Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which, Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday’s Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry’s Daughter, One Sunday, Pearl in a Cage and Thorn on the Rose. Moth to the Flame is Joy’s third novel in her Woody Creek series.

  Also by Joy Dettman

  Mallawindy

  Jacaranda Blue

  Goose Girl

  Yesterday’s Dust

  The Seventh Day

  Henry’s Daughter

  One Sunday

  Diamonds in the Mud

  Woody Creek series

  Pearl in a Cage

  Thorn on the Rose

  Joy Dettman

  MOTH TO THE FLAME

  First published 2011 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited 1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Joy Dettman 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Dettman, Joy.

  Moth to the flame / Joy Dettman.

  9781742610023 (pbk.)

  Woody creek series; no. 3.

  A823.3

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Typeset in 12.5/16 pt Adobe Garamond by Post Pre-press Group Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2011 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Moth to the flame

  Joy Dettman

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  978-1-74262-642-0

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  978-1-74262-640-6

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  For Hannah and Dallas

  PREVIOUSLY IN THORN ON THE ROSE

  Characters, in order of importance:

  Gertrude Foote, retired town midwife, mother of Amber Morrison, grandmother of Jenny and Sissy Morrison.

  Vern Hooper, father of Lorna, Margaret and Jim. Vern, mill owner, farmer, leading Woody Creek citizen, is also Gertrude’s half-cousin and long-term lover.

  Margot, Georgie and Jimmy Morrison, Jenny’s illegitimate children. Margot is the daughter of Bernie or Macka Macdonald, conceived when a drunken prank turned to rape. Georgie is the daughter of Laurie Morgan, the redheaded water-pistol bandit who looked like Clark Gable. Jimmy is the son of Jim Hooper.

  Cara Jeanette, Jenny’s guilty secret. Her father may have been any one of five drunken American sailors. Myrtle Norris, a childless Sydney landlady, is no longer childless.

  J.C. — Juliana Conti, the stranger buried beneath a small grey tombstone in Woody Creek’s cemetery, and Jenny’s birth mother.

  Archie Foote, Gertrude’s philandering husband and Jenny’s natural father.

  Maisy and George Macdonald, parents of eight daughters and hell-raising identical twin sons, Bernie and Macka.

  Harry Hall, married to Elsie, a light-skinned Aboriginal woman raised since the age of twelve by Gertrude. The Halls have several children. Joey Hall, Elsie’s son, born when she was twelve.

  Charlie White, town grocer, and his daughter, Hilda.

  Mr and Miss Blunt, town drapers.

  Mr Foster, Woody Creek’s postmaster.

  Constable Denham.

  Raymond King, a giant, stuttering youth who disappeared from Woody Creek fifteen years ago. Returns on a motorbike for his sister’s funeral.

  Jenny Morrison, born to a foreign woman who died before Gertrude Foote, the town midwife, learned her name, was adopted by Norman Morrison, a strange but gentle man, and his mentally unstable wife, Amber. At fourteen years old, with a wonderful life before her, Jenny is raped and gives birth to a daughter, Margot. She refuses to acknowledge the child, and flees Woody Creek to escape the marriage arranged by Amber and her rapists’ father. Four months later, Jenny returns, with an expensive new wardrobe and a secret. Warned by Norman that she must make no attempt to contact her mother and sister, Jenny finds refuge with her always dependable granny, Gertrude. Within days, Jenny tells Gertrude she must return to the city.

  ‘It’s happened again,’ she admits. ‘But it’s all right this time. I’ve got the name of a doctor who can fix it.’

  ‘Fix it?’ Gertrude replies. ‘Murder is my name for it. Butchery, carnage, war on the innocent . . .’

  The infant, Georgie, is born on the night of a storm. Once Jenny sees that baby’s tiny hands, miniatures of her own, she can’t give her away to strangers.

  Jenny’s sister, Sissy, has pursued Jim Hooper for years, and in 1940 they announce their engagement. Jim was always like a big brother to Jenny. He’s the only boy in town who still treats her like Jenny, and with whom she can be the girl she used to be. Their friendship becomes something more. Six weeks before the wedding to Sissy, Jim has a change of heart and joins the army. Eight months later, Jenny’s third child, Jimmy, Jim Hooper’s son, is born, and, once again, Jenny flees the town, this time to Sydney and to Jim. He wants to meet his son before he is sent overseas.

  Jim buys Jenny a wedding ring. He tells her she has to marry him, if just for Jimmy’s sake. She is eighteen and requires parental permission to wed. She promises to marry him on her twenty-first birthday. Jim Hooper leaves Australia to fight the Japanese, and Jenny makes a life for herself in Sydney as Mrs Jenny Hooper, mother of one.

  As a child, Jenny was hailed as Woody Creek’s little songbird. By 1942, she is known as the girl who went off the rails — but not so in Sydney, an enormous, anonymous place. She finds work there with a band, singing at clubs and parties, finally living her childhood dream, her past wiped away. Happy, in love, working hard, caring for Jimmy, living an exemplary life, Jenny waits for Jim to return and for the promised happily ever after.

  In 1943, Jim is listed as missing in action. The news comes in a telegram from Gertrude to the boarding house where Jenny and Jimmy are living with their landlady, Myrtle Norris. Jenny wears Jim’s ring but she is not his wife. Once again, life begins to fall apart for Jenny, and in November of 1944 she returns to Woody Creek, leaving a part of her behind with Myrtle; a secret she must keep forever from Gertrude.

  Gertrude never changes, nor does life o
n her fifteen-acre property. But Jenny has been changed by her two years in Sydney; and Margot and Georgie have grown. Jenny has difficulty enough settling back into a life of hard labour and no luxuries, without Vern Hooper and his daughters making things more difficult by trying to take Jimmy from her. Vern is determined to raise his only grandson in the Hooper household.

  In 1945, Jenny and her father, Norman, are reconciled, the war ends and the army boys start coming home.

  Ray King, a nervous stuttering boy who disappeared from Woody Creek fifteen years ago, returns for his sister’s funeral. He tells Gertrude he is a widower, that he has a house in Melbourne. He tells Jenny he loves her. Each weekend he rides the many miles to court her.

  ‘I’ve got three kids, Ray. I can’t marry anyone,’ Jenny says, but Ray persists.

  Is this Jenny’s chance to begin life again?

  Sissy has found her own way out of Woody Creek. She spends her life as a guest in the homes of Norman’s many relatives. Amber, who has lived for Sissy, lived through Sissy, is a lost woman. She is also a violent woman, unstable for most of her married life, wedded to a man she loathes. She murders Norman while he is sleeping.

  Jenny, so recently reconciled with Norman, must now deal with his loss. And if that is not enough, Archie Foote, Gertrude’s philandering husband, arrives in town for the funeral. He’s close to eighty, has no grandfatherly inclinations, but is perhaps ready for fatherhood. Two daughters were born to him: Amber and Jenny. He played no positive role in Amber’s life, but since sighting Jenny on stage as a nine year old, he has been obsessed by her voice. He speaks to Gertrude and admits his connection to Jenny, and identifies the unfortunate foreign woman, J.C., who gave birth to Jenny then died, as Juliana Conti. Archie tells Gertrude he has come into money and is now in a position to guide Jenny.

  ‘She will take her rightful place on the world stage,’ he says; a stage denied to him by his surgeon father.

  Gertrude’s hand is forced. She tells Jenny the truth of her birth. Jenny is distraught.

  ‘I don’t care if it’s the truth or not. Can’t you see what you’re doing with your truth, Granny? You’re taking everything away from me. You’re taking you away from me, and you’re all I’ve ever had.’

  Can Jenny come to terms with what she learns that night, or is she destined to make one more bad decision?

  PART ONE

  AND AWAY

  At six thirty on the evening of Saturday, 13 January 1946, Gertrude Foote’s old cart, loaded with cartons, cases, kids and the miscellaneous, drove into the station yard. It was seen and commented on by many. Norman’s railway house had to be readied for the new stationmaster. Margaret Hooper and several more decided that Gertrude’s late trip into town had something to do with the clearing out of that house.

  Maisy Macdonald knew what was going on. Twice today she’d spoken to Jenny. She left the dinner dishes in the sink and walked across the road to help with the unloading. The cart’s contents piled down the far end of the platform, the temporary stationmaster in his ticket office, Jenny in there with him, Ray King not in earshot, Maisy took the opportunity to ask a question that had been niggling at her all day.

  ‘Does she know what she’s doing, Mrs Foote?’

  ‘She doesn’t know if she’s coming or going, love.’

  Gertrude had spent the day attempting to talk Jenny out of leaving with Ray King.

  ‘What brought it on?’

  ‘Too much,’ Gertrude said. ‘Too much, piled on top of too much more.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering if she’s heard the talk that’s been going around?’

  ‘About Amber?’

  ‘Jim.’

  But Jenny was coming, and so was the train. It was rarely on time. Tonight it was ten minutes early. They heard its elongated hoot, warning traffic — or dogs and kids — to clear the line up at Charlie White’s crossing.

  Two of Jenny’s trio ran down the platform to watch its approach. The third of them, the oldest, Margot, ran to Gertrude.

  ‘Not going on the train,’ she said.

  ‘It will be a big adventure, darlin’,’ Gertrude told her.

  Adventure? God alone knew where those kids would end up tonight. Ray had a house, so he said, but what sort of a house? Gertrude had known his parents, had known the way they’d lived too.

  ‘I offered to take Margot until they get settled in,’ Maisy said.

  ‘Jenny’s intent on cutting her ties with Woody Creek.’

  ‘Did someone mention Jim to her at the funeral, I wonder?’

  ‘Why Jim?’ Gertrude asked, but the train and the ensuing bustle killed further conversation.

  ‘Time to go, Margot,’ Jenny said. ‘Say goodbye now.’

  ‘I’m not going, I thaid.’

  ‘We’re all going. Let go of Granny.’

  Margot wrapped herself more tightly around Gertrude’s long, trousered leg. There wasn’t much of the little girl, but what little there was was undiluted determination. Jenny turned away to lift Jimmy and Georgie on board, seemingly prepared to allow Margot to remain — or was it psychological warfare? Margot bawled as her siblings disappeared. Gertrude untangled and carried her to the train where she handed her into Ray’s arms. No final kisses, no final words — it was too sudden.

  Doors closing, the engine hissing, puffing dark smoke into the evening air. There was a smell about train smoke, a smell like no other, and a sadness about it tonight. Those kids had been Gertrude’s life for too long. Her searching eyes sighted Georgie’s hair at an open window — like molten copper, that hair. Gertrude walked down the platform blowing kisses. Two small heads out that window now, blowing their kisses back, happy little faces, eager for what was to come next. As was the train tonight. Its many wheels jerked forward and Gertrude stepped back — stepped back into Maisy.

  ‘They’re saying that Jim has been in one of those Jap prison camps, that he’s in a Melbourne hospital. Has Vern said anything to you, Mrs Foote?’

  ‘It’s rubbish,’ Gertrude replied.

  ‘I’m not sure that it is.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  Little family being drawn away by those wheels, Jenny waving, Ray standing at her side.

  ‘The Hoopers have been down in Melbourne. I didn’t know they were back until I saw Vern and Margaret at the funeral. The talk around town is that they were down there with Jim, Mrs Foote.’

  No comment from Gertrude, or not until she could no longer see Georgie’s hair. ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘I would have thought so too if I hadn’t heard it from Sylvia, Bert Croft’s wife,’ Maisy said. ‘She’s not the type to come out with a thing like that if it had no fact to it — and at a Red Cross meeting in front of a dozen or more. Vern hasn’t said anything at all to you?’

  ‘He hasn’t, and he doesn’t need to hear that sort of gossip either,’ Gertrude said.

  ‘Margaret is always at those Red Cross meetings. Someone asked why she wasn’t this time, and Sylvia Croft said she’d no doubt be down at the hospital in Melbourne —’

  ‘Vern’s always down there seeing some doctor or other.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, then she said that young Gloria Bull — you’d remember she went into nursing? — well, Sylvia said she’s nursing at one of those rehabilitation hospitals for the returned soldiers. Her mother and Sylvia Croft were as thick as thieves when the Bulls owned the hotel. Mrs Bull told Sylvia in her last letter that Gloria was nursing Jim Hooper — that they’d flown him down from some hospital up north. She said the Japs had made a terrible mess of him. I don’t think there’s any mistake, Mrs Foote.’

  ‘Vern would have told me,’ Gertrude said.

  ‘Would he though — I mean, knowing you’d tell Jenny? The last thing he’d want would be to see those two involved again, Mrs Foote.’

  Gertrude couldn’t deny that. She walked away from it.

  Her horse, a middle-aged black gelding waiting between the shafts, lifted his head as she approached
, flicked his tail at a late fly. She patted his neck for his patience, then untied the reins from the wheel — the cart’s only brake, and effective enough for a horse who required no brake.

  ‘Will you come over and have a cuppa with me?’ Maisy said. ‘Sylvia’s got the phone on. I could give her a call for you.’

  ‘I’ll be losing the light soon, love,’ Gertrude said.

  The spokes of the big wheel her ladder, she climbed up to the cart’s plank seat, more easily than a seventy-year-old woman should.

  ‘I’ll give her a call anyway and see what I can find out,’ Maisy said.

  ‘There’ll be no truth in it,’ Gertrude said. ‘Young Gloria will be confusing the Hoopers with someone else.’

  She flicked the reins and the old horse wheeled around and clip-clopped out through the dust of the railway yard.

  Vern Hooper sat on his eastern veranda enjoying the evening air and looking to the future. And maybe he had one now. The time was ripe to go after custody of Jimmy. Given what had gone on in Woody Creek this past week, no judge would refuse a caring grandfather’s claim. The papers were ready. Vern had instructed his solicitor to give that girl a week to get over the loss of her father then to get those papers in the post.

  He heard Gertrude’s cart coming, raised a hand as it went by, then stood to gain a better view. Margaret had seen the cart on its way into town with three kids on board. They weren’t riding it home.

  He limped down to the northern corner of the veranda, knowing those kids were in the cart, that he wasn’t seeing them. Not there to see. She was riding alone.