Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  And how could she?

  Jen and Jim, 1942. That’s all she could think of.

  And bloody Friday night and no work tomorrow, and he never missed a Friday night, and she hated the whole animal thing of his bed.

  And dark in the dark old inn yard, a stable wicket creaked, where Tim the ostler listened . . . There were seventeen verses in ‘The Highwayman’. ‘Daffodils’ had five. And she couldn’t concentrate on either poem. Wanted Jim. Wanted the flight of butterflies — not a bear grunting over his fresh kill.

  Ran from his bed. Ran to the lavatory, her coat over her arm. Her place. Her only place. And the washhouse. It wasn’t a Wednesday or a Sunday but she washed there, washed him off her there, then felt out two cigarettes she’d wrapped in newspaper and hidden on a shelf beside the troughs. Felt for five minutes for the box of matches kept down there to light the copper. And found them, and lit a cigarette. Oh, glorious cigarette. Stood in the doorway sucking in smoke and not feeling the cold, warming herself with tears, howling in peace while staring up at Melbourne’s dark sky. No stars. The stars lived on light poles in Melbourne. They went out when someone turned off the switch.

  A bad Friday, it led into a worse weekend. And thank God for Monday. Ray left for work, and at eight thirty she walked the kids to school. Before she reached the house again, Margot came ahzeeing up behind her.

  ‘I’m not going to thcool if I can’t thit with Georgie.’

  Give up. Just give everything up. What did it matter anyway? Nothing mattered. She was empty again, an aching hollow again. Just get the tram out to Amber’s asylum and ask if they’ve got a spare bed, ask them for a lobotomy. Why bother trying to survive when the fight wasn’t worth the effort?

  She had to live at least through today. She’d promised to take up the hem of a ballgown for some nursing friend of Mrs Andrews from over the road.

  She got it done. Could have done a better job. She didn’t charge enough anyway. Shops charged three times as much. She picked Georgie up from school. Happy little girl, she’d had a good day and was full of her new teacher, her new classroom, Gwyneth, the girl she sat beside.

  Fried steak for Ray’s dinner, and her mind not on steak, she fried stewing steak. It was as tough as old boots. And how was she supposed to know one slimy piece of dead cow from another? Forked it from the plates and tossed it into a saucepan with her last onion. He ate his stew late, with more mashed potatoes, ate the lot. The kids were in bed. And he wanted her in his bed, and she couldn’t stand it.

  And didn’t.

  ‘I’ve had a rotten day, Ray. Margot wouldn’t go to school.’

  She wouldn’t go to school on Tuesday, not unless she could sit with Georgie. Georgie didn’t want to be late. She ran off alone while Margot stood in the kitchen ahzeeing.

  Jenny stood watching, listening, wondering if she couldn’t say an ‘s’ or wouldn’t try. A ‘z’ was only an ‘s’ with voice added. She glanced at Jimmy who stood in the bedroom doorway, fingers jammed into his ears.

  Margot’s noise lasted until lunchtime. They ate an early lunch that Tuesday. Like Maisy, Margot enjoyed her food.

  Couldn’t bribe her to go to school on Wednesday. Georgie walked home alone and found Jenny digging a grave for another liver and hitting roots.

  ‘Will meat work like chook and horse dung works for making garden things grow, Jenny?’

  ‘It might,’ Jenny said.

  ‘If that’s rhubarb, it might make it grow and we can have rhubarb pies like at home.’

  Was it rhubarb? Maybe. She got down to her knees, carefully brushing away dirt, pulling long weeds, little Georgie down beside her. And it was rhubarb. Though they found no sign of leaves, they’d exposed several crowns.

  ‘It is,’ Jenny said, and couldn’t help herself, kissed that pretty little face. Loved her face, loved her mind. Just loved her. Married Ray to give that beautiful little girl a father and a chance to live a good life, and she had to stop mooning over Jim — which never could have been anyway. Vern would have stopped him from marrying her. Just a stupid kid’s dream, that’s all.

  She dug more carefully then, and when the hole was deemed deep enough, they had a grand funeral for the liver, and maybe for a few childhood dreams.

  ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if he buys another liver, I think I’ll bust,’ Jenny said over the grave.

  Jimmy liked silly rhymes. ‘Another one,’ he demanded.

  ‘We like macaroni and a rhubarb pie, so I’m sorry, Mrs Cow’s liver, if we don’t cry.’

  ‘Now say it all again, Jenny.’

  Wednesday became a better day, or it did until Jimmy recited her rhyme at the dinner table, until Georgie appreciated it anew and got the giggles. Ray didn’t appreciate it, or the waste.

  ‘What w-was wrong w-with the liver?’ he asked.

  ‘It was going green. I told you, I don’t know how to cook cows’ innards.’

  ‘L-lamb’s. You ssss-lice it and f-f-fry it.’

  ‘I can’t slice it, Ray. It quivers under my knife. There are things I can’t do. Please don’t buy any more.’

  ‘I g-g-get what he’s g-got.’

  He didn’t appreciate Margot’s ahzeeing at bedtime. She wasn’t going to bed and she wasn’t going to school, not never.

  ‘W-what’s g-got into her?’

  ‘She wants to sit with Georgie. The teacher split them up.’

  ‘Tell her to p-p-put them b-back where they were.’

  ‘She’s holding Georgie back.’

  ‘Sh-she can s-stand a b-bit of hhh-holding back.’

  ‘No one can stand holding back.’

  ‘That teacher ith thtupid ithn’t thee, Daddy Ray?’

  Embarrassed by the name, he stood to walk out, then he reached out a hand and patted Margot’s head, just a brief pat, as he may have patted an unknown cat, wary, at arm’s length. It was his first physical contact with either of the girls, and maybe a good sign.

  Margot got herself dressed for school on Thursday morning. Ray had said to put her and Georgie back together. It was his house. He was the boss. She learned that morning that teachers were the bosses at school. She came home at midday.

  On Friday, Jenny gave up the fight, and the fight with herself. She left her two kids playing with Lois in the backyard and went to the post office to call hospitals. She was married and wasn’t planning to jeopardise her marriage, but she had to see Jim. She had to explain to him why she’d married. She had to tell him too that his father had let her believe he was dead.

  She didn’t find him that Friday but was given two phone numbers to try, though not today. She had enough coins left in her purse to buy a tin of powdered milk. Kids needed milk. Ray didn’t use it and rarely bought it.

  Arrived home to World War Three. Lois and Jimmy played well together. Margot was a pincher, a puncher, a pusher.

  ‘You’re going to school. Get your school shoes on, Margot.’

  ‘I’m thitting with Georgie.’

  ‘Georgie can read and you can’t, so you can’t sit with her.’

  ‘Not going then.’

  She looked too much like her fathers. Maisy should have been raising her. Jenny had never had any interest in raising her. Hadn’t touched her until she was fourteen or fifteen months old. Hadn’t wanted to touch her then. Didn’t like her hands, her face, her hair.

  I had her — had her forced on me . . .

  Should have signed her away at birth.

  Would have — if not for Maisy and Elsie. So let them raise her. I can’t.

  ‘Do you want to go home?’

  Margot didn’t understand.

  ‘Do you want to go back to Granny and Elsie?’

  Margot wasn’t sure about that.

  ‘You have to go to school. You could go to school up there with Elsie’s kids.’

  ‘And Georgie.’

  ‘Georgie goes to school down here.’

  ‘I want to thit with her, I thaid.’

  A circular argumen
t, going nowhere, as did all arguments with Margot. Walk away. Or fight.

  An exercise book taken from her dresser drawer, a page ripped out, a pencil found. ‘Kids have to go to school. If you won’t go, you’ll have to go to school at home. Sit down and write your name at the top of that page.’

  ‘You’re not a thchoolteacher.’

  ‘Sit down and write your name.’

  ‘You’re thtupid.’

  The page swiped to the floor, Margot left the kitchen. There was relief in watching that stocky little back disappear into the bedroom. Easier to let her go, but Jenny grasped her skirt and drew her back to the kitchen, to the table, picked her up and sat her on a chair and held her there.

  ‘I want to play!’

  ‘You don’t play. You pinch. You’re going to sit there until you write your name.’

  The page flew, as did the pencil.

  ‘Now you’ll write it two times.’

  Margot didn’t write. She hammered the sharp end of the pencil into the table. The lead broke, she smiled and escaped.

  She was the twins, tormenting Miss Rose in that classroom. She was Sissy, fighting in Norman’s kitchen. She was Jenny’s nemesis — but she’d taken her mind off Jim and rehabilitation hospitals.

  ‘It’s three times now.’

  At four times, she locked the kids’ bedroom door, locked the glass door and placed both keys on top of the dresser — as had Norman. She remained calm, as had Norman, just kept sharpening the pencil, flattening the paper.

  The pencil flew at her head. Even at full zee, that kid’s aim was good — like her fathers’.

  ‘Every time you throw it I add one more. Keep that in mind, Margot.’

  The count reached seven, the paper crumpled, ripped, flattened, the pencil sharpened for the fourth time, Margot’s ahzeeing reaching a crescendo, and Jenny stole a cigarette, opened Ray’s new packet to steal it. He’d know. And who cared? The army had supplied soldiers with cigarettes, and if that’s what it took, then that’s what it took. Margot had been dictating the terms of their relationship for too long.

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘I’m telling Daddy Ray you pinched hith thigarettes.’

  ‘I’m telling Granny that you can’t write to her because you can’t even write your name.’

  ‘I can tho.’

  ‘Then do it! Eight times.’

  Jimmy wrote to Granny, and drew her pictures. He’d been born with a pencil in his hand. Georgie wrote letters. She’d read anything: newspapers, books she shouldn’t have been able to lift. Two of a kind, Georgie and Jimmy, little sponges demanding water and soaking up every drip of information fed to them. Tell Margot the same thing twenty times and it slid off like water on glass.

  ‘What comes after nine, Margot?’

  ‘Ten of courth.’

  ‘Very good. When the count gets to ten, I start increasing by five. Can you count by fives?’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘You’ll hate me more when you have to write your name fifty times. If I were you, I’d start now.’

  She didn’t write but the page didn’t fly. Jenny offered the sharpened pencil stub. Margot didn’t take it. She slid from the chair and beneath the table. Jenny hauled her out by a leg. Wondered if Ray’s mother had tried to sit him down with a pencil and paper; if she’d had a pencil to sit him down with.

  The Palmer kids had written with sticks in the dust. Plenty of dust in Woody Creek. Plenty of sticks. The desire had to be in a kid before he’d pick up a stick and write his name in the dust.

  She’d written her name, had written ‘Cara Jeanette Paris’, the childhood pseudonym used when she’d written to Mary Jolly. She’d written Mary’s name, and rubbed it quickly away — Mary, her magical penfriend. What had Ray done through his childhood? What had he been doing between the age of twelve and twenty-six? Where had he been doing it? Who had he been married to? How had she died? Why hadn’t she had kids?

  He didn’t want kids. He tolerated Jenny’s, but was a happier man when they weren’t around.

  How many men would have married an unwed mother with three kids?

  Jim would have — if Vern hadn’t got to him.

  He would have got to him.

  ‘He’s too strong for me,’ Jim had said once. ‘You don’t know him, Jen.’

  She knew that lying old bugger — knew this bugger of a kid too. She’d grown up with her.

  ‘Are you ready to go to school yet?’

  ‘I will, I thaid, if I thit with Georgie.’

  ‘You’d better pick up that pencil then and start writing. Georgie can write.’

  ‘After I play with Jimmy and Loith, I will.’

  ‘You’re not playing with Jimmy and Lois today. You pinched Lois.’

  ‘Thee wouldn’t get off the trike.’

  ‘Your full name, nine times, please.’

  Margot snatched the pencil and, for a split second, Jenny thought she’d won. It flew at her. She caught it.

  ‘Now it’s ten times. What comes after ten?’

  ‘Eleven, thtupid.’

  ‘Not when you count by fives. Fifteen comes after ten. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty.’

  ‘You’re fifty timeth a thtupid idiot and I hate you.’

  ‘How many more pages will you need?’ Jenny asked, reaching for the open exercise book.

  ‘You thtop that.’

  ‘You start writing then.’

  Margot could count by fives when the kids played hidey. Ripping out a second page forced the issue. She wrote her name, once. It took an hour more for her to write it ten times, but she did, and considered throwing the pencil when she was done, but, with her arm raised, changed her mind.

  Such battles aren’t won in a morning, or in a weekend; some such battles will never be won. The school term ended in June. Jenny walked Georgie two streets away to play at Gwyneth’s. Margot fought all the way home. She wanted to play too.

  ‘You don’t play. You pinch.’

  There is a time for all things, and, if nothing more, Jenny had learnt that much. She’d been seventeen when Jimmy had been conceived; eighteen the week she’d spent with Jim in Sydney, just a kid. She was an adult now, an accidental mother, but a mother no less. She was a teacher with one focus — and her school didn’t recognise holidays.

  The clock on the dresser became Margot’s only relief. When its little hand got to the ten and its big hand was on six, she had a biscuit and a drink of milk. When both hands reached twelve, she had a sandwich. When the little hand was on three and the big hand on six was the best time of the day. It meant Margot’s torment was over.

  She learned to tell the time; she learned to read, or memorise her first reader, and write her name well. She didn’t surrender, or not unconditionally, but never had a child dressed so eagerly for school when the holidays were over, and never was there a mother so eager to walk her child to school and to come home to the peace of an empty kitchen and her sewing machine.

  Jenny had a growing business. Rarely did a week pass without someone knocking on her door. She made seventeen and six one week and fifteen shillings the next. There was money in her purse, and money made by her hands felt so good.

  She had a refrigerator. Only the rich had refrigerators in Woody Creek. She had a large wedge of cheese in the refrigerator, cabbage, carrots. She had a nice-looking husband who never missed a day at work, half a dozen roots of rhubarb six foot from her door, and, like Margot, that rhubarb was responding to her care.

  And, because of Margot, because of her ‘Daddy Ray’, she’d got Ray playing Switch with her and the kids — and got a pencil into his hand.

  Margot was never happier than when she had playing cards in her hand. She didn’t like scoring: her addition was slow and painful, her figures atrocious. Ray was short on patience. He took the pencil from her hand one night and totalled the scores. Still held that pencil as he had in the schoolroom, in his left hand, between
his index and tall finger, his thumb guiding its point. And how anyone could learn to write with a grip like that, Jenny didn’t know. He could write figures though, good figures, and his addition was fast and sure.

  She could teach him to read. She could teach him to write more than his name. He was a good man, just . . . just lost.

  Dear Granny,

  Margot wants to show you how well she can write. I hope all goes well in your world. As some time has now passed, no doubt you and Vern have got over your little tiff, and he has told you of Jim’s whereabouts. I can assure you, and him, that I have no desire nor intention to crawl into Jim’s hospital bed, but as Jimmy will need to be told that his father has arisen from the dead, it might be easier to explain if he can see the living proof of him during the explanation.

  [Mrs] J.C. King

  Georgie’s letter was not so brief. Like Gertrude, she didn’t believe in wasting paper. Margot copied five lines of Jenny’s words; Jimmy drew a picture of Granny’s house, eight goats, umpteen chooks, a mountain of eggs and Granny on horseback. He signed it too. With his full name.

  A lengthy reply came by return mail.

  Dear Jennifer,

  I haven’t seen Vern in months and if I never see him again it will be too soon. He did an unforgivable thing to you and to me and I don’t plan to ‘get over our little tiff’.

  I don’t know where Jim is being treated. All I know is what I’ve heard from Maisy. She says he had beri-beri, which is caused by a lack of decent food and can lead to all sorts of problems if it’s not attended to early. A British doctor at the camp amputated his lower leg when gangrene set in. From what I know of gangrene, Jim is lucky to be alive. That’s not the first time I’ve said that. Since his birth, that boy has been surviving against all odds.

  Maisy probably told you that Gloria Bull nursed him when they first brought him back. Her mother told Mrs Croft, she told Maisy and a few more. You know what this town is like for spreading rumours. I didn’t believe it when I first heard about it, and you know me well enough to know that I don’t pass on rumours, not to you or to anyone else.

  I know what it must have been like for you hearing it from Maisy over lunch. That woman needs her tongue putting in a vice. I intended writing, but I knew how you’d feel reading about it in a letter, so I kept putting it off. I thought I might go down with her, but things keep coming up. I’m sorry now that I didn’t go.