Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  Dear Jenny,

  It’s been a madhouse up here and it doesn’t look like improving soon. Harry took Elsie down to the hospital this morning. She’s pregnant and been having enough trouble keeping it before she got the disease that’s been going around up here. Harry is worried sick. Tom Vevers died of it. Old Mrs O’Donald and three more are in the hospital . . .

  The secondhand man caught her unaware. She led him and his offsider indoors, pointing with Granny’s letter to the items she wanted to sell.

  He offered a third of what she’d paid him for the dresser. He offered five bob for the sleep-out cabinet she’d repaired and polished, which may not have been hers to sell, though if not for her it would have ended its life on the wood heap.

  ‘It can stay,’ she said.

  He liked the old chest of drawers, obviously didn’t recognise it as the battered wreck he’d sold her. He said old beds without their mattresses were two a penny. He’d said different when she’d bought it. He offered her two bob for both iron and toaster. She told him they could stay. A man with Ray’s needs would move in another woman in a week. At least she’d find an iron, a toaster, curtains.

  The kitchen looked bare when the men carried her dresser away. The kids’ bedroom was bare. She followed her furniture out to the gate, watched her dresser loaded, almost waved goodbye to it.

  Seated again on Granny’s tin trunk, she opened the letter.

  . . . Harry said he’d stay down there with her. You know what Elsie’s like with strangers.

  It’s a terrible thing. I swore it was polio when I saw the first cases — sore throat, fever, pain in the limbs — but it’s striking the old as well as the young and there’s been no paralysis with it. There are a lot in town blaming an immigrant family for bringing it to town. We’ve got a couple of English families up here. Tom Vevers came out from England as a boy. One of the migrant chaps is a cousin of his. Tom had them staying with him for a time.

  Archie is up here again. He says the disease is a form of the pneumonic flu we saw a lot of just after the first war. He probably knows what he’s talking about. He was a good doctor when he put his mind to it, and I’ve never said different. It’s staying power he lacks, and if the truth is being told here today, I hope he stays longer. I’m too old to be running in and out from town and so is my horse.

  I started this on Thursday, now it’s Saturday, and all I’ve got for you is bad news. Doctor Frazer told Harry that Elsie isn’t pregnant, that what is going on in her womb could be a tumour. If they can get her over this flu they want to take her down to the city next Thursday. They’ve got someone else going down that day. Harry asked me to ask you if you could find him a corner. Try to keep the kids away from him as much as you can. He’s showing no signs of it, but you never can tell with this swine of a disease. When it hits, it hits sudden, and take it from me, you don’t want those little kids catching it.

  The Dobsons have offered to take Teddy and Maudy in while Harry is away. Maisy has already got Brian and little Josie in with her. Lenny, Joan and Ronnie will stay down here with me. You might give Maisy a call when you get this. We should know more by then.

  Love to all, Granny

  Jenny had spoken to Maisy on Tuesday night. Elsie would be at the hospital by now, and Harry walking the polished corridors. She’d told Maisy to tell him she’d meet him at the hospital after the kids got out of school. He wouldn’t be looking for her yet.

  The carrier had said he’d be there between three and three thirty. Anonymous Melbourne where anonymous people could make arrangements with anonymous carriers, then rely on them to come when they said they’d come. In Woody Creek they came; and whether they did or not in Melbourne, she was leaving at three thirty. He had the address. He knew where her goods were to go. He’d see her pile, see her labels.

  You can’t pay via telephone. So . . . leave the money somewhere. Write him a note. Where do you leave the note? Should have made some arrangement to leave it in the letterbox.

  Knock on Flora’s door and give her the money . . .

  Jenny shook her head.

  He hadn’t arrived by three, or quarter past three. She walked down to the corner to meet the kids, kept glancing back, unsure from which direction the carrier might come.

  Margot’s face looked piebald. Georgie’s nose had peeled. Jimmy was as brown as a berry — and he needed a haircut.

  ‘Rough nut,’ she said, ruffling it.

  They saw the pile on the veranda. They knew.

  ‘When?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘When Daddy Ray cometh,’ Margot replied.

  He’d been eating with them. Margot had forgotten, or forgiven, the night of the bruising.

  Maisy had known how to forgive, or to forget. How many times had Amber screamed at her to get out and not to come back? How many times had she come back for more of the same?

  ‘Why can’t we take my trike, Jenny?’

  She’d forgotten it. ‘Get it, darlin’, and be quick.’

  One final piece of cardboard cut, one final time she printed, J.C. KING C/O MRS FOOTE, WOODY CREEK STATION. She added a bracketed nine beneath the address, bored a hole through cardboard with the point of her scissors, threaded one final length of twine.

  ‘What’s the time, Jenny?’ Georgie wanted to go.

  ‘Quarter to four.’

  Harry would be standing out front of the hospital now, looking for them, wondering if she’d forgotten to meet him, if she’d gone to the wrong hospital. The kids followed her out to the gate, and this time they saw a horse-drawn dray turn their corner. It had to be the carrier. It would be him. They stood at the kerb, willing him to stop out front of their house. And he did.

  ‘Mrs King?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d given up on you.’

  ‘Trams on every corner today, love, and the trucks are starting to think they own the road.’

  He lifted a two-wheeled trolley down from the dray and she walked with him to her pile. The trunk was heavy. He handled it. Jenny carried the battered red case, eager to see it loaded.

  Flora watching from behind her parlour’s lace curtains, needed to be told she was visible from the street. She’d stood there when the secondhand dealer had loaded the dresser, no doubt keeping an eye out for the sewing machine. Poor old sewing machine, destined to end its life on one of the verandas, rusting away.

  Poor old garden too. Who would give it water? Everything was doing so well. She had a beautiful healthy crop of rhubarb, begging to be harvested. Fat white onions. Ray might pull an onion. Flora and Geoff would pull more. Jenny didn’t need them. Plenty of everything where she’d be tomorrow. She’d stay there this time, milk goats, feed chooks, grow vegies, make jam and live man-free — as Granny had lived her life man-free.

  ‘That’s it, love?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  She paid the man, then her goods moved away. ‘That’s it,’ she repeated and went inside for the last time.

  Small leather case waiting open for her scissors, the last of the twine, the exercise book. She packed it, closed it, the kids at her heels like three eager puppies waiting for her to pick up their leashes and say ‘walk’.

  ‘Run down to the lav before we leave. It’ll be a while before we see another one,’ she said, and like three good little puppies they ran to obey.

  She opened the case and ripped out the page containing the Parkers’ itemised account. She’d added to it during the past week.

  Flywire for sleep-out.

  Canvas for blinds.

  Curtains for three rooms.

  Reconditioning of sewing machine.

  Oil and needles.

  Repairs and polishing of sleep-out cabinet, she added now, and, Garden produce.

  About to slide it beneath the passage door, she changed her mind. Why not leave Flora a double-edged message? She placed it beneath the sewing machine’s stitching foot, aware the passage door would be unlocked two minutes after she and the kids had closed the g
lass door.

  Patted the machine’s head as she may have patted a faithful dog’s. Then away.

  ‘Old J.C., she went off to find happy, found a flushing lavatory, ended up in purgatory. Old J.C., she’s better than she used to be, many long years ago,’ she sang as they walked. Kids like lavatory humour, and Jenny’s troop had insufficient religious training to understand the literal meaning of purgatory. They laughed and marched, and Jimmy wanted her to sing it again.

  They saw a horse and dray as they turned the corner, and ran hand in hand to catch up. It wasn’t their carrier. Georgie asked how Granny’s Nugget would like driving down roads with all of those trucks and cars. There would come a day soon when the horse and dray would be forced from city roads, but not yet, not while petrol was rationed, not while one-horse motors worked on hay.

  Trams worked on electricity. They went fast. The tram caught up to their carrier three or four blocks on, and the kids laughed at the wheel of Jimmy’s tricycle spinning at a hundred miles an hour.

  ‘Goodbye, red racing trike,’ Jimmy called to it.

  ‘Goodbye, mattress,’ Georgie called.

  ‘Goodbye, Armadale,’ Jenny said.

  It was not at all like her leaving of Sydney and Myrtle, not one little bit like that. This was breaking out of prison with a bunch of happy kids. This was escaping to the paradise of Granny, to buckets of free milk and chooks that laid golden eggs.

  ‘Old J.C. is heading to paradise, finding it so very nice, like dough balls with lots of spice. Old J.C. can live well without fridge ice, for many long years to come.’

  Laughing on the tram with her kids, loving them and their laughter, and making even sillier rhymes so they’d laugh more.

  Lanky Harry standing out front of the hospital, rolling his inimitable slim cigarette, his watery blue eyes searching for them. A lean, rusty-headed, snub-nosed boy of eighteen when he’d married Elsie, Gertrude’s darker-than-average adopted daughter. Twelve-year-old Jenny had been at his wedding. He didn’t look much more than a boy now. They waved to him as the tram went by, then all four ran back, all four grabbing a part of him to hug. Plenty of length to go around.

  ‘Any news yet?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘They’re not mucking about, Jen. They’ll do a hysterectomy tomorrow morning the chap said. Doctor Frazer warned us what to expect. He knows his business. He got her onto some new drug to clear up her chest. They say she’s well enough to stand the operation.’

  Slim cigarettes burned fast. He tossed the butt and his hands wanted to roll another one. ‘I was convinced the flu would take her, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. If she hadn’t got it, I wouldn’t have got her down to see Frazer. He knew right away that there was no baby inside her.’ Harry was wound up, words spilled from him as they walked to the tram stop. ‘She’s been having trouble for months. Mum kept telling me to get her down to a doctor.’

  ‘She’s with the best of them now,’ Jenny said.

  ‘If it’s cancer, it could have gone further, one of the doctors told me. He said there’s no way of knowing if it is or not until they get in there and have a look.’

  ‘Wombs are made to hold babies in. Whatever it is, it’s locked in tight.’

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

  ‘Gardens inside ladies’ tummies where baby seeds grow,’ she said, and turned again to Harry.

  ‘It’s the same hospital Dad died in. It’s like it’s all happening again. I can’t lose her, Jen.’

  ‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘Doctors have come a long way since you were thirteen.’

  ‘There was nothing of her before she got crook. There’s nothing left of her to cut into . . .’

  ‘She’s a sparrow with the heart of an eagle. She’ll breeze through it.’

  The tram coming, she gathered the kids in close to board. Harry had been raised in the city. He hadn’t been back since his father died, but he remembered the city streets.

  ‘Isn’t it going the wrong way for Armadale?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  Georgie remembered her father. ‘I forgot my photo, Jenny.’

  ‘He’s packed, Georgie.’

  ‘And mine?’ Jimmy said.

  ‘They’re together in one of the cartons.’

  Harry followed them onto the tram. He asked no questions, not until they’d found seats, he and Jenny side by side, the kids opposite.

  ‘I hope I didn’t cause trouble between you — asking for a bed?’

  ‘You gave me a date to leave, Harry. I’ve been putting it off since last Christmas. I’ve booked a family room for the night. I hope you don’t mind sharing.’

  During one of Laurie’s poorer periods, Jenny had spent a week with him at a Spencer Street hotel, almost opposite the station. It hadn’t changed: not the reception desk, the tired furnishings, the creaking lift, or the musty odour of the rooms. A crowded little room, three single beds; they wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in it.

  For dinner they bought fish and chips at a little shop near the corner of Flinders Street, also unchanged in eight years. Nothing better in the world than fish and chips eaten out of paper, with a large bottle of fizzy lemonade to wash the salt and grease down. They picnicked on a street bench, spoke with their mouths full, the kids giggling when Harry burped.

  Bliss is to be free in the city with giggling kids and someone from home to talk to. Bliss is a thousand words tossed to the wind, and a thousand words returning.

  At seven they caught the tram back to the hospital. The kids weren’t allowed on the wards. Told to be as quiet as three little mice, they were left in a downstairs waiting room while Jenny followed Harry to a four-bed ward.

  No bliss there. Overwhelming sadness washed through her, and fear, at the sight of capable little Elsie, frail, lost in the space of a city hospital bed, her birdlike hands reaching for Harry, grasping him. And that lovers’ kiss. They had seven kids at home: five of their own and two of Elsie’s sister’s kids. Harry must have been six foot four; Elsie might have stretched to five foot before that bed had swallowed her. Two unrelated entities, fate had stitched into one. And Jenny wasn’t needed there.

  She kissed Elsie’s cheek, told her she’d see her at home soon, and she took her kids outside to a city night where they didn’t need to be as silent as three little mice.

  After nine they returned to that bed-cramped room, and too much talking, too much laughter, when they got there. Jenny turned off the light and told the kids they had to get up very early. Kids don’t sleep when they’re on holiday. They thought they were having a holiday. They spoke of Granny’s surprise when she saw them coming tomorrow, and asked if they’d still sleep in her bedroom like they used to. And why was Elsie in the hospital? And would everyone be in the same classroom when they went back to their old school? And would Mrs McPherson remember them, and would they be Morrison at their old school or still King? Eleven o’clock before their eyes gave up the fight to stay open; when they closed them just for a second, then forgot to open them. One by one they succumbed.

  Cigarettes lit, two heads out the window, and Harry raised the subject of the Hoopers — or Elsie.

  ‘Vern’s wife died of a growth,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t in her womb. They cut that out of her when Jim was born.’

  ‘Is he the reason you’re going home?’

  She drew in smoke and breathed it out. ‘He’s the reason I know I have to go home.’

  ‘They had him up there again a while back. Nelly Dobson says he’s still — not himself.’

  ‘He was a starburst in the black night of my life, Harry. Some stars burn so bright they burn out,’ she said. ‘Keep your head out the window for a minute while I get into bed.’

  She took her frock off, hung it, and made room for herself down the bottom end of Jimmy’s bed. Harry kept his head out the window for ten minutes more, then the creaking of bedsprings told her he was lying down.

  Room full up with breathing
. No rhythm to it. Harry’s breathing deep, slow. He’d had a long day, a stress-filled week. Georgie had a clicking little snore. Margot’s sleep was sound. Jimmy’s feet ran. What was he dreaming?

  She rolled to her side, her mind too busy for sleep. Wondered what Ray had done when he’d opened the door and found the dresser missing, when he’d found the kids’ room bare. Wondered if Harry was fated to lose Elsie, as he’d lost his brothers, his parents; if God was really up there ticking off names in his account book. She yawned and hoped Norman was sitting at God’s desk tidying up his bookwork. Harry and Elsie were family.

  Hum of the city, rattle of a lone truck, tick-tick-tick of her alarm clock, the alarm set for five thirty . . . and before the city placed its head down for the night, Jenny was asleep.

  PAINTING THE CLOUDS

  Jenny had paid in advance for the hotel room, paid for two nights. She could have changed her train tickets and stayed another day, but if things went well at the hospital, Harry wouldn’t need her with him; and if the news was bad, three excited kids wouldn’t be his preferred companions.

  He walked with them to the station, stayed with them until they boarded, but his mind was already at the hospital with Elsie and he had little to say.

  Then goodbye land of electricity and refrigerators and flushing lavatories.

  ‘Goodbye, trams,’ Jimmy yelled.

  ‘Goodbye, powdered milk,’ Georgie yelled.

  ‘Goodbye, thtupid thchoolteacherth,’ Margot yelled.

  ‘Goodbye, dear old sewing machine,’ Jenny added.

  ‘Goodbye, tell-tale Loith.’

  ‘Goodbye, zoo.’

  ‘Goodbye, elephants.’

  ‘Goodbye, monkeyth.’

  No one said ‘goodbye, Ray’.

  *

  Jenny had made this trip at fifteen, with the Salvation Army couple, Dorothy and Donald. She’d made the trip with three-yearold Jimmy, and surely the train moved faster this morning than it had back then.