Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  ‘I need the money today.’

  ‘Bank policy.’

  She’d already waited too long, but she had money to wait with now. She bought tea and a six-pound bag of flour, a large tin of powdered milk, four pounds of brown sugar, half a dozen eggs. She bought a pound block of lard from the butcher and half a pound of minced steak; a large loaf of bread and a few ounces of yeast from the baker. Fried the steak with vegetables and served the lot, then for sweets she mixed up a batter with just a smidgen of yeast and, when it doubled its size, deep-fried spoonfuls of it in pure white lard. During the depression, the Palmer kids had lived on dough-balls tossed in brown sugar and cinnamon. Jenny’s kids pronounced them delicious.

  She made bread that night and the kids sat up late, wanting to see one of Granny’s loaves come out of their own oven. It smelled like Granny’s bread, smelled better than it looked. They ate it for breakfast, slices of it dipped in egg and milk, then fried. For two mornings, they ate fried bread for breakfast, with the last of the plum jam.

  Her new bankbook arrived in the mail the following Tuesday, alongside a letter from Granny. Jenny read it on the tram into town.

  An English migrant family who had moved in with Tom Vevers had three kids down with something that looked a lot like polio to Granny. It was always around. Every few years there was an epidemic. It killed kids, and if it didn’t kill them, it crippled them. Elsie and Harry had a tribe who caught everything that was going. And she was taking her kids up there in the morning. Couldn’t think about that, not right now.

  Later, thirty pounds in her handbag, she went to Coles and bought a new purse, black, transferred her money into it, then took a tram down to Spencer Street station to check on the train time and the availability of seats to Woody Creek. When she’d left the house this morning, she’d planned to book and pay for the tickets, to book and pay for a hotel room for tonight — the train left early. She didn’t book seats or hotel. Knew she couldn’t take those kids anywhere near polio.

  Her mind on other things, she was approaching the Swanston Street tram stop when she sighted the back of the abortionist she’d described to the police. Knew that head. Knew that long black skirt, the lisle stockings wrinkling around sparrow ankles, that long-legged, striding walk — like Jim’s walk. Jenny stopped dead, her eyes searching the crowd for the dumpy little platinum blonde. See one of the Hooper sisters and you usually saw both. Lorna was with an elderly couple, a dumpy little dame and a lean English squire in his hunting gear.

  Jenny stood in the middle of Swanston Street, forcing the crowd to walk around her, her mind dancing from Vern to polio, from polio to Ray, all three as bad as each other.

  So she’d go somewhere else.

  Where else?

  Queensland. Joey.

  What do you use for money when your bank account runs dry?

  I had a plan. What did I do in my past life to deserve this? Survived my birth. Opened my mouth when I should have kept it shut.

  She turned on her heel and walked back the way she’d come, walked with the crowd to the lights, crossed over with the crowd, no aim in mind, crazy thoughts in her head. Itchy-foot had a big empty house. She had plenty of pennies now. Give him a call.

  Out of the frying pan into the fire; the ensuing results could be worse than dire . . .

  Had to think straight. Had to think further than the immediate.

  Three laughing women walked by her in a hurry to get somewhere. She followed their laughter into a picture theatre, stood behind them at the ticket office. She had plenty of time, and she’d be better off the street if the Hoopers were on it. The theatre was showing It’s a Wonderful Life; James Stewart and Donna Reed starring in it. She’d read about it. It was supposed to be good. Not in the right frame of mind to appreciate it though; just a place to hide today, a place to sit and think and kill a bit of time.

  Newsreel playing: prime minister, girls in bathing costumes, boats in the harbour, a male voice attempting to make it all so highly interesting. Just light and dark flashing before her eyes to Jenny, making no contact with her conscious mind — a mind too busy refereeing contests. Ray wrestling in there with Vern Hooper. Polio stepping in. Ray versus polio and Vern Hooper. It was no contest . . .

  Charlie White — he had her address! Hilda, his daughter, would have it, and she was a worse gossip than Maisy — and a nasty bitch with it. That’s why Lorna Hooper was down here! They had her address. Vern would be at her door when she got home. Or he’d already kidnapped Jimmy from the schoolyard! She had to go!

  Then the picture started and it was a magical show. From the opening scene, it wiped her mind clean of Vern, polio and Ray.

  She found herself relating to the James Stewart character, stuck in a tin-pot little town, spending his life wanting to break away and do something grand. Something always came up to stop him. He was ready to end it all in the river when an elderly angel, still working for his wings, gave him his wish and took back his insignificant life. The story was about how one insignificant life had changed the lives of many, had changed an entire town, maybe even the world.

  While the credits played, Jenny considered her own impact on the world.

  Had she not survived her birth, Amber may not have gone mad. Norman may have been alive. Sissy may have married Jim. Jim may not have joined the army. Laurie may still have been dodging the police. Granny may have married Vern Hooper. Myrtle wouldn’t have had her baby. Ray could have married some girl who might have been pleased to spend her life pregnant and frying livers. The world would have been a better place.

  Except there’d be no Georgie and Jimmy in it. The world may not have missed Jenny Morrison, but her kids were destined to leave their mark.

  Not if I take them home and they get polio. Kids of their age are more vulnerable to it than older kids. I’ll have to wait.

  Only one place to wait.

  She left the theatre with the crowd, squinting at her watch-face as she walked from semi-dark into natural light. Over two hours had disappeared. It never failed to amaze her how a good movie could swallow time and a bad one lengthened it.

  As she slung her handbag’s strap over her shoulder, it caught on her wedding ring. She felt its slide too late to save it. She looked at her feet, turned. A young chap had stopped its run with his shoe. He was looking for the owner.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Shouldn’t have thanked him, should have walked on fast. When it was in her hand, she knew she didn’t want it and never had. Didn’t slide it back onto her finger. Walked on towards the tram stop, looking at her naked finger, skinny, like the rest of her. Sick before the abortion, she’d lost a ton of weight since. The skirt she wore told her so, as did her sweater.

  Poor worn old finger, its fingernail ragged. She had useless fingernails, flat, weak. A long ring finger, and his brand worn into it.

  Branded first by Jim’s ring. She glanced at her right hand, at an identical gold band. Only she knew the difference. And in the middle of Swanston Street, she worked the smaller band of gold over the knuckle of her right ring finger. It slid eagerly onto her left — and Jen and Jim, 1942 was back where it belonged; secure there too, sized six years ago for a girl’s slim finger.

  A tram trundling by, not her tram. She crossed at the lights, gripping Ray’s ring, punishing her palm with it for her stupidity. God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform, they say. The sign was on the corner, on a barred jeweller’s door: Turn your unwanted gold into cash.

  She had unwanted gold.

  The jeweller bought the ring. Jenny didn’t know, nor care, if he was robbing her blind or paying a fair price for it. Just took what he offered and ran to catch her tram.

  Ray had promised to look after her kids, so let him feed them — and put a roof over their heads — for a week or two more.

  WEAR AND TEAR

  Men’s memories may well have been in their trousers. It was their wives and mothers who remembered who could take up those
trousers, make false cuffs when lanky-legged sons grew tall. Money no longer a priority, it started trickling in again. On Friday evening, a middle-aged woman knocked on Jenny’s door.

  ‘I’m Mrs Carter from two doors up. We moved in yesterday and the lady next door said you took in sewing.’

  Mrs Carter had a daughter turning twenty-one on Saturday week, and she was wondering if Jenny could possibly run her up curtains for three rooms, and if she could do the lounge-room curtains first.

  ‘I brought my curtains from the last place, but my new windows are longer, and with the party . . .’

  There was nothing to making curtains, just the measuring and a bit of straight sewing. Jenny had the lot done by the following Wednesday and Mrs Carter told her she was worth her weight in gold. She added a fifteen shillings tip to her cheque. Jenny ran a cash business. The cheque presented a problem. Not to the bank though. They accepted it.

  On the Sunday morning after the party, two of the younger Carter girls came to the door with leftover cake and a plate of pastries.

  No more pancake sandwiches in school lunch bags; no more time to make Granny’s bread or to fry it for breakfast. Porridge with milk was back on the breakfast menu, sausages or minced steak on the dinner menu, and Jenny’s new purse, bulging with money, safe in Granny’s tin trunk, tucked deep between Norman’s sheets, beneath his towels, while her snakeskin bag hung empty over a doorknob — a snake decoy.

  Ray came and went. He noticed the full canisters. He ate their bread and leftover mince stew. At times he came in while she was pressing a garment, measuring up material. He didn’t speak to her. She didn’t speak to him. She washed his clothes on Wednesdays and Sundays, ironed his shirts. He wore them, then pitched them soiled to his bedroom floor, with his cigarette butts. She made a big minced steak curry one night. He found the leftovers and heated it up for his breakfast, on toast made from her bread.

  She dodged Flora. Flora dodged her. Geoff no longer winked at her. Lois was rarely sighted in the backyard and Jimmy stopped looking for her. Each night, Jenny sat on the kids’ bed spinning bedtime stories about a small colony of Earthlings who lived in an enclave on Mars, Earth and the rest of humanity a spaceship away — or a gate. The small group lived happily, while the Martians kept their distance.

  ‘What happened to them then, Jenny?’

  ‘That’s for tomorrow night.’

  ‘Give us a hint,’ Georgie said.

  Who knew what tomorrow might bring?

  October had grown old before their enclave was invaded by the Martians. Jenny, up to her elbows in Earthling food, turned to the sound of the key in the passage door. It wasn’t bathroom night. Then someone knocked.

  ‘Come in,’ she called, hoping the Martians were friendly.

  They didn’t come in. They stood side by side in the doorway, their small Martian behind them. She looked friendly — the adults not so friendly.

  ‘We’ve come for Aunty Phoebe’s sewing machine,’ Flora said.

  Syrup bubbled on the stove, dough waited on the table, already cut into eight. Jenny gathered the eight onto a floury palm and placed each piece carefully into the boiling syrup, placed the lid on to the saucepan, before turning to face them.

  ‘Going into the tailoring business?’ she asked.

  Flora couldn’t sew a straight line.

  ‘You’ve had the free use of it for twelve months,’ she snapped.

  Jenny walked to the sink, splashing water while washing flour and dough from her hands. Old treadle sewing machines were two a penny; she could make her choice between half a dozen at the secondhand shop — and she was going home anyway, as soon as she heard from Granny.

  ‘Take it,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not for you to tell us to take what’s our own,’ Flora said.

  ‘Then don’t take it, Flora.’

  ‘You’re lucky we’re not charging you for wear and tear on it. Your type need to learn that nothing is free in this world.’

  ‘If you believed that, your type would have paid me for the sewing I did for you,’ Jenny said, removing a folded brown-paper bag from the middle drawer of her dresser. She proceeded to empty the machine drawers into it; Geoff now on the east side, leaning on the machine, Flora watching Jenny from the doorway.

  ‘Those scissors are Aunt Phoebe’s,’ Flora said.

  ‘I bought them. Want to see my receipt?’

  Norman had kept his receipts. He’d kept account books listing every penny he’d ever spent. Jenny may not have been his blood, but her bookwork was as accurate. She’d glued every receipt she was given into the rear pages of an exercise book, recorded every item she stitched in the front pages. The paper bag on the table, the machine lifted around to make its way west, Jenny took her account book from the drawer, flipped through receipts until she found the one she was looking for.

  ‘They cost twelve and six.’

  Flora had lost interest. She left the doorway.

  ‘If you want the thing, give me a hand with it,’ Geoff yelled.

  The machine’s frame was cast iron. It didn’t lift easily. Lois came in to help, Flora rushing in behind her. She couldn’t allow her daughter to set foot on the polluted side alone.

  Lois was wearing a frock stitched on that sewing machine, as most of her frocks had been stitched on it. That frock, and fiveyear-old friends caught up in an adult war, raised anger in Jenny. Flora’s parlour curtains, visible through the open door, added fuel to that anger. She may have been raised as Norman the pacifist’s daughter, but she wasn’t.

  She opened the account book to the front page where the Parker name was repeated five times with the date — and not one payment.

  ‘If you can hang on for five minutes, Geoff, I’ll get your wife’s dressmaking account ready for you.’

  ‘You’re the one who owes us, babe.’

  ‘And you can add on the cost us of taking you to the hospital when your abortion went wrong,’ Flora said.

  ‘Oh, the jars of jam, the chutney, should cover that. The eggs, vegetables —’

  ‘It’s our land they’re growing in,’ Flora snapped. ‘And we didn’t come in here to fight in front of the kids either.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. You came in to take away my livelihood so my kids can starve, like any good Christian would.’

  ‘You’re sitting in here rent-free, babe, the lights on until all hours, sewing on this bloody thing. Your husband hasn’t paid the last light bill and the gas bill is due,’ Geoff said.

  Syrup dumplings threatening to boil over, Jenny grabbed the saucepan and held it high while turning the gas low. The machine she could live without. Electricity and gas she couldn’t.

  ‘If that’s all that’s niggling you, I’ll pay it.’

  ‘You should be paying two-thirds of it with that fridge going all day and nothing in it,’ Flora said.

  ‘How do you know there’s nothing in it, Flora?’

  That got rid of her. She scuttled back to her side as Jenny walked between her kids — standing together, watching, wondering what was happening now, what would happen next. They followed her to the sleep-out where she flung the lid of Granny’s battered trunk open and dug deep for her purse, took a pound note from it and returned to the kitchen, placed it on the sewing machine bench.

  Geoff picked it up. ‘We’re struggling to make the payments every month on this bloody place.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Ray pay rent, Geoff?’

  ‘He must have been bloody good in bed, that’s all I can —’

  ‘Geoff!’ Flora hadn’t gone far. She was back at the door.

  ‘If you want the bloody thing, help me lift it,’ he said.

  Lois was again deep into enemy territory.

  ‘I told you to stay away from them. Get back in here, Lois!’

  Geoff left the machine, picked up Lois and carried her back to the Martians’ side. The door closed, the key turned.

  ‘What’s wrong, Jenny?’ Georgie asked.

 
‘Just something grown-up.’

  ‘He took your money.’

  ‘It’s to pay for our lights. We’ve got plenty of money.’

  And she had to use some of it, go somewhere. This was no life for kids. Was a two-and-a-half-room hut any better? Was a two-mile walk to and from school better? Was being the illegitimate kids of the town slut better? Maybe it was. From day one, her kids had been unwanted lodgers here.

  Too many reasons why she couldn’t go right now. The dresser she’d paid big money for; Norman’s linen; those curtains too, the blinds, the new flywire. She’d put too much into these rooms to walk away from them.

  The machine was moved back to its place beside the windows with little effort. It had little metal rollers on one set of its cast-iron legs. Just a case of lifting the bench and steering it — if you knew how. She hadn’t told Geoff about those wheels. Wouldn’t tell him the next time they came for it either. And they would.

  No sign of Ray that night. She got the kids into bed at eight, then made a cup of tea and sat at the table flipping the pages of her account book, mentally totalling Flora Parker’s sewing account. She selected a clean page and wrote an itemised account — and the Parkers would get it too, the next time they came for the machine.

  She sighed, knowing she’d resent someone living rent-free in a house she was struggling to pay off. Anyone would.

  She’d given Flora what she could, and much more than free dressmaking services. Every time Granny sent down eggs, she’d given Flora a few — a full dozen once. She added eggs to the account, walnuts, half a cabbage. How many bunches of onions? God knows. Bunches of rhubarb too, silverbeet.

  All forgotten now. Jenny had done the unthinkable.

  And Granny would agree with Flora, which was one of the reasons Jenny didn’t want to go home, one more secret she’d have to keep forever. Too many secrets. Granny didn’t know about Cara Jeanette, didn’t know she’d been seeing Itchy-foot, didn’t know she’d played Snow White to his Grumpy — who had looked so much like old Noah with his white beard.

  Should give him a call. She could probably remember his number. And if she couldn’t, the exchange would soon find it. How many by the name of Archibald Foote lived in Hawthorn? Maybe tomorrow.