Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  Money hadn’t seemed necessary in Woody Creek. Down here she couldn’t live without the stuff, and if she didn’t find a way to make some soon, her bank account would run dry.

  The treadle sewing machine now lived in the kitchen. The Parkers, frequent visitors to that kitchen, named it ‘the old girl’s’ machine. They’d claimed the old picture frames and a small table; had shown no interest in the camp stretcher or a crumbling cabinet, as heavy as lead and threatening to collapse when Jenny had dragged it away from the wall. They hadn’t offered to get rid of it or to help clean out that room.

  They’d known that small table was in the sleep-out. Flora had asked for it. And how had she known it was in there unless they’d had the key to the padlock?

  They coveted Ray’s refrigerator, named it ‘the old girl’s’ fridge. By May, Jenny knew ‘the old girl’ had been Flora’s Aunt Phoebe, that she’d left the house to Flora’s father, that Geoff was buying it from her father. She had not yet learnt how Flora’s aunt’s fridge had ended up on Ray’s side of the house, though apparently Ray had been living there when Phoebe was alive.

  ‘How come you lived here, Ray?’

  ‘W-worked for her,’ he said, and that was all he said. He wasn’t forthcoming with personal information.

  Jenny was on speaking terms with Carol from over the eastern fence, an older woman with two near grown sons who had known Ray for years. She was on garden-visiting terms with Miss Flowers, the first neighbour to knock on her door, a wee humpbacked woman of Granny’s age who lived with her brother in the house directly opposite. Six weeks after Jenny had moved in, she’d come to the glass door with a posy of violets — and ended up sitting for an hour. She wasn’t the type of visitor you needed in a shared house. Partially deaf, Miss Flowers over-compensated for her own lack of hearing by raising her voice. Five minutes after she’d sat down, Jenny had wanted to gag her.

  She’d popped over with a bunch of beetroot the day Jenny moved the sewing machine into the kitchen.

  ‘She used to turn out some weird and wonderful things on that when she was younger. How come the niece didn’t get it like she got everything else?’

  Living is learning. On her first visit, Jenny learned to say what had to be said once, to say it clearly and close to the old lady’s ear. ‘It was in the sleep-out.’

  ‘None of them ever came near that poor woman while she was dying,’ the old dame said.

  ‘Have you lived in the street very long, Miss Flowers?’

  ‘Since Howie was widowed, thirty year ago.’

  Miss Flowers was Jenny’s first customer. She’d made her a coverall gardening apron in exchange for the bunches of flowers and garden produce, and the old lady asked if she could make her a frock that fitted to wear to her great-nephew’s wedding in June. Jenny, who had taken inordinate care in making the frock fit the old lady’s shape, refused to accept payment, but Miss Flowers, as independent as Granny and more determined, hid a ten-shilling note in the tea canister, where it remained until the next pot was brewed. Ten shillings was riches. It paid for a six-pound bag of oatmeal, half a dozen eggs, golden syrup . . .

  Five days later, Miss Flowers introduced a second customer, a Mrs Andrews, who was not a lot older than Jenny. She said she’d gone back to nursing and had lost a lot of weight. Everything she owned hung on her like a sack. Jenny remodelled three skirts, a pair of slacks, two frocks, and didn’t charge her enough according to Miss Flowers.

  ‘Her husband, Bill, runs a bank, and with her working five nights a week they’ve got money coming out of their ears, dear.’

  Geoff Parker was her third customer — not quite customer. She cut three inches from the legs of his new suit trousers and turned up new cuffs. Flora was appreciative but didn’t offer payment. Instead, she brought in a second pair of trousers and later a length of material — and stayed on to watch the making of a new dress for Lois. She was going to a party.

  ‘You do it so easy,’ Flora said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  Jenny was growing more confident with her scissors — but losing confidence in handling Margot, threatening her one minute, giving in the next.

  She shouldn’t have told the girls that she and Jimmy were having lunch with Maisy on Friday. Maisy was Margot’s grandmother, not Jimmy’s.

  ‘I want to go, not him,’ she whined.

  ‘Friday is a school day, Margot.’

  ‘I hate thchool.’

  ‘If you’d behave yourself there you wouldn’t hate it as much.’

  Margot bawled. Jenny, having one of her non-give-in days, walked away, so Margot bawled louder.

  The other kids cried on occasion and got it over and done with. Not Margot. She pursued Jenny from room to room, red-faced, fists and jaw clenched, and that inimitable wail Jimmy had labelled ‘Margot’s ahzeeing’. A good description. The ah was the inhalation, the zee created by air exhaled between clenched teeth. The girl couldn’t make an ‘s’ to save her life, but she could keep up that ahzeeing for an hour. It wore you down.

  ‘If you can read three pages of your reader by next Friday, you can come with me,’ Jenny said.

  ‘And me too,’ Georgie said.

  ‘You don’t want to miss school just to catch a tram into the city and home again.’

  ‘She’s your pet,’ Georgie accused.

  ‘No one is my pet.’

  ‘Is so. I have to have yellow jumpers because she wants yellow jumpers.’

  How do you explain yourself to a kid when you can’t explain yourself to yourself? Maybe it takes a kid to point out that what you’re doing is wrong.

  Jenny escaped to the veranda, closing the glass door on wail and accusation — and wishing she had a cigarette. Didn’t. Stood, fingers massaging her scalp beneath too long hair, while looking through the glass at two little girls dressed as twins. What suited one didn’t suit the other — and never had. Georgie was long and skinny, Margot short and thick. But it never had been about what suited them. Knitting those two identical yellow jumpers, stitching those two brown skirts, was insurance — insurance against leaning towards Georgie, which had always been too easy to do. She’d vowed when those girls were babies never to give them cause for envy.

  Childhood envy leaves scars. She still felt the scar of a young Jenny singing on stage in faded pink, the armholes rotted by Sissy sweat, looking at Sissy preening in flounced floral. And she had to stop allowing Woody Creek to dictate how she lived the rest of her life. She was an adult, a married woman, a mother. She had to stop that ahzeeing brat of a kid dictating how those other two kids lived their lives. And she had to alter Ray’s eating habits — or she’d be a widow before she had time to learn how to be a wife. Miss Flowers said that her sister-in-law had lived on red meat and died of a stroke at thirty-three.

  Margot had that door open. Her volume increased, and not a tear in her eyes.

  ‘One more ahzee out of you, Margot, and I’ll lock you in the sleep-out.’

  ‘The thnib’s on the inthide.’

  ‘Then I’ll put one on the outside and you can spend your life out there ahzeeing.’

  ‘You didn’t buy two thnibth, and I want to thee my grandmother and Jimmy, not thee her.’

  CALICO SHEETS

  Friday should never have happened. She’d left Margot wailing in the schoolyard and continued to the tram stop, stirred up by Margot, or by the thought of lunching with Sissy. She wanted to see Maisy. Didn’t want to see Sissy. And of course Sissy didn’t turn up. It would have been better if she had. Maisy might have kept her mouth shut.

  The solicitor’s papers had been signed and placed away. Gertrude had sent down two dozen eggs and a bag of walnuts, which turned the conversation to her.

  ‘Did your gran tell you about her and Vern?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I thought she might have written something about it to you.’

  ‘They’re getting married?’

  ‘No. It’s nothing like that.’ Maisy filled her mou
th, chewed, swallowed. ‘Sissy doesn’t live far away from you. She looks after the house for that parson uncle of your father’s.’

  ‘Uncle Charles.’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘God help his stomach. What were you going to tell me about Granny and Vern?’

  ‘Forget I said anything, love.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Maisy.’

  ‘No. And you probably should have been told anyway — if just for Jimmy’s sake.’

  ‘Vern’s threatening to go after him again?’

  Maisy shook her head. ‘No. They had a blazing row, that’s all. Nelly Dobson told me while I was cutting her hair. She still does some cleaning for Vern, and was there the day your gran turned up at the house. She said there was fireworks.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I hoped she’d told you, love.’ Maisy filled her mouth and Jenny waited, knife and fork in hand. ‘I never want you to think that I’ve known something that you ought to have been told, that I’ve kept it from you. You’re like one of my own kids. It’s about Jim, love. They brought him home.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ve taken him back to the hospital now.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Maisy?’

  ‘Rumours have been circulating about him being alive for months. We didn’t know if there was any truth in them or not until they brought him home the weekend before last.’

  Jenny placed her knife and fork down as her eyes searched Maisy’s. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘He’s not, love. He was in one of those Jap prison camps. Gloria Bull nursed him when they first brought him back.’

  ‘He’s dead, Maisy.’

  ‘Nelly Dobson saw him. Young Mick Boyle helped him get in and out of his wheelchair. He says he’s skin and bone.’

  Maisy filled her mouth. Jenny sat, silent now, watching her chew, knowing Maisy had lost her marbles. And knowing she hadn’t. Knowing it was true. Jim had never felt dead to Jenny, just . . . missing.

  That nasal voice continued, Maisy’s fork was loaded while blood rushed, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, drowning Jenny’s floundering heart, muffling Maisy’s words.

  ‘Your gran swears that the Red Cross got lists of the prisoners being held in those camps, that Vern and his daughters would have known all along that he was alive . . .’

  Jimmy scooping ice-cream from a boat-shaped dish, ice-cream swimming in raspberry topping, triangular cone standing like the sail of a boat. Sail me away. Sail me away from this place. Watched him turn his boat, eating from the edges. Watched him bite a piece from the sail, magnified by a tear. Caught it with her finger. Caught another.

  ‘That’s what their argument was about, love. It started in the house, Nelly said, but Vern wouldn’t let your gran get the last word. He followed her out to her horse. Cathy McConnell was walking by. She heard them.’

  Jenny held up a hand, Norman’s sign for enough. Maisy didn’t read hand signs.

  ‘You know Cathy McConnell. It’s all over town.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you. Not here, like this.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  The woman at the next table turned to censure the bad language and saw a pretty girl, clad in green and black, her eyes leaking waterfalls. She tut-tutted and turned back to her meat pie and chips.

  ‘Bastard.’ There was nothing else to say.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, he always was.’ Maisy loaded her fork. ‘Young Billy Roberts was in one of those camps for months. Jessica’s Joss saw him when they brought him back to Australia. The things he told Joss, I wouldn’t repeat.’ Maisy chewed. ‘He’s lost half of one leg — Jim.’

  ‘Stop it, Maisy.’

  ‘I know how you must feel.’

  Know how she must feel? She couldn’t feel the chair beneath her, couldn’t feel the table she leaned on. Everything she’d been building for months was dropping away — and she’d barely started building it, and she didn’t want what she was building anyway. Know how she must feel? She felt as if she was sinking in quicksand, no floor beneath her feet, no floor to the world, and Maisy’s every word like an sledgehammer pounding her head deeper into hell.

  ‘They say he had that disease a lot of the boys got up there. It’s affected his eyes.’

  Enough, Jenny’s hand and her heart howled. Take his legs, take his arms, but not his eyes. Then her head was down on folded arms, at a table in the middle of a crowded cafeteria. Nothing else she could do. Nothing.

  Jimmy stopped eating around his dish of ice-cream to reach out a hand and pat her head. Knew his gentle touch as she’d known his father’s. Couldn’t lift her head, tell him it was all right when it was all wrong.

  He knew who had made her cry. ‘You go away,’ he said to Maisy.

  ‘I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry I told you.’

  That lifted her head. ‘Granny should have told me!’

  Maisy’s hand on her shoulder. ‘She’s having a hard time coming to terms with it herself. I spoke to her before they brought him home and she swore that Vern wouldn’t keep something like that from her. It’s been an awful shock to your gran. She probably can’t bring herself to put it on paper.’

  Jenny wiped her eyes on paper, blew her nose on the paper serviette, and lied to Jimmy. ‘It’s all right, darlin’. Eat your ice-cream.’ Walked blindly to the ladies’ room, washed her face while ladies stared, blew her nose on toilet paper, held wet wads of toilet paper to her eyes. Nothing she could do about her heart.

  Alive, it was pounding. He’s alive.

  And look what you’ve done.

  The ice-cream dish was scraped clean when she returned. She took Jimmy’s hand, said a fast goodbye and left.

  And forgot her string bag, Granny’s eggs and walnuts in it. Jimmy reminded her. She didn’t want to go back, but eggs were eggs and her kids saw too few of them. They went back. She kissed Maisy’s cheek.

  ‘Thanks for telling me. Write to me, Maisy.’

  ‘I haven’t got your address, love.’

  ‘Granny has.’

  They caught a tram to somewhere, didn’t know where, didn’t care. Too early to go home and Jenny didn’t want to go there. They rode a tram to the terminus and back again, and barely a word she could find to say. They caught a second tram to Armadale and arrived too early at the school gate, waited too long for the bell to ring.

  And Georgie came out with a message. The teacher wanted to speak to her mother.

  Her mother? She wasn’t a mother. She was a half-witted fool.

  ‘I can’t, darlin’.’

  ‘She said, Jenny.’

  Too full of tears. Too full of Jim. Overflowing with tears she couldn’t release.

  He was alive.

  Please God, she’d prayed in Sydney. Please God, don’t let him die.

  He was alive.

  She allowed Georgie to lead her to a classroom where a middle-aged woman waited, a busy woman who didn’t waste words.

  ‘I want to separate your girls, Mrs King.’

  ‘They like being together,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Margot is not handling the work and is making no attempt to handle it. To put it bluntly, Mrs King, her belligerent attitude is having an effect on Georgina’s social interaction with the other children.’

  Jenny looked at those kids waiting outside the door where they’d been told to wait, Georgie in charge. She was six years old and would have passed for eight. Margot was eleven months her senior and might have passed for a spoilt-brat five year old. Hard enough getting her to school most mornings. If she couldn’t cling to Georgie, she wouldn’t go.

  Jenny sighed in a deep breath, attempting to get beneath the ache of half-witted fool Jenny and down to Mrs-till-death-do-us- part-King.

  ‘Moving from her old school has been . . . very difficult for Margot.’

  ‘As, no doubt, it has been for Georgina,’ the woman said.

  ‘She likes learning.’

  ‘And is bei
ng held back by her sister — who will learn nothing while Georgina is doing the work for her.’

  And of course she wouldn’t — and hadn’t. She clung like a limpet to Georgie. She hobbled her.

  ‘Do whatever you think best,’ Jenny said.

  Georgie would be moving. Margot would remain with this woman. Maybe.

  Home then, or back to that house that wasn’t a home, Jimmy talking about Granny’s eggs, about Maisy, Margot ahzeeing because Maisy was her grandmother, not Jimmy’s, and she wanted her grandmother, not Jenny, and why couldn’t she see her grandmother?

  ‘Shut up your ahzeeing, Margot,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Thee’th my grandma, not hith.’

  Take her out to Box Hill and dump her with her grandma then run like hell, Jenny thought.

  Can’t. Four chops swimming in blood, going green around the edges. Have to cook them.

  Bury them, then run.

  Too much bank-account money invested in my dresser.

  She sighed and lit the oven, then, eyes near closed, slid slimy chops onto the baking tray. Eight filthy potatoes, half of them attempting to take root in the wheat bag and the other half rotten inside. It would have cost him less to buy decent potatoes she could use. She peeled an onion, allowed her eyes to leak a tear or two. Ray liked onion gravy. Onions were vegetables.

  Served him three chops. Shared one between three kids, doused their potatoes and cabbage with gravy. Didn’t serve herself a meal. Her stomach wouldn’t take it.

  Didn’t tell him that Jim was alive. Couldn’t say his name or she’d bawl. And he wouldn’t want to know. He was jealous of Geoff Parker, jealous of Flora’s wood man, probably jealous of the garbage man . . .

  Far better if she hadn’t known Jim was alive. She’d married Ray to give her kids a name, to get rid of the Morrison name. She had to concentrate on that.