Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  ‘She was little more than a child when she was here.’

  ‘Mrs Collins will move on when she retires. Her son is in Melbourne.’

  Had Lorna Hooper not been abroad with her Langdon relatives at the time, she may have travelled to Sydney with her investigator and seen Cara at play. She would have recognised her hair, her eyes, as Jenny’s. Vern’s retired policeman investigator had sighted the infant at her mother’s heels when he’d knocked on Amberley’s door but had not known of nor had he been in quest of that child.

  Twice he’d knocked, and once Myrtle had come on him in the laundry, speaking to Mrs Collins, a sweet-natured woman, but far too chatty.

  ‘Who sent him here, Robert?’

  Their daughter had been fathered by one of the five American sailors who, Jenny claimed, had carried her down to an unknown beach where all five had had their way with her, then left her naked there. Had she lied? Had the boy been in love with her? Had he known there was to be a child? Was he attempting to find that child?

  ‘If that chap comes back, Robert, I’m taking her to New Zealand. You can stay behind and sell the house.’

  The investigator didn’t return. Vern Hooper had his grandson.

  On Christmas Eve of 1947, Father Christmas found the scattered children of Jenny Morrison. He delivered a fluffy black and white puppy to Amberley, a puppy that moved its head and yapped when a key was inserted into its tummy and given a few turns. Cara named him Bowser, like the shadow puppy dog Robert created on the parlour wall.

  To a substantial house in a tree-lined street in Balwyn, a northeastern suburb of Melbourne, the bearded old chap delivered a shiny red and silver bicycle, fitted with small trainer wheels. Or Aunty Maggie pretended Santa had left it beneath the tree. Michael, Jimmy’s new friend, said Santa wasn’t real, that mothers and fathers bought the presents.

  While the Christmas chicken roasted, Jimmy rode the bike in circles around the garden and remembered riding his old red tricycle. He thought about its wheel spinning around and around so merrily the day it travelled away from Ray’s house on the cart. He knew his trike was very lonely, and sad too, because Jenny and Granny and everyone had gone to live with the angels. Aunty Maggie said so.

  Angels were good though, and they could sing, and Jimmy bet that Jenny was singing ‘Painting the Clouds’; and she might even really be painting the clouds because she’d told him his daddy had painted the rainbows when he was dead. He wasn’t dead any more though, because after Christmas dinner was finished, everyone was getting in the car and going to see his daddy, who wasn’t living with the angels, anymore, but with the nursing sisters, who were like halfway to angels, Aunty Maggie said.

  It was good that people who had gone to heaven could come back sometimes. Jesus had. Jenny hadn’t told him about Jesus coming back from being dead. She hadn’t told him about Santa Claus not being real either. He wished he could ask her if he was real. He’d asked Aunty Maggie, but she always said just nice things, not true things. Jenny had said true things. Like Aunty Maggie said babies came from stars falling from heaven, but Jenny said they grew from seeds planted in the mother’s tummy gardens.

  Around and around he rode on his new bike, his mind making its own small circles. Nowhere else to ride down here but in circles. The house had a tall fence and iron gates so no one could get in and he couldn’t get out, except in the car. Or sometimes he went out with Aunty Maggie and they rode on a tram exactly like the same tram he and Jenny used to ride on. The city was exactly the same, though it didn’t feel like the same, unless he closed his eyes very tight and just listened.

  He couldn’t close his eyes on the bike or he’d run over the garden beds, then Grandpa wouldn’t take the little balancing wheels off. When he did, it would be a proper grown-up bike, and one day, one day when the gate was open so Lorna could get the car out, he’d ride that bike out, ride it very, very far until he found the ‘just one’ railway line, that went all the way to Woody Creek and he’d ride there. Jenny and Granny and everyone might have come back from heaven.

  In Gertrude’s house, no one believed in Santa Claus. Margot and Georgie received new school shoes, new frocks and two giant balloons.

  While Elsie and Granny were serving out Christmas dinner, Teddy Hall blew Margot’s yellow balloon up until it burst. She howled and hit him with Gertrude’s poker, and he punched her, and Harry took his pop gun away from him, because boys didn’t hit girls, even if they deserved it.

  ‘She told me to blow it up bigger than Georgie’s,’ Teddy argued.

  ‘You didn’t have to buthted it.’

  Always bedlam at Gertrude’s on Christmas Day.

  Elsie’s kitchen table carried across the paddock, any Hall kid capable of carrying a chair carrying one, the cane couch moved out to the yard to make room. They’d made enough room for thirteen. Home-grown vegetables crowding the plates alongside homegrown chicken, Granny’s seasoning, Elsie’s gravy.

  Jenny’s plate was as crowded as the rest. She pushed it away when she heard that motorbike.

  He kept coming back, and coming back.

  He bought Margot a doll’s tea set, bought Georgie a picture book, bought Jenny a ring, two hands clasped. A friendship ring? He didn’t know his wedding ring had bought flour, porridge. She placed the ring back into its box and, with nothing more to give, gave him her meal, her chair at the table, then walked away from the house.

  He found her mid-afternoon, sitting on the water-dipping log at the creek.

  ‘Th-th-this is no p-place to l-live, Jenny. C-c-come home.’

  She took her shoes off and slid into the water, swam to the other side where he couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t swim.

  For two hours he sat on the log waiting for her to swim back. She didn’t, and when his cigarette packet was empty, he walked back to his bike. Left without a word to the girls, to Gertrude.

  He didn’t come back.

  THE BRIGHTEST STAR

  Vern Hooper came back. He made his final trip out along the forest road on a Saturday in January when 1948 was still brand new. He knew he’d get no welcome from Gertrude. He wasn’t looking for a welcome. He wasn’t too sure what he was looking for; maybe to make peace with himself. He’d done the right thing by that boy. There was no doubt in his mind about that. Maybe he wanted to convince Gertrude that he’d done the right thing by that boy.

  The boundary gate was closed. He had one foot on the ground when she came out of the trees.

  ‘Where is he?’

  He hadn’t expected to see her. Nelly Dobson had told him not half an hour ago that Jenny Morrison hadn’t been sighted since they’d brought her home from the hospital. He got his foot back into the car and closed the door. He wasn’t down here to get into a slanging match with her; wouldn’t have come near this place had he known she was down here. He slapped the gearstick into reverse and the big car moved back.

  ‘You answer me!’

  He didn’t.

  The track was narrow and overhung by trees. His head through the open window, watching the path of his rear wheels, he didn’t see her pick up a solid length of fallen timber. He heard it smash into his windscreen.

  ‘You wild little bitch.’

  ‘Tell me where he is!’

  A bankbook he’d intended giving to Gertrude to post to her was on the passenger seat. He reached for it, spun it at her.

  ‘Take your money and get your life sorted out or you’ll lose the other two.’

  Wind currents on a warm day can’t be relied on. Spin a flat stone and if it’s done right, it will skip on water. Spin a slim book by its corner and if it catches the right air current, it will fly. He didn’t wait to see where it landed but continued backing up the track. She didn’t chase her money. She chased his car, and got his driver-side door open. The track wasn’t wide enough. He hit the brake.

  ‘He’s mine.’

  ‘He was, now he’s mine. Let go of that bloody door.’

  ‘I want to talk to
Jim.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you.’ Or anyone else.

  Vern fought her for that door. He was stronger. He got it shut, got it locked, tried to wind up the window but her hand was inside, gripping the doorframe. He stopped winding before he cut it off, then he slipped the car out of gear. His bloody knee was throbbing with the effort of holding down the clutch.

  ‘Your boy shook his father’s hand on Christmas Day, and if you could know the feeling raised in a man’s guts at seeing those two Hooper hands meeting, then you mightn’t begrudge it to me.’

  These were the words he’d prepared for Gertrude. They cut no ice with Jenny.

  ‘He’s mine. I carried him. He’s my son.’

  ‘He’s my grandson, a Hooper. The papers you signed at the hospital state that you’ll make no attempt to see him. It’s over. Now let go of this bloody car.’

  She clung to her only contact with Jimmy, and Vern was too old for this.

  ‘For all I know or care, you might have been the best mother in the world to him. You might have even loved his father at one time. It makes no difference to me. Can’t you get that through your head? You had the misfortune of giving me my only grandson. He’s the reason I’ve kept on living, and now he’s living like he should have been living five years ago. Christ almighty! Can’t you see what we’ve done for him? You named him Hooper. What the hell did you expect a man to do?’

  ‘You let me think Jim was dead.’

  ‘And thanks to you, he may as well be.’

  Again the gears engaged and the car moved back. You can’t back a car up a narrow track while arguing. He clipped a tree, heard the screech of his paint peeling away from metal as he hit the brake.

  ‘Now look what you made a man go and do.’

  His car would wear the scar of this day, and his overbearing bitch of a daughter already spent enough time telling him he was unfit to drive the bloody thing. He drove forward, heard a second scrape. Unfit to drive; unfit to get out of the car and look at the damage too.

  ‘You’ve got time to have ten more and no doubt will. I’ve got no time left. I’ve got no legs left to walk on. All I’ve got is money, and your boy to leave it to when I’m gone. Now for Christ’s sake, let go of my car and pick up your money. Let it buy your life into some sort of bloody order.’

  Then, too fast, carelessly, he backed up the steep rise to the forest road, determined to shake her off. She stumbled, but didn’t let go.

  The gearstick slapped into first, he hauled on the steering wheel and turned that big car towards town.

  He shouldn’t have come down here. He’d been coming down here for too bloody long. Her face was close, a face he’d known through every stage of its life. Her eyes had lost none of their col-our, though the light behind them had gone.

  ‘You fool of a bloody girl. You were the brightest star this town ever grew. You could have bought and sold every bugger in town if you’d played your cards right — and look where you’ve ended up.’

  He took off then, the motor roaring, those big wheels spraying gravel, whipping Jenny with gravel as she ran beside him.

  She let go.

  An eye for an eye, laddie, his grandfather whispered in his mind. And fair enough too. She’d killed the life in Jim’s eyes. He’d killed the light in hers.

  An eye for an eye.

  It had taken him six years, but he’d done what he’d set out to do. His grandson wouldn’t grow up a bastard in this town.

  PART TWO

  JIMMY’S GONE

  A blistering, smoky month, January 1948. The forest knew Jimmy was gone. It burned for him. Then the storms came, and for days on end the thunder gods beat their drums and lightning lit the land, but not a drop of rain fell on the blackened earth. The creek was down to a trickle out near the bush mill. Teddy Hall hooked a mighty Murray cod. It was damn near as big as ten-yearold Teddy, but he landed it, and dragged it home in a wheat bag.

  Then March, and the heat worse than midsummer. They blamed lightning for the fire out at Three Pines. Not much they could do about it but let it burn. They saved Monk’s old house, lost a few outbuildings and most of the fences, a few head of sheep.

  Then the mother and father of all storms hit Woody Creek. Hail as big as golf balls hammered the town. Gertrude’s goats ran bleating from the bombardment; Georgie stood in the doorway watching them run, watching lumps of ice dance on dust.

  For two days more, the sky wore black, then its days of mourning passed and that violent summer of no Jimmy gave way to the wet ash smell of autumn without Jimmy.

  The girls stopped asking when he was coming home. Gertrude stopped saying, ‘Jim will look after him, darlin’.’

  Jenny sat. She slept, and sometimes walked while others slept, or slept while others walked.

  Elsie came to the house to help with the sauce-making. Tomatoes mutilated by hail were good enough for sauce.

  Maisy drove down with a bicycle for Margot, who didn’t like dogs, who wouldn’t cut through Joe Flanagan’s wood paddocks to school with Georgie and Elsie’s kids. She didn’t like bikes either. For a week, Maisy supplied a private taxi service to and from school. At the end of the week, she suggested it would be easier if Margot moved into town from Monday to Friday.

  Silence in Gertrude’s house then. Long, long nights of Jenny’s silence. It made Georgie scared; she wanted Jenny to talk to her.

  ‘Will I read the paper to you, Jenny? Jenny, you know that man in Brunswick? Remember that man who got burned in Brunswick — well, he stole a big heap of ration coupons. Will I read it to you?’

  ‘Read it to me, darlin’,’ Gertrude said. ‘My old eyes aren’t much good by lamplight.’

  Georgie read of thieves and politicians, of cricketers and unionists, of murder and beauty queens — just the same old news, only the dates on the newspapers altered, only the names of those deemed newsworthy.

  Margot had more interesting news to relay at weekends.

  ‘Nana Maithy’th got proper lightth like in Armadale. I can’t even thee to read with that lamp.’

  Long weekends.

  ‘Granny said to stop your ahzeeing, Margot. Jenny’s asleep.’

  ‘Why can’t I thtay with Nana Maithy all the time?’

  Please God, let her stay all the time with Nana Maisy. Please God, take this cup away from me. I never wanted it.

  Never wanted Jimmy either. Jumped off the shed roof to shake him out of me. A Richmond doctor would have got rid of Georgie. I would have got rid of Cara.

  Is it your first, Mr King?

  It wasn’t his first. His first had gone the same way as his second. She’d done it. Her fault. She’d given the Hoopers the ammunition, and they’d shot it back at her, straight through her heart.

  ‘Nana Maithy’th got a vacuum that getth all the dutht out of her houth.’

  ‘I’m very fond of my dust,’ Gertrude said.

  ‘You get thick from dirt.’

  Monday night, a quiet night, Georgie reading of Jews moving back to the land of Jesus, now the land of the Arabs.

  ‘Was Jesus an Arab or a Jew, Jenny?’

  British troops were getting out of the place, packing up to go home, or packing up to get on a boat to Australia. Georgie read about British migrants by lamplight.

  ‘Why are they all coming out here, Granny?’

  ‘They’ve got millions of people in England, darlin’. The government doesn’t think we’ve got enough,’ Gertrude said.

  Australia was prepared to take in the world — as long as they were white.

  ‘Those of colour who found sanctuary in Australia during the war have been given notice to quit the country,’ Georgie read. ‘What’s sanctuary, Granny?’

  ‘A safe place, darlin’.’

  ‘Like here is a sanctuary?’ Georgie said.

  ‘A sanctuary from what, darlin’?’

  Georgie glanced at Granny, thinking before she replied. ‘I liked school in Armadale, and the trams and everything, when
Jenny was making heaps of money.’

  ‘From her sewing?’

  ‘From singing mostly.’

  ‘Singing?’

  ‘She got lots and lots of money from that. When she was in the pantomime, me and Margot and Jimmy didn’t have to pay, but hundreds of people had to buy tickets, and she came home with piles of money.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘She was Snow White. In the last September holidays.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me she was singing down there.’

  ‘You were sick when we came home, then she got sick.’

  ‘Why did you come home, darlin’?’

  ‘If we didn’t, the Hoopers wouldn’t be able to get Jimmy, would they?’

  ‘He’s with his daddy who loves him.’

  ‘Is Margot going to stay with Maisy and her fathers, Granny?’

  ‘She’ll come home again when Jenny is well.’

  ‘My father can’t ever get me, can he? Even if she’s not well?’

  ‘Never, my darlin’ girl.’

  ‘I don’t even want one now.’

  You can hold your mind still. Sometimes. You can hold your limbs still. You can’t hold time still. Old clock hands jerk forward, deducting minutes from hollow days, and when enough hollow days erode, they turn into hollow months. Enough of them, and the first autumn of no Jimmy gives way to the bitter winter of no Jimmy.

  White frosts that winter, bleak foggy days, and the old black stove, too hot in summer, insufficient to take the chill away from the dark kitchen.

  Gertrude and Georgie sat close to the stove at night, the oven door open, icy feet propped on the hearth tray before it. Jenny didn’t sit with them. Bed was her sanctuary, bed was one more day over, bed was dreams. Sometimes they were kind.

  ‘She’s going like Amber, Mrs Foote. We need to get her to a doctor.’

  ‘All she needs right now is peace and quiet, Maisy.’

  ‘Margot says she won’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘She’s got nothing she wants to say to anyone.’

  ‘I remember those terrible days with Amber. The only thing that would shake her out of herself was the doctors.’