that.’
Jesse shrugged.
‘My mother makes fancy-coloured meringues and can’t make a scone to save her life – or ours. Other mothers make useful tomato sandwiches and sensible fruitcake.’
‘I like them. Them fancy-coloured meringues.’ He grinned at Marjorie and she smiled ruefully back. She was running out of the easier items.
‘She drinks coffee. Every other person in the entire Mallee drinks tea. There is no other coffee to be had in any other Mallee kitchen.’
‘Jimmy Waghorn drank coffee,’ said Jesse. ‘At your place. He told me.’
Marjorie drew in a long breath and let it slowly out. ‘Mum wears a tea cosy on her head – all the time. It makes her feel better.’
Jesse remained silent and still beside her.
‘Mum planted those bloody plastic flowers she won,’ Marjorie went on. ‘She talks to them. And she thinks they talk to her.’
Jesse, carefully like a fox, moved to face Marjorie, so he could look her in the eye. ‘Yes. But what does all that do to you?’ he asked.
Marjorie spent a long time bunching all her thoughts and trying to decide which one to pull out of the pile. ‘For as long as I can remember,’ she whispered, ‘Mum has gone away. My mother goes away inside herself and stays there. Sometimes it’s not long. Sometimes it’s for days. Sometimes it’s for weeks. Sometimes I know it’s my fault. Sometimes I have no bloody idea why she does it.’ She shook her head. ‘She gets so angry.’
‘How is it your fault?’
‘I’ve said the wrong thing. Or I’ve not said anything. Who knows?’ Marjorie shrugged. ‘All I know is it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for me and I need to try harder. Like Ruby does. Like Ruby can. But I’ve never been able to try hard enough.’
‘What do you do?’ asked Jesse. But Marjorie didn’t seem to hear him.
‘It’s not Mum’s fault,’ Marjorie went on. ‘I’m too loud. I’m too boisterous and clumsy. I make her angry without even trying.’
‘What did you do when you were little? What do you do now?’ asked Jesse, and Marjorie heard him this time.
‘I used to latch on to Ruby. I was so bloody scared all the time. Remember when I told you I wasn’t scared?’
Jesse nodded.
‘Well, I am scared,’ said Marjorie. ‘Mum and I tried to make a rose garden – just after I started high school. I was so happy. Mum was so happy. Then she went to bed and wouldn’t get up and we never got that garden. I got caught in a willy-willy with bees in it. We got bees instead.’
There was a long silence after that. They smoked in silence and smoked in silence again.
‘My mother has nervous breakdowns, Jesse.’
The peppercorn tree had been holding its breath all this while, listening to Marjorie, wondering if she had the courage. Now it breathed out. It soothed and sighed around them. Its leaves whispering and swaying softly in the night breeze.
‘Sometimes my mother is a complete lunatic. Sometimes she is totally mental. My mother went completely mental over those plastic bloody flowers and had to go away to a damn fool bloody mental hospital for mad person treatment.’
And, having broken the rules and betrayed the family and exposed the secret business of Elise, Marjorie sighed a gulping, gut-wrenching sigh
of relief. ‘That is not normal,’ she said, using her arms and hands again to demonstrate the scientific balance of normal.
Marjorie looked at Jesse and they both burst out laughing. They laughed and laughed. They kicked the dirt with their laughter. They rocked the old bench with their laughter. They scared the plovers and the rabbits and the foxes.
The laughing finally wore out, so Marjorie rolled two more smokes.
‘I don’t think I can do all this without Ruby,’ whispered Marjorie. ‘She has always been there for me. She even made sure she was born before me so she could look after me.’
Jesse put his arm around Marjorie at that. Because he knew two things: he knew what it meant to be the one who always had to look out for everyone. And he knew what it meant to see frightened eyes staring at you all the time. Marjorie sat there, leaning into his shoulder. They smoked their contraband and waited for the train to tell them to go home.
‘It’s your turn next time,’ said Marjorie as she tied her jumper around her waist.
*
So on the next Jimmy Waghorn night, Jesse did the talking. Staring straight ahead, just like Marjorie had done. And it was Jesse’s turn to be supported by the flames and smoke of the fire.
Marjorie sat there beside him on that old blue bench. She stared at the fire too. It was lucky for the pair of them that the fire was there and could carry the night by itself. Because Marjorie had nothing at all to say. Because Jesse might not have let too many words come out of his mouth, but the words he did let out had way too much to say. About his own particular, peculiar way of managing life on his farm:
‘My father is a drunken useless father who has been drunk and useless since the day I was born,’ said Jesse. ‘My little brothers have not known anything except being scared to death when their father comes home. I am the big brother who has spent so much time jamming and hiding them in cupboards since they were small.’
‘No wonder you never do your homework,’ said Marjorie.
‘The concept of homework at my house is misplaced,’ said Jesse.
Wearing Paper Dresses Page 18
