Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  Or give Maisy a call and find out if they did have cases of polio up there. Could have. Granny hadn’t written for weeks. She didn’t like writing bad news.

  Would she go up there if there was no polio? Should she try to work out some arrangement with Ray? Offer to pay for the gas and electricity, cook his meals, wash his clothes.

  And ring Itchy-foot, claim sudden illness and see if they’d take her back at the jazz club.

  OLD PHOEBE FISHER

  Ray slept at home on Friday night. Jenny wouldn’t have known he’d been there if not for the pile of clothes in the corner of his bedroom, the butts on his floor. She was sweeping them up when he came home with his roadkill. He dumped it on the table and left again.

  No liver, no tripe; a pile of minced steak, which would last longer cooked than it would raw. She made a large pot of mince stew; and that night, roasted chops, cooked a pot full of potatoes, made gravy. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, they used to say in Woody Creek. She wasn’t interested in Ray’s heart, only his share of the roof, and tonight was determined to work out some compromise, at least until the school year ended.

  She and the kids ate at six thirty. He came in at eight, smelling like a walking brewery. She’d kept his share of the meal warm over a saucepan of water. He ate it without comment and went to bed. So much for working out a compromise.

  She left the kids eating porridge on Sunday and went down to the washhouse to get the copper boiling. When she returned to the house, he was heating up a portion of mince stew and making toast. Margot was with him; the other two were in the sleep-out, playing with the train set. Jenny stripped the beds, swept up more butts, picked up his pile of washing and returned with her bundle to the tubs. Sheets and towels went directly into the copper to boil clean. His working trousers required a soaking then a scrubbing brush. She dipped half a bucket of boiling water from the copper, enough to warm the water in the trough, then stood handwashing small frocks and underwear.

  It must have been well after ten when the kids came down to tell her Ray had asked them if they wanted to go to the shops and get an ice-cream.

  In the early days, before she’d married him, when things had been good, he’d taken the kids up for an ice-cream one Sunday morning. They’d brought one home for her. Maybe he had appreciated his chops and mash last night, his breakfast this morning. She didn’t want to give up Melbourne’s unlimited water, its electricity, its anonymity, his fridge. She had to at least try.

  ‘Can we, Jenny?’ Jimmy loved ice-cream.

  ‘Walk together and hold hands when you cross the road,’ she said.

  Time has a habit of disappearing when you’re at the wash-tubs, while your hands rub and the mind is free to plot courses, dream a little. Sheets and towels bubbling, she poked them down, added a few more sticks to the firebox before hanging her first load out to the clothes line. She couldn’t hear the kids. They hadn’t brought her back an ice-cream.

  A dozen socks pegged, small frocks flapping, she glanced at her wrist. Her watch was on the kitchen dresser. She hung the underwear, gave his work trousers a scrub, then left them soaking while she went up to the house to get her new packet of blue bags. Amber had always used a dash of the blue bag in the sheets’ rinsing water. It kept them white. No sign of those kids, no sound of them, and it was almost twelve o’clock.

  ‘Georgie?’ She opened the glass door. ‘Jimmy, where are you?’

  She got what she’d come inside to get, then walked out to the veranda. The trike was on the front section.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  Down the side of the house and back to where she’d come from.

  ‘Georgie! I’m not in the mood to play hidey.’

  Hoped they were playing next door with Lois. Small hope. A curtain lifted at Flora’s kitchen window but no kids came out.

  What time had they left? It must have been well before eleven. His bike was in its usual place, his bedroom door was closed. She knocked then entered. He wasn’t in there. She looked beneath the bed, hoping those kids were playing games with her.

  ‘Georgie!’ she called over Carol’s fence. Carol’s oldest son, mowing the back lawn, turned to her call. ‘Have you seen my kids, David?’

  ‘I saw them walking off with their father when I was doing the front.’

  Ray wasn’t their father. He wasn’t anyone’s father — and he was paying her back because he wasn’t anyone’s father.

  Is it your first, Mr King?

  He’d kidnapped them.

  She ran out to the front gate, fear growing in her. He’d been in touch with Vern Hooper. They’d formed an alliance . . .

  Stop it, you fool. Vern had no interest in the girls.

  Archie Foote then. Ray had found his telephone number in her old bankbook. He’d formed an alliance with Vern and Archie Foote. Or he’d taken them down to the Yarra and drowned them like a bloke had drowned his kids six months ago . . .

  Georgie could swim like a fish.

  Not with Margot clinging to her neck.

  Stop! There were three of them and all three could yell.

  She was on the street when Veronica walked down her husband’s driveway, waving both arms. She’d gone back to him!

  That’s what we do, Jenny thought, then shook her head. That’s what women with kids might have to do. Veronica had no kids. She had a trade, could get work anywhere, work day or night. So what was she doing back there?

  ‘Where are you off to in your apron?’ Veronica said as she crossed over.

  ‘He took my kids for an ice-cream hours ago.’ Jenny reached to untie the tapes and remove her washday apron. ‘I thought they were back.’

  ‘Make me a cup of tea, kiddo. I want to tell someone my news.’

  ‘You’ve gone back to him?’

  ‘When hell freezes over. The mad bugger is in jail. I wanted to see what he’d done to my house while they’ve got him locked up. He’s put his boot through a couple of walls — and better them than me.’

  ‘A bank manager? In jail?’

  ‘Unless his old man bailed him out, which I strongly doubt. They’ve had enough of him.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘They caught him with his fingers in the coffers. They reckon he’s embezzled thousands.’

  The curtains moved at Flora’s parlour window. Jenny waved a hand as she led the way inside.

  ‘He’s always liked the gee-gees,’ Veronica said. Jenny held a finger to her lips. Veronica sat, then in lower tones continued. ‘Every Saturday he’d head for the races with a wad in his pocket. The last of the big spenders, my Bill, which was the reason I went back to work in the first place. I hated leaving that house. I’d put so much of myself into it.’

  ‘Was he always . . . you know?’

  ‘He was a different bloke when he was young, before the war.’

  ‘Was he in it?’

  ‘For six months. He was in an accident and it ruined his back for marching. How did you get mixed up with Ray?’

  ‘I knew him at school.’

  ‘He looks a damn sight older than you.’

  ‘Five years. He’s twenty-eight.’

  And just like that she’d given up her age. No comment though from Veronica, only an offered cigarette. Jenny lit one, lit a gas ring with the same match and put the kettle on. Or no comment for a time.

  ‘You’re twenty-three and you’ve got a seven-year-old daughter?’

  ‘She’s eight now.’

  ‘How did you manage that, kiddo?’

  Jenny measured tea into the pot. ‘I had no say in the matter.’

  ‘Your father?’

  Hands rose to push those words back where they’d come from; then, to save a good and gentle man from accusation, she said more. ‘A neighbour’s twin sons raped me when I was fourteen.’

  ‘And they let you raise the kid!’

  ‘They tried to marry me off to one of them — for my good name’s sake. I took off down here and as they say, jump
ed out of the frying pan into the fire. I ended up having Georgie.’

  And she’d said too much. She set two mugs on the table, the sugar basin, milk.

  ‘How has Ray been about the abortion?’

  ‘He hasn’t been around much, and when he is, he doesn’t talk.’

  Kettle boiled, she poured water over the tea leaves then turned to the clock. ‘They’ve been gone too long. I should call the police, Vroni. There could have been an accident. He could have been in touch with Jimmy’s grandfather. He’s got the phone on, and Ray knows he’s been threatening to take Jimmy for years.’

  ‘I hate to be the one to tell you, kiddo, but the cops would side with them.’

  And of course they would — as soon as she said her name. A woman who aborted a baby wasn’t fit to raise a litter of rats.

  ‘He’s not going to make any phone calls.’ Veronica went on. ‘He came to my door when old Phoebe was dying and he couldn’t get a word out. It’s Sunday. He’s taken them somewhere.’

  ‘Down to the river to drown them.’

  ‘If he’d been going to drown anyone, it would have been old Phoebe or her housekeeper. Want to hear the rest of my news?’

  Veronica’s chap had bought an old guesthouse in Frankston which he was planning to set up as a health farm, with fringe benefits, and Veronica would be running it. She was full of news that morning. She spoke while the clock ticked away the minutes, while Jenny stared at her wedding photograph and a cobweb dangling from it. It hadn’t been dusted since the abortion. She couldn’t stand to look at it long enough to dust it.

  ‘How come Ray’s first wife didn’t have kids?’ she said.

  ‘You’re joking?’

  Jenny’s eyebrows rose. ‘Did you know her well?’

  ‘No one wanted to know her well, kiddo.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Smoked cod,’ Veronica said. ‘Dried smoked cod.’

  ‘Do you know how long they’d been married?’

  ‘She made an honest man of him on her deathbed, according to popular belief. I don’t know the ins and outs of it. Carol says he moved in here when he was a bit of a kid. She’d been in that house for twenty years.’

  ‘What connection did she have to Flora’s aunty?’

  Veronica squinted around the smoke. ‘That’s who we’re talking about.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Old Phoebe Fisher. That’s who he was married to.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Watt invented the steam engine, kiddo. The old dame who owned this house, Phoebe Fisher-King — or, so it said in the death column, loved Aunty of Flora — like hell, she was — passed away after a long illness. She took six months to die, and sometime before she did, married Ray, though none of us knew — until we saw the funeral notice. Survived by her devoted husband, Raymond.’

  ‘I feel sick. She was . . . old.’

  ‘Sixty-seven — according to the death column.’

  ‘He worked for her. He told me he looked after her yard.’

  ‘He did. He spent his life cutting limbs off the neighbours’ trees then cutting them small enough for her to pitch back over the fences. At the best of times, old Phoebe was as mad as a rattlesnake. Riled up, she was a sight to behold. When Carol’s lilly pilly trees were shedding their berries, you could hear her from one corner of the street to the other. The year I moved in, I watched her carry two buckets full into Carol’s. One of the boys opened the door and she let him have them, then danced what she could into the floorboards.’ Veronica laughed, and lit another smoke.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter. It’s sick.’

  ‘It was no love match.’

  ‘Stop it, Vroni.’

  ‘Flora reckons she did it to get back at the family. Her brother got the house but Ray got free tenancy for life.’

  And Jenny finally knew why Ray didn’t pay rent.

  ‘A tricky old bugger was Phoebe Fisher, supposedly a big name on stage in her youth. Even as a smoked cod, she could dance. When I was going out with Bill, we used to see her and Ray at the dance halls, long before I knew who they were. I used to think she was teaching her grandson to dance. He was well dressed, not a bad-looking boy, and she was this gruesome old hag, bewigged, make-up plastered on with a trowel, eyebrows drawn in with a black pencil, wrinkled old lips weeping scarlet lipstick. Ramón, she called him.’

  Not a word could Jenny find to say. Someone had taught him to dance. Now she knew who.

  ‘He told you he’d been married?’ Veronica asked.

  ‘The first time he came down home, he told my grandmother and me that his wife was dead.’

  ‘Never told you who he’d been married to?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘How come the Parkers are buying the house if he’s got free tenancy?’

  ‘According to Wilma, Flora’s father worked out some deal with Ray. Flora had been living with her parents until Geoff got out of the army. They had to live somewhere — and her old man can’t stand Geoff. Flora’s family are rabid Catholics and Geoff’s not — and he refused to change his faith. She had to marry him.’

  ‘She told me Lois was born nine months to the day after the wedding.’

  ‘Try seven. Who did you think Ray had been married to?’

  ‘One of Phoebe’s relatives. Her housekeeper . . .’

  ‘She was older than Phoebe. You could have knocked a few of us down with feathers when he turned up here with you and three kids. Your ears must have burned for months, kiddo.’ She offered her cigarettes and Jenny took one, lit it. ‘We all felt sorry for the poor coot but rent-free or not, he was stark raving mad to bring you to this street.’

  ‘I was stark raving mad to come. And I’ve got sheets boiling to death in the copper. I’ll have to get them out.’

  Veronica helped wring the sheets, helped hang them. Ray’s working trousers went into the copper to boil clean.

  Almost two o’clock. Those kids had been gone for at least three hours.

  ‘I’ll have to call the police, Vroni. I’m getting scared.’

  ‘He’ll bring them back,’ Veronica said. ‘He’s weird but he’s never been a danger to anyone. He looked after old Phoebe for months when she was dying and was as gentle as a woman with her. Ian is picking me up at three. If they’re not back by then, I’ll get him to take us to the cops. They’ll take more notice of him than they will of you.’

  They had another cup of tea, another cigarette, and at quarter to three Veronica took a roll of ten-pound notes from her handbag and tossed it across the table.

  ‘It’s Ian’s. He asked me to give it to you.’

  Jenny swept it back. ‘I don’t want his money!’

  She was up. She’d heard the gate open. Stood listening for kids’ voices. Heard someone knock on Flora’s door. Waited, expecting the police to come around her side and tell her her kids had been drowned. No. Flora had visitors, loud voices in the passage.

  ‘I could have got five years’ jail, and Ian could have been dragged into it with me and lost everything. Take it, kiddo. He can afford it.’

  ‘If I was pregnant now, I’d be pulling my hair out in a madhouse. Put it away.’

  Veronica walked out to the veranda, the notes and her cigarette packet left on the table. Jenny rolled the notes, five of them, slid them in with the cigarettes and followed Veronica to the gate. No imported maroon car waiting, but her small trio approaching, holding hands. Jenny ran.

  Georgie’s face was sunburnt; Margot, who usually looked as if the vampires had been at her, was red raw, arms, face, scalp.

  ‘We went to the zoo,’ Jimmy said. Already tanned, he showed no sign of burning.

  ‘We saw elephants and tigers and everything,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Where’s Ray?’

  ‘He said go home.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Just the tram,’ Georgie said. She walked on ahead as Margot started ahzeeing. Her feet were sore, her head was sore, and no doubt the rest of her.
Jenny picked her up and carried her inside. Georgie was at the sink, filling a mug with water.

  ‘He let you cross the road by yourselves?’

  ‘After we crossed the big road, he said go home,’ Georgie said around the mug.

  ‘Why didn’t you wear your hats?’

  ‘We were only going to get an ice-cream at first.’

  ‘Then he said the zoo,’ Jimmy said. ‘And we said yes.’

  She’d never taken them to the zoo, had promised to. Sunburnt or not, they’d had a good day. She found zinc cream, olive oil, mixed up a plaster of it, and the two women plastered the girls, then, warning them not to step outside the door, they returned to the gate.

  ‘If you decide you’ve had enough of him, I’ll need staff down at Frankston.’

  ‘Me and my three kids, Vroni.’

  ‘The old servants’ quarters are well detached from the house. There’s six rooms that could be made habitable.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do from one day to the next,’ Jenny admitted.

  Maroon car approaching.

  ‘That’s him.’ Veronica waved to the driver, who looked older in daylight than he had by night. ‘The phone will be connected down there after Christmas. We’re calling the place Veronian — which is as close as I’ll ever get to joining my name to another man’s. The exchange will give you the number if you need me.’ She kissed her cheek. ‘Bless your tight little mouth,’ she said, and kissed her other cheek, gave her a Granny hug.

  Jenny held her for an instant. ‘Bless you too,’ she said and turned away, tears blurring that brick house. There’d been a lot of months between Granny hugs.

  She had an option now, if she could hang on here until Christmas, until after Christmas. Had to hang on, that’s all.

  TEN-POUND NOTES

  She was sewing when Ray came home. The kids were in bed, Margot silenced with half an aspro and a glass of milk. Jenny had a skirt to finish off before next Wednesday, and the hand-stitching on a ballgown — six yards of its hem to roll by Friday. She had a list of Miss Blunt’s prices too, glued into her account book. She’d put hours of work into that ballgown — had hoped to put a few more hours into it tonight. Packed it away when he came in, slid it safe into a pillow slip, with the skirt. Sewing expensive fabric was a dangerous occupation when there were little fingers around — and Ray, on the hunt for food.