Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  She’d greeted him with a rifle salute yesterday — and Lenny’s little rifle didn’t aim true. She’d gone closer to his car than she’d intended. He hadn’t hung around to argue. Got back in behind the wheel faster than an eighty-year-old man should have been able to.

  She smiled, wondering at Vern’s reaction had she given him a two-shot salute. He would have kept coming. She hadn’t. And maybe that said it all. And maybe she’d missed seeing him sitting on that chair, missed talking to someone who remembered what she remembered, those she remembered. Too many of their age group had moved on to the graveyard.

  ‘I still swear he fathered that girl,’ Vern said.

  ‘There’s no doubt.’

  ‘So you’re admitting it now?’

  ‘You’re losing your onions. I told you, he admitted it the night of Norman’s funeral when he came down here.’

  ‘I’m talking about Margaret, not that hot pants little bitch.’

  ‘Give it up. Margaret’s a better daughter to you than your hawk-faced, globe-trotting lamp pole. When is she due home?’

  ‘Too bloody soon, and she’s bringing them back with her. I was stuck with them for two months the last time, and I was a healthy man and could take off somewhere.’

  ‘Where have you got Jim?’

  ‘At a private place that promised the world and is doing bugger all. We were down there the weekend before last.’

  ‘There’s talk going around that he’s lost his sight.’

  ‘Sight? He’s lost his leg. They’ve got a fake one on him. He could get around on crutches, but won’t.’

  ‘Bring him home.’

  ‘Margaret’s got a bloke, and enough on her plate. And we’ve had him home twice. We took him out to see Monk’s place. Before he joined up, he conned me into spending a fortune on that bloody house and we couldn’t get him out of the car to look at it. He doesn’t want to be home, or any-bloody-where else. Where has she got his boy living?’

  ‘Sydney,’ Gertrude said.

  ‘She’s doing very well for herself up there too.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘Yeah. She can afford to take a flight down from Sydney to take that boy hospital visiting. Like bloody hell, she can. She’s got Jimmy living somewhere in Melbourne.’

  ‘Joey’s flying down for Christmas.’

  ‘Stop changing the subject. Where has she got him?’

  ‘You brought up flying. He’s getting married in April to a nurse he met when he was in the army hospital up north.’

  ‘Is he bringing her down?’

  ‘He’s coming alone this time.’

  ‘And every time. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny she doesn’t know he’s a darkie.’

  ‘He’s got a whiter heart than you, you lying sod.’

  ‘Speaking of liars. We’ve contacted that Sydney boarding house and the landlady hasn’t set eyes on your granddaughter since ’44. You’re a bare-faced liar, Trude.’

  ‘And the longer I know you, the better I get at doing it.’

  He’d spent a lot of money in looking for his grandson. For months now he’d been paying a retired police detective to search Sydney for him. The chap had found the boarding house; he’d been to Sydney schools searching for Morrison or King kids — found plenty, though not the right ones.

  ‘Maisy Macdonald met her in Melbourne for lunch. Did she fly down that day too?’

  ‘Go and clutter up Maisy’s kitchen. She’ll be happy to gossip with you all day. I’ve got better things to do.’

  ‘We bought a train set for Jimmy’s birthday. I need her address.’

  ‘I’ll post it up to him for you.’

  ‘You’ve known me for seventy bloody years and you don’t trust me to send my own grandson a birthday present?’

  ‘Because I’ve known you for seventy years. She’s married. She’s happy. They’re living in a nice house. The kids are happy. Leave them alone.’

  ‘If she’d left Jim alone, he would have been taking care of me now, not the other bloody way around.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t have had a grandson to buy train sets for — and with luck, you could see him at Christmas time. She said in her last letter that she’s thinking about coming home when school breaks up. And you hound her while she’s up here Vern, and, by God, I will greet you with my rifle.’

  *

  Archie Foote hadn’t appreciated Gertrude’s bullets. They’d kicked up dust two foot from his front tyre. His ’39 Auburn roadster had been suffering from shell shock since, and while old lovers sparred in Gertrude’s kitchen, Archie stood in the sun out front of a tin-shed garage watching his pride and joy subjected to the garage man’s greasy hands and his screwdriver poking around in its bowels.

  The car had done very few miles before the war; had spent most of the war years up on blocks, according to its previous owner. This morning, it had woken up with the hiccups. Some blockage perhaps, diseased petrol more than likely. He’d blamed country fuel when presenting his case. There were sufficient cars in Melbourne to guarantee the product was fresh. The Auburn’s fuel tank had been topped up last night in anticipation of making an early start and arriving home in time to freshen up for an evening engagement. Now this.

  ‘A blockage of the arteries?’ he asked.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it,’ the garage man said.

  Three days in Woody Creek was a week too long. He’d come in quest of information on the whereabouts of Jennifer, and had learnt nothing, other than her older sister was living with her father’s relatives in Richmond and that Jennifer sang with a band in Sydney. She’d given him a phone number, an address. He’d placed a call to that number, and, on the off chance he’d managed to transpose the last digits, had placed the call again. Apparently she’d moved on. He’d written to the address. Not a word.

  Gertrude, his only conduit to Jennifer, was a blocked conduit. She’d pulled a rifle on him forty years ago and her bullets had set the dust dancing at his feet. He’d raised the dust himself yesterday in his haste to get his vehicle out of rifle range.

  The garage man removed a spark plug. Archie could just about recognise a spark plug. He drew nearer, his manicured hands clasped behind his back while the mechanic walked into the tin shed wiping large greasy paws on what looked to be a pair of his wife’s bloomers. He returned with a dialled implement, which Archie watched him attach to the sick motor. A minute or two later he had a diagnosis.

  ‘Your compressions are down to buggery,’ he said.

  Archie had learnt the art of driving a vehicle back when the horse had first made way for the combustion motor. He’d known nothing of a car’s internals back then and knew less today.

  ‘Some clarification perhaps?’

  ‘Valves,’ the garage man said. ‘I’ll need to take your head off to make sure, but I’ll hazard a guess that you’ve got a couple of burnt-out valves.’

  ‘Operable?’

  The greasy chap wiped the dialled implement on his wife’s bloomers, slowly, carefully, his eye not on the task, but sizing up his customer’s ability to pay. He saw a dapper little man in a pin-striped suit, dark hat, white shirt, maroon tie.

  He knew who he was. A stranger didn’t remain a stranger in Woody Creek, not if he hung around for more than a day. An hour after booking in at the hotel, he’d been connected to Gertrude Foote, and through her named as the local murderess’s father. A few hours more and they’d connected him to the Monk family: big property owners and the town’s toffs until the bank sold them up during the early days of the Great Depression. Old man Monk’s son had wed Archie Foote’s aunt, which made Dr Archibald Foote MD a first cousin to Max Monk. After he’d been three days as a guest at the hotel, there wasn’t a lot Woody Creek folk didn’t know about Gertrude Foote’s husband. Nelly Dobson, the hotel laundress, could tell you he wore black silk underdrawers.

  No one had yet connected him to Albert Forester, the bearded old coot who had hung around town during the depression years. Horrie Bull, th
e previous publican, may have made the connection, but a year or two ago he’d sold the hotel to Fred Bowen and bought a pub in Carlton. Denham, the previous copper, would have recognised him. The Denham family had moved on to Bendigo. Betty Duffy gave Archie the evil eye, but she’d lost most of her marbles and even her family took no notice of anything old Bet raved on about.

  ‘It won’t be cheap,’ the garage man said.

  ‘Time is the priority, sir, not cash,’ Archie said.

  More specifically, how much more time he now must spend as a guest of the local publican, the one place in Woody Creek where a stranger might find a bed. There were two establishments where he might buy a meal, both of them greasy.

  ‘I’ll need to strip her down.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A day. Two if I run into problems. You never know what you’ll find until you get inside these old girls.’

  Archie had a response on his lips but held it in. This was Woody Creek, not the city. He glanced past the mechanic and into his shed. Barely room for a car between the piles of junk and tin cans.

  ‘I believe I’ll allow her to limp home.’

  ‘She might get as far as the ten-mile post,’ the mechanic said. ‘I charge for towing.’

  ‘No doubt you do — and provide car-washing services too?’ he added as a mangy and somewhat greasy fox terrier lifted his leg against a back wheel.

  He was not the first dog in town to lay claim to it, and no doubt would not be the last. The town was full of peeing dogs. Archie didn’t like dogs, abhorred cats, had a bird phobia.

  ‘I’ve got Joe Flanagan’s brakes coming in after lunch. If nothing urgent comes up, I’ll get on to yours this evening.’

  The keys were changing hands when something more urgent came up. A girl of twelve or thirteen rode into the yard. The terrier left off his peeing to bite at her wheel.

  ‘Mum says can you come quick, please. Trevor just fell off the roof and he’s out cold.’

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ the garage man said and started stripping off his overalls.

  Archie laughed, amused, as always, by this town. ‘Does the town doctor moonlight as mechanic — or the reverse?’

  ‘Taxi driver,’ the garage man said, again utilising his wife’s bloomers. ‘Always someone wanting to go somewhere.’

  ‘In my long experience I’ve found that most children bounce.’

  ‘He’s one of Tom Vevers’. He lost his oldest boy in the creek, and lost his second in the war. Young Trevor is his last — or his last boy.’ He eyed his customer. ‘Go around and take a look if you like. Save me a trip, and you’ll get your car faster.’

  Archie was watching the girl and the bike disappear up the road, the dog near hanging off her back wheel. His credentials were current. Doctors came under the heading of essential services, and those employed in the essential services gained an extra portion of the rationed petrol. He was well beyond the age of wanting to poke around at unclean bodies, but always eager to obtain more than his fair share of whatever was going. In retirement, he’d gone into the study of shell-shocked minds. An American chap by the name of Freeman had been having some success with them. More recently, Archie had volunteered his services one day a month at an asylum for the criminally insane, where he documented many similarities between the shell-shocked boys and his vacant-eyed firstborn, locked behind those walls.

  ‘They’re over the lines and through the park. The third house on your left. They’ll know who you are. If they don’t, tell them I sent you.’

  He found Tom Vevers’ house, found the thirteen-year-old youth, no longer out cold though maybe suffering a mild concussion. He suggested they keep him under observation for thirty minutes; and, an hour later, ate a nice lunch with the woman and her daughters.

  Mrs Vevers turned the conversation to Gertrude, to Amber, who she’d gone to school with. She spoke of the Morrisons’ lost babies, and how losing a child was something parents never got over.

  Archie turned the conversation to his granddaughters, and, over a second cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake, edged it around to Jennifer.

  ‘They say she’s singing with that band again in Sydney,’ Mrs Vevers said. ‘We heard her on the wireless years ago. She was very good, doctor, then she went right off the rails.’

  Archie nodded, his expression, one of disappointment, not a perfect match for his thoughts — and where was the fun in walking that straight and narrow rail?

  I KNOW YOU

  Between the hours of ten and three thirty on the third Wednesday of each month, Archie Foote could be found at an asylum for the criminally insane. His interest in the dysfunctional mind was genuine. Throughout her lifetime, his sister had suffered from a recurrent mania, which had, more or less regularly, seen her carried away to a private sanatorium, where, removed from the stresses of a family hell-bent on educating the ineducable, she had regained her senses and been returned home until the next episode. He’d seen little of his sister during her adult years, too little to make a study of her mania. Not so his firstborn, a permanent inmate of the asylum. Each month he spent time with her, documenting her responses, watching her actions as a child may look on a caged creature at the zoo, with consuming interest but little concern for the animal’s welfare.

  She’d been a pretty enough thing in her youth, as had his sister, Victoria. The Foote females bloomed early and faded fast. Like his sister, this one had evolved into a skin-and-bone hag.

  It was the first time he’d seen her on her feet. On his previous visit she’d been a screaming, spitting shrew. She was walking in circles today, her narrow shoulders hunched, head down, her right finger and thumb pinching the bruised skin on the rear of her left hand. Self-mutilation? Counting her steps? Perhaps a pinch for each circle completed. Was she capable of counting?

  ‘How many circles have you completed?’ he asked.

  No response, he added to the already copious notes compiled on his firstborn.

  New drugs were being developed, which, in some cases, made the handling of the insane easier on their keepers. This one had murdered her husband, which, in the state’s eyes, made her a fair enough guinea pig.

  Check recent medication, he wrote. Something had got her on her feet and seemingly tamed.

  He stood for ten minutes observing her circles and that pinch, and he smiled, recalling his own time spent in a similar cage.

  Twice in his life he’d been incarcerated: for the best part of two years in Egypt; and over fourteen months in Pentridge. The human mind is a magnificent creation. Take away the printed word, take away paper and pencil, take away light, and the strong mind will find a way to fill a day.

  The males of the Foote line were a strong race, which may have accounted for the mania that ran through the female line. He’d given life to two. His first seed had grown twisted in Woody Creek’s dust. The other had taken root in the same dust and bloomed. This circling hag, having been planted in the strong-willed daughter of a hovel-dwelling dirt scratcher, would, in all probability, have wed a dirt scratcher and lived out her days in penny-pinching poverty with her umpteen dirt-scratching offspring. His second seed, planted in the wife of an Italian banker, should have been raised in a Catholic orphanage. Some manipulative hand had seen to the meeting of his two daughters. The older had raised the younger.

  Four years of mopping up the blood and guts of war and Archie had washed his hands of religion, and, like many, had spent the early twenties partying. Even so, the perfect symmetry of life was, at times, almost sufficient to convince him there was a greater being than man; a grand old clown balancing on a cloud while pulling the strings and, with raucous amusement, watching the dance below. He’d manoeuvred Archie into a corner in ’23.

  Stony, motherless broke, reduced to penning a begging letter to his father when his current meal ticket had started pining for London, a city Archie had never been fond of. He may have gone with her had his father not replied. He’d give him no more money,
but a position might be found for him in the family business. Dear old Dad or dear old Lily? One as bad as the other, he’d taken a wander down to the shipping company’s office where he’d learnt that a cruise ship’s surgeon had slipped on deck and broken his leg. Two days later, Lily deserted, Archie had been pandering to the rich on a luxury world cruise. The puppet master had got him exactly where he’d wanted him.

  They were two days out of San Francisco when she came to his surgery, a dark, sad-eyed woman, edging towards thirty-five and more beautiful for her maturity. She’d had little English. He’d mixed her a headache potion and she’d gone on her way. That night he was called to her cabin with a repeat of the potion. He’d sat on her bed and spoken to her in her own tongue. As a youth he’d excelled in schoolboy Latin. His interest in the study of languages had taken him to many shores.

  She’d been desperate for companionship. She’d told him that her husband had two sons, that she had five grandchildren. She’d told him that her husband lost much money in the gambling room. Archie knew the fat old coot who spent his evenings playing cards for high stakes. He’d watched him later that night, his own fingers itching for cards. Had his pockets been up to it, he may have taken Conti’s money instead of his wife. Alas for empty pockets.

  The signora’s debilitating headaches had continued. The banker and his much younger beauty had been on that boat for months.

  ‘You are missing your children?’ Archie had asked.

  ‘No baby, I am flower only for my husband to wear in the buttonhole.’

  ‘But such a beautiful flower,’ he’d said.

  He diagnosed her headaches as sexual neglect. His cure was simple enough. He should have known better, but he’d never been one for self-control. A pleasurable game, the initiation of a thirtyfive-year-old woman to the joys of the bed. Each night he’d carried a sleeping potion to Juliana’s cabin, and on several of those nights he’d locked the door behind him.

  They were docking in Sydney on a pretty morning in late April, Archie on deck taking in the view, when Conti’s wife approached him, told him she had been touched by the hand of God. Likened to the angel Gabriel in his youth, to Jesus on occasions, God’s representative on earth had considered jumping overboard and swimming for his life when she told him she was with child. He’d quelled the desire and patted her hand.