Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  Doreen, a friend of Wilma’s, asked me to make a wedding dress and two bridesmaids’ dresses for her daughter’s wedding. I almost had a stroke when I saw the material they’d bought. I looked at it for two days, too scared to cut into it, then I went out and bought a roll of calico and made the entire frock out of that, just tacked it together. Once it fitted, I unpicked it and used the calico pieces as the pattern. It looked so good, I couldn’t believe I’d made it. Even the inside looked good. I didn’t have a clue how much to charge them so I rang up a dressmaker and asked what she’d charge to make me a wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses. I almost fell over in the phone box. I ended up charging eight pounds for the lot and even Wilma said I was mad. If you happen to be talking to Miss Blunt could you ask her what she charges these days?

  Flora had watched the making of the bridal gowns with great interest. She’d played model for the smaller of the two bridesmaids’ frocks and wanted one the same. It took a day to make it, and maybe Jenny shouldn’t have made it look so easy. Flora didn’t offer to pay. She wore it to a ball; Jenny envious when she watched her neighbour leave, leaving her at home with the kids, Lois asleep on the camp stretcher.

  Jenny had moved back into Ray’s bed. She’d asked him to take her to a jazz club on Friday night.

  THE BREEDING OF MONEY

  She went alone and couldn’t find the club that first night. She walked by the entrance three times, was ready to turn around and go home, when she realised the club was down a set of old stairs, in a cellar. Jim had always wanted to hear what her voice sounded like in Monk’s cellar . . .

  A crowded, smoky place; eyes turned to her as she entered, clad again in blue, her frock too tame for that place, out of place there, as was she.

  Itchy-foot had been watching for her. She’d phoned him to let him know she’d . . . flown down again. He introduced her to Monique, clad in slinky and low-cut black, and to her husband, Ralph, as slinky in his black dress suit. Not the same atmosphere or clientele as the club in Sydney. Archie sang; Monique sang; her husband, Ralph, played the piano; and the bug-eyed club owner considered himself a dirty-mouthed comedian.

  Jenny sat at a small table in a smoky corner, partially screened by a dusty palm in a pot. Archie had supplied her with a jug of water; she shouted the palm a glass. It was late when Archie introduced her to the protruding-eyed manager.

  She hadn’t expected to be asked to sing, but she sang ‘Blue Moon’, Ralph on the piano, adding bits never written into the music of that song, but she wasn’t booed off stage, which wasn’t a stage anyway, just a corner crowded by a piano.

  ‘Like a breath of fresh air,’ the bug-eyed coot said — and invited her back — or maybe offered her a job.

  After eleven, when she left to catch the tram home, the party in the cellar was still warming up. She was going back — whether to donate her time or not, she didn’t care. She’d got a foot inside that door and it wasn’t closing on her.

  That week she ripped the guipure lace from the neck of the black frock she’d worn to Norman’s funeral and hadn’t worn since; the once-red frock Laurie had bought for a fifteen-year-old Jenny in Melbourne. She’d dyed it black in Sydney, when she’d had nothing to wear to the Sydney club, had added the lace to give it a respectable neckline. She didn’t need that same respectability at Itchy-foot’s jazz club.

  The frock was a heavy silk. It fitted at the hip, flared at the knee and looked fashionable enough for after five. She bought a gold silk rose to pin on its shoulder, wore her pearl-in-a-cage necklace and earrings, then covered the frock’s low neckline with a button-up cardigan until she got to the club.

  Itchy-foot noticed the pearl-in-a-cage pendant at her throat — or her frock’s neckline. He reached to touch an earring, smiled, but didn’t comment.

  A few world-weary eyes concentrated on her neckline while she sang, but who cared. The bug-eyed coot discussed money that night. She rode the tram home with cash in her handbag.

  Ray wasn’t happy. Nothing she did could make him happy. She read his newspapers to him, cooked his meat, slept with him — or spent time in his bed. She did most of her sleeping in the sleep-out, in the narrow camp bed.

  Sewed for herself that week, made a black wool gabardine suit and a black and white print blouse. With her next week’s wages, she bought a pair of ultra high-heeled black shoes and two pairs of fine stockings with black seams, paid for a haircut and dictated every snip.

  Put money in the bank the next week and read of trade unions to Ray. Everyone was chasing money. The trade unions wanted more of it for fewer hours, which was madness. Before the war, anyone who could get a job had been happy to work as many hours as it took to keep it. Two years ago, most of the unionists were overseas shooting people and being shot at. Now there was no war and there was enough work, so they waged war on people who were fighting just to keep their heads afloat.

  A child of the depression, Jenny worked when she could. She had a big sewing job in March, making curtains for Carol’s sister’s brand new house. No more card games on Friday nights, but Wilma was more than a card-playing friend now. She popped in every Wednesday while Flora visited her mother. Carol popped in too. She’d elected herself Jenny’s agent — sent a heap of sewing work her way.

  There is something very strange about money. Get a little of it into one place and it breeds more.

  In April, Norman’s estate was finally wound up. Granny wrote the figure on paper: Three hundred and forty-seven pounds. It was a fortune. It was enough to . . . to . . .

  She couldn’t stand Ray’s touch. Couldn’t stand living with him, watching him eat. Loathed the sound of his bike put-putting in through the gate. Didn’t have to live with him, not with a job and three hundred and forty-seven pounds, but where else was she going to get rooms and someone to look after the kids on Friday nights? They liked their school, were doing well there. Even Margot was coping.

  Already caught up in a whirlpool, for two days Norman’s money stirred it.

  Dear Granny,

  See if you can invest Dad’s money for me. The banks were offering good interest for three-year investments . . .

  The papers came in the post, the figure typewritten and not so real. Maturity date: 19 April 1950. Jenny placed the envelope and its contents safe in her cake tin, with the birth certificates, her marriage certificate, then put the lid on it — until April of 1950. That would be her running date. By then Georgie would be ten, Jimmy eight, Margot eleven. They’d be old enough, she’d be rich enough. All she had to do was keep on singing, keep on sewing, until 1950.

  She bought herself a black sweater to wear with her suit skirt. It showed her shape. Her ultra high heels showed the shape of her legs. She spent more time looking after her hair, powdering and painting her face.

  ‘You’re m-meeting someone in there.’

  ‘I take the tram in. I sing. He pays me. At eleven I ride the tram home. Ride in at eleven and pick me up, Ray.’

  ‘G-get yourself home.’

  ‘Then stop accusing me. Do I accuse you when you stay out all night?’

  Like hell, she accused him. She blessed him.

  ‘You’re d-d-dressed up l-like a t-tart —’

  ‘I can’t please you when I dress up. I can’t please you when I don’t dress up. I can’t please you, so I’ve stopped trying.’

  ‘You’re m-m-my wife.’

  ‘And I’ve got three kids who need to eat, and you don’t feed them so I do.’

  Apart from his roadkill and rotten potatoes, she paid for what she served on his table. And she had her own potatoes too, big fat home-grown potatoes she boiled in their jackets and ate with butter and salt and pepper. She bought milk each day after school, large loaves of bread. Washed his clothes, swept up butts from his bedroom floor, cooked his meat, changed his sheets, did her wifely duty with gritted teeth, and did what she’d been born to do on Fridays; the one thing she could do effortlessly, the one thing she enjoyed doing.

 
Could have picked up a dozen blokes at the club if she’d wanted to. Leo, the bug-eyed owner, told her he knew a chap in the recording business, and asked if she’d be interested in meeting with him. Of course she was interested, and she’d shown her interest — in the recording chap. Just another come-on. She knew how to deal with come-ons.

  ‘My husband picks me up, Leo,’ she’d lied.

  And he could have. In Woody Creek, she’d loved riding on the back of his bike, and he knew it. He could have taken her riding through the night streets of Melbourne and she may have gone more willingly to his bed. That wasn’t the way Ray’s head worked. You don’t court wives.

  And it didn’t matter any more. She had a big neon sign flashing before her eyes: 19 April 1950. She’d rent her own house, or put a deposit on a brand new house, like Carol’s sister. A lot of people were paying off new houses.

  In June, she lost track of the date and forgot to pick up her child endowment, her lifeline of not long ago. That’s what happens when you’re caught up in a whirlpool.

  In June, Flora told her she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on the kids next Friday night — or any more Friday nights.

  ‘You said they’re no trouble.’

  ‘They’re not. It’s Ray. He told us he doesn’t want me to do it. We have to live with him, Jenny.’

  Why did they have to live with him? They were the ones paying off the house. Why didn’t they tell him to go? She wanted to ask why, wanted to tell Flora to tell him to go, to tell her she’d pay rent for those rooms. She got as far as, ‘Why?’

  ‘Men like to be the breadwinners,’ Flora said.

  Geoff didn’t. He wanted Flora to get a job. Lois went to school, to the Catholic school.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Flora,’ Jenny said.

  Janice, Wilma’s thirteen-year-old daughter, was happy to earn five bob babysitting. The following Friday, Jenny left her playing cards with the kids and returned to find her in bed with them. She woke her and walked her home.

  Wilma popped in on the Monday to tell her Janice wouldn’t be back.

  ‘He came in drunk and told her to get. Bring your kids around to my place next Friday.’

  They enjoyed their night at Wilma’s house, were full of it on Saturday.

  ‘It’s like at Elsie’s down there, Jenny, when everyone used to laugh and play cards,’ Georgie said.

  Not much laughter in this place.

  One memory will raise another. Jimmy spoke of Myrtle’s leadlight window when Jenny served up bowls of macaroni cheese casserole.

  ‘Did we live a long time before in a house with a magic window, Jenny?’

  ‘How was it magic?’

  ‘Like colours, like in that church we see when we go into the city.’ He spooned in macaroni. ‘It made rainbows on the wall.’

  Only one window had painted rainbows. And how could he possibly remember Amberley? He’d been a month away from three when they’d left Sydney.

  ‘Do you remember Myrtie?’

  He shook his head. Maybe he remembered Myrtle’s macaroni cheese casserole. He cleaned his plate, scraped up the last of the sauce.

  ‘Can you remember the lady who used to make this same dinner for you?’

  ‘Did she have a baby that cried very loud?’

  She had a baby, a tiny bald mite with Jenny’s hands. Hoped he’d forgotten Myrtle and that baby. Jenny questioned him no further.

  In July, she bought a roll of flywire and on Saturday morning, while Ray was out raking up his roadkill, she and the kids ripped the old flywire from the sleep-out and began tacking up the new. Geoff heard the hammering. He came around to help.

  ‘A cat sleeps in there,’ she explained. Didn’t tell him the fool of a thing had landed on her camp stretcher and frightened ten years’ growth out of her. She’d thought it was Ray.

  The following week, she bought a roll of canvas, green canvas, and forced the old sewing machine to stitch new blinds. Geoff took the old blinds down and tacked the new canvas to their rollers. They worked all afternoon together, Ray watching from a distance. The sleep-out a cosier bedroom now, with new blinds to keep the wind out.

  In July, she moved the last of her jams and chutney into the fridge and dragged the dilapidated old cabinet away from its wall to form a partial barrier to her camp stretcher, leaving a small passageway between the kids’ bedroom door and the back door. Well used that back door. That week, she took to the cabinet with Norman’s tools, repaired its drawers, used Norman’s screws to fix the backboards on firmly. Elbow grease and sandpaper removed the years of abuse; Amber’s furniture polish made the old unit glow.

  She moved out of Ray’s room for good that day. He knew why. She’d told him she’d been raped by drunks before; called him a raping bastard. Wished she hadn’t invested Norman’s money. Bought an old wardrobe from the secondhand man; no drawer space in it, but she had three drawers in that old cabinet.

  ‘You’re m-m-married to me.’

  ‘You spell wife with a “W”. Prostitute starts with a “P”. Take a trip to Fitzroy, Ray.’

  A school of life, that jazz club, a fast-talking place. She was a fast learner. She bamboozled him with words.

  He pitched chairs, ripped her frocks from their hangers, stamped on them. She washed them, ironed them, hung them again. A big man, Ray, grown more solid on her cooking. She had to go.

  But not yet, not until after September. She was going to make a pile of money in September, all thanks to Itchy-foot.

  He had a persona to suit every occasion. At the hospital, she’d seen the doctor; at the concert, he’d played the kindly grandfather; at the club, she glimpsed the man Gertrude may have known. A big talker, always another story to tell. He’d lived history. He’d been on a boat little more than five hundred miles away when the Titanic went down. He’d spoken to survivors. He’d seen the carnage of the first war, had operated in field hospitals. Such a little man, so much smaller now than he’d seemed in his long black Noah coat. Maybe her high heels made him smaller. Been everywhere. Done everything.

  And I’ve done nothing.

  I will. After the school holidays.

  She’d asked him about Juliana.

  ‘A victim of circumstance,’ he’d said. ‘A beautiful and tenacious woman.’

  She’d wanted more, had pushed him for more.

  ‘I’m not one to look back, Jennifer. The present is far too interesting to go puddling in the past.’

  Wished she could tell Granny about him. Wished she could tell her she was singing, putting money in the bank. Wished she could tell her to come down in September.

  She was playing Snow White in a pantomime. Itchy-foot was playing Grumpy, and he was so good at it. They were doing five performances at the Hawthorn town hall: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons and two shows on Saturday. She’d be out all day Saturday.

  Ray would get drunk and pitch the furniture. And Granny would murder her if she knew she was allowing those kids to live like that.

  Wanted to play Snow White. Wanted fairytales. Wanted . . .

  Had to keep her eye on the main prize, that’s what she had to do — and write fairytales to Granny.

  Seated on Granny’s tin trunk at night, she scribbled pages of the truth in an exercise book. Couldn’t see what she wrote, so just wrote it, then hid the truth deep in Granny’s trunk, between the clean linen.

  I planted a penny and tended it well

  It grew into a green bank-note lettuce.

  But marauding snails feast well in the night

  And how far will nibbled notes get us?

  I planted a sixpence. It thrust flowers from the earth

  Each one a small handbag, gold filled.

  But a black frost came down, now the flowers lie dead,

  Not a coin have those small handbags spilled.

  I planted a shilling. It grew into a tree

  And silver and gold were its leaves.

  But a woodchopper came and he stripped the trunk b
are,

  My hope in the pockets of thieves.

  SHEEP’S-HEAD STEW

  August. Cold. Wet. Windy. The kids had colds and Jenny’s world was black. He came home at noon on Saturday and dumped down a pile of newspaper-wrapped roadkill. He’d scraped up the lot this time. She unwrapped the largest parcel, expecting something she might roast for Sunday, and was confronted by a skinned sheep’s head. Covered her mouth and ran to the glass door.

  ‘Get it off that table, Ray.’

  ‘What’s w-w-w-rong w-with you n-now?’

  ‘Get that thing off the table or I’m going to vomit.’

  ‘M-make a s-stew out of it.’

  Margot poked a finger into one of its eye sockets and Jenny was out the door. The wind caught it and flung it back hard. She waited for the smash of glass; when it didn’t come, she ran for the lavatory and lost her breakfast.

  ‘He’s stopping you from singing the only way he knows how,’ Wilma said.

  He’d stopped everything. She no longer wanted to sing. Had to. Couldn’t let everyone down and needed the money. Sick in the stomach, sick at heart, and Fridays kept coming around, rehearsals kept coming around.

  He boiled his sheep’s head while she and the kids were down at Wilma’s, and when she returned the stink of it was in the kitchen and he was sucking at its eye sockets. She ran for the lavatory and vomited again, lost a cup of tea and the biscuit she’d thought she was keeping down. She could keep cigarettes down. Smoked too many. Sat on Granny’s trunk, wrote the truth and chain-smoked.