Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  A man’s memory is a remarkable tool. His hadn’t faded. His voice wasn’t all it used to be; he was the first to admit that. He didn’t like the way it quavered on the high notes. But nothing is forever, not youth nor beauty, not money nor eyesight. Only the sun is forever. Somewhere, at any given time, it was rising. He’d watched it rise over oceans, over mountains, over jungles, always offering a new day, a new beginning for Archie Foote.

  The car purred on, eating up the miles, delighted to be out on the open road. He’d been promising it such a trip for weeks. Short trips around the city were no good for new motors.

  At eight o’clock he was halfway between Willama and Woody Creek. And where better for an innocent man to run than back to the town of his accuser, where for three weeks he’d played the caring doctor? Whose side of the story were they likely to believe? Kindly old Dr Foote’s or his crazed, murdering daughter’s. It was no contest.

  He’d renew his acquaintance with Jennifer, with his grandson, get to know his granddaughters, and torment Tru into the grave.

  He laughed, lifted his head and sang again. And why not? He had money in his pocket, petrol in his car — and by the time he went blind, he’d get free medical treatment.

  Oh the Sun always rises in the morning

  And sets each evening in the western sky . . .

  You can dodge the truth forever, if you work at it. You can run from intolerable situations, escape tenacious women.

  You can’t dodge Old Man Kangaroo when he’s intent on crossing the road to get to greener grass on the other side. There’s not a thing you can do about Old Man Kangaroo.

  THE MERRY WIDOW’S HAT

  Norman’s wireless had found a space in the rear corner of Gertrude’s kitchen. Gertrude enjoyed listening to the six o’clock news. She made a point of sitting down to dinner at six. The local news usually consisted of saleyard reports and the price obtained for fat lambs. That night, the announcer spoke of a horrendous road accident fifteen miles south of Willama. The elderly driver, who had been travelling alone, was pronounced dead on arrival at the Willama hospital.

  The ten o’clock broadcast stated that the car, a Holden, had been registered to a retired Melbourne doctor. Gertrude didn’t hear that broadcast. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise — she was healthy. And widowed for the second time to the same man, so the local police officer told her at nine the following morning. They’d found the driver’s name on his licence, though an official identification was still required.

  She’d do it. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

  She dressed in her black suit, in her black and white striped blouse, rolled on her only pair of stockings, wiped dust from her black shoes, and took her merry widow’s hat from its box on top of the wardrobe. It was black, with a scrap of veil and a cheeky red feather standing tall. Vern had bought it for her in Melbourne twenty years ago. She wore it to Willama that morning, not convinced that the dead man was Archie until they drew back that sheet.

  Even death had been kind to Archie Foote. There was hardly a mark on him. The impact had broken his neck. He’d always had a skinny neck — and a hard head.

  ‘It’s him,’ she said. She didn’t touch him. ‘He’ll have two scars on his scalp: one over his left ear and one on the rear of his crown.’

  She’d stitched both of them. Hadn’t made much of a job of the first — just a fool of a weeping girl back then. She’d put too many stitches in the second while he’d played possum on a cell bed. Tried to tickle the possum out of him with her stitching — but not a flinch out of the sod, not a whimper.

  The scars were still there.

  She didn’t say goodbye, and had no intention of burying him. ‘He’s got family in Melbourne. I don’t know where. They’ll no doubt bury him.’

  Walked away without a backward glance. Only the red feather waved goodbye to Archie Foote.

  Car accidents were no longer newsworthy in the city; a death might receive a line or two. Archibald Gerald Foote received a two-inch column on page three, along with mention of his daughter’s recent accusation.

  Not that a soul in Woody Creek believed a word of Amber Morrison’s lies.

  ‘He was a lovely, decent old man,’ Mrs Vevers said. ‘He sat with our Linda all night when she had that disease. We would have lost her, like we lost Tom, if not for old Doctor Foote.’

  ‘His lying daughter deserves hanging, not letting out — or wasting our taxes keeping her in there,’ the people said. ‘They hanged that prostitute for murdering a bookie.’

  Doctor Archibald Foote received two columns in Friday’s Willama Gazette. They wrote about the retired doctor who had laboured untiringly during the influenza epidemic of ’47, but made no mention of his daughter’s accusations.

  Gertrude received more than the usual stares when she rode into town that Friday, clad in her uniform of drill trousers and boots, her hair tucked beneath her old felt hat.

  ‘I don’t know how he ever married her. He was such a fine old gentleman.’

  Always one of the world’s great mysteries — how dead men are never the bastards they’ve been in life.

  Not a good year, 1951. There was a bad epidemic of polio in New South Wales, which led to fear of strangers bringing disease into town. There was a bad accident at Davies’s bush mill in June. Lenny Hall worked out there, and the young chap who had been killed had started there the same week as Lenny. His death was followed by the senior Mick Boyle’s — suddenly — then old mother Lewis followed him — not so suddenly.

  Archie started the rot. Within ten days, there’d been three deaths in Woody Creek.

  Vern Hooper and his lamp-post daughter drove up for Mick Boyle’s funeral. Lorna caught the train home that night, leaving Vern and his car out at the farm, in the care of Rick Thompson, the farm manager.

  Vern spent more time than necessary in town, but had sense enough not to crawl back to Gertrude one last time. He wanted to. Stopped himself where the road forked and drove on out to the farm. Harry ran into him at the post office. Vern asked if everyone was well down there. Harry told him they were, and asked about Jim and Jimmy, which cut their conversation short.

  ‘The boy’s well,’ Vern said and left without checking his mail.

  Elsie became a grandmother in September. Joey sent photographs of his son and Elsie howled for two days. A new baby in Bundaberg, Queensland, might just as well have been in London. She couldn’t get up there to mother it.

  Cara Jeanette turned seven on the third day of October. Jimmy turned ten two months to the day later.

  Then Christmas, and, for the first time in over eighty years, Christmas dinner wasn’t served in Gertrude’s kitchen. The tables and chairs were set up in the yard; Elsie’s mob had grown too large.

  They were all there, seated around the table, cracking walnuts, slapping at mosquitoes, when they heard the motorbike. There were a few around town. Most went on by. This one came put-puttering down the track. Gertrude and Harry left the table. They didn’t recognise Ray beneath his riding glasses and leather helmet. They didn’t recognise the bulk of him when he dismounted. Four years to the day since they’d sighted him. Four years can change the shape of a man.

  Jenny had once likened his eyes to those of a lost lamb. His riding goggles removed, Ray’s eyes were more crazed horse, wide, shaking, showing too much white as they searched the yard for Jenny. She’d gone indoors to watch through the bedroom hatch.

  Smell of hot petrol, of the bike’s exhaust, in Gertrude’s yard. Then she and Harry smelled more than petrol and exhaust. Thirteen pair of eyes watched Ray unbuckle his riding jacket. It wasn’t his waist that had thickened up. Like a caesarean birth, he eased a well-grown baby from beneath the jacket. And Gertrude yelled for towels — as she might have at a birth. Elsie ran inside to the wardrobe, ran out with the towels in time to see Ray dig another one out of his saddlebag. It was alive. It had the wail of the newborn. Let Elsie get within smelling distance of a newborn
and she’d mother it. She claimed that tiny baby, wrapped it and ran for home.

  ‘What’th he doing with babieth?’ asked Margot, standing beside Jenny.

  Georgie was behind her, the taller of the three. She’d turn twelve next March. ‘Probably buried their mother in our garden,’ she said.

  Gertrude carried the larger baby across the paddock. Elsie had a bathroom and they’d need it. Harry took charge of Ray. He rolled him a smoke then led him across the paddock. The kids tailed them, Harry’s seven and Jenny’s two.

  Dinner plates stacked high on the table, pudding plates, mugs, empty saucepans on the hob. Jenny washed them, was still up to her elbows in dishwater when the girls came back.

  ‘There’th thomething wrong with the big one,’ Margot said.

  ‘You should see Ray, Jenny. He’s got one of Harry’s navy blue singlets on with pyjama pants. That’s all they could find to fit him. He’s sitting in the kitchen, shaking. He can’t even talk, can’t pick up his mug of tea. Granny said to get her brandy.’

  They ran back across the paddock with the brandy, and didn’t return until ten, Gertrude with them.

  ‘Stay out of the shed if you don’t want to run into him, darlin’. Harry’s thrown a mattress down in the corner for him. It’s just for tonight. We’d do as much for a stranger on Christmas Day.’

  No need for Jenny to stay away from the shed. Ray’s clothes must have been dry enough by dawn. They heard his bike start up. He hadn’t taken his babies.

  A lost day, Boxing Day of ’51. Gertrude wanted to contact the constable. ‘Lord only knows what happened to the mother of those babies,’ she said. Elsie wanted to wait for a day or two. Georgie thought she knew what had happened to the mother, and, by the look of Ray when he’d arrived, she could have been right.

  ‘Wait till tomorrow, Mum,’ Elsie said.

  Distance denied her her grandson. She gave him love by proxy that Boxing Day, and by the end of it, had named the babies: Lynette and David.

  ‘Their mother will have gone to the police,’ Gertrude said. ‘They’ll be searching the countryside for them. We have to let someone know where they are.’

  ‘I’ll go in in the morning,’ Harry said.

  The bike returned that night, near eleven. No light showing at Elsie’s house, but Jenny was burning the midnight oil. She opened the door to him. He’d brought a bulging wheat bag, bulging enough to have the mother in it — maybe not heavy enough.

  ‘You can’t stay, Ray. Those kids need their mother.’

  ‘Sh-sh-she w-w-won’t look after ’em,’ he said.

  He stood in the doorway, blinking into the light. She stood with her back to the table, looking into the dark.

  The bag placed down, he took her wedding photograph from it, offered it. She didn’t want it. He stepped inside and placed it on the cane couch, then took a wad of pound notes from his pocket and offered them. She turned away, needing Gertrude, needing Harry, needing to get him out.

  Gertrude came, dressing-gown-clad, her long plait hanging. ‘Make a cup of tea, darlin’. See if there’s a bit of cake left.’ Patience personified, Gertrude. ‘Put your money away and sit down, Ray.’

  He put his money on the table and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.

  ‘If you want to smoke, you’ll have to do it outside.’ Law-maker, Gertrude.

  Too fast, he obeyed her law, slid the cigarette back into its packet, packet in his pocket, and sat.

  ‘Your little girl is a bright wee mite but your boy needs special care. We can’t give it to him. There’s places in the city —’

  ‘H-he’s m-m-mine.’

  He’s mine.

  A wind-up chimp will play the drums until its cogs rust, its spring snaps or its drumsticks wear out. It’s not haunted by secrets. It has no memories. Jenny had been playing the wind-up chimp, functioning, refusing to think, wearing herself out with labour, going to bed when she could no longer stand.

  He’s mine.

  Those words hit the wind-up chimp’s main spring, and something snapped.

  Is it your first, Mr King?

  She’d aborted his first, and his second. He brought them back to haunt her.

  Shook her head and poured boiling water over tea-leaves, then set the pot on the hob to draw for a minute. Old clock on the mantelpiece ticking towards midnight. Her mind travelled to her days here when she’d thought Gertrude was dying. So sure of herself then, strong . . .

  ‘What age is your boy?’ Gertrude asked.

  ‘He c-came O-O-O-October twelve m-months ago. D-Donald H-H-Henry. G-g-girl’s R-Raelene. She came l-last N-N-November.’

  Jenny poured tea into three mugs, listening to his struggle for words. Could never get any information out of him in Armadale. Gertrude was better at it than she’d been.

  ‘He’s fourteen months, Ray,’ Gertrude said. ‘He shouldbe walking.’

  ‘H-h-h-he’s g-g-getting b-better.’

  They drank tea with him — or Gertrude drank tea with him. Jenny stayed on her feet, watching him, listening to him, thinking; remembering him sleeping on the couch when she’d thought Granny was dying, how she’d been pleased he’d been on the couch those nights.

  He had no one, no friends. He had a factory job, half a house — where he wasn’t wanted. And two babies.

  He’s mine.

  ‘I’ll make up a bed up on the couch, Granny. It’s too late to do anything tonight.’

  ‘J-J-Jenny?’

  Shook her head and went to the bedroom for a pillow, a blanket.

  *

  Not a lot of sleeping done that night. Gertrude’s bedsprings complained; Ray spent the night in the yard, no doubt leaving a trail of butts; and by dawn, Jenny wished she could join him out there. Hadn’t had a smoke for close on four years. Hadn’t wanted a smoke. That night she did.

  Early birds chirping; a few dancing on the roof when Gertrude’s springs complained for the last time and she rose. They shared the bedroom: Jenny up the north end, Granny down the southern end. Jenny kept to her bed, not wanting to deal with him yet. Maybe she dozed. Woke to the sound of an axe on wood. She rose and peered out through the hatch. He was at the wood heap, cutting, stacking, stove-sized wood.

  She made the porridge. Didn’t offer him a bowl. Offered him two slices of toast, no stew to put on them, no butter either. Jam, honey. He ate the first slice dry, added honey to the second slice, and watched her every movement.

  The money he’d left on the table last night had been moved to the dresser. Jenny picked it up and placed it beside his plate.

  ‘Get yourself a room at the hotel,’ she said.

  Eyes of a whipped pup meeting her own. She looked away, knowing she had to get rid of those eyes.

  ‘There’s no room down here for us, Ray. You have to go.’

  He left at nine and returned at two, with a bedroll, butter, sausages, minced steak and a large loaf of bread. She cooked his minced steak. Uncooked, it would go off fast in this weather. She cooked his sausages that night, different sausages. Gertrude commented on them.

  ‘W-W-Willama,’ he said, attempting to dip melted butter from the bowl.

  He wouldn’t go.

  On the third day, he rode out to Davies’s bush mill and rode home with a job. He didn’t tell them. Lenny told them; he worked for Davies too.

  They tried to get rid of him. Harry tried. They tried to speak to him about Donny. A floppy little boy, he looked like Ray, same shaped head, similar features, big-boned, though not an ounce of fat on those bones and nothing in his eyes. Raelene had less meat on her bones but a head of black ringlets. She was nothing like Ray.

  Jenny changed her tiny wet backside on the fourth day and wondered if God was offering her a chance to make restitution. And what if he was, and what if she didn’t take that chance?

  Crazy. Wanted nothing to do with Ray.

  But argued for him.

  ‘He’s got no one, Granny.’

  Or his little girl had no one
. Little girls needed someone to care enough to weave them into this crazy patchwork of life.

  ‘I’ll raise Raelene up here, Ray,’ she said on the seventh day. ‘I won’t raise Donny. Granny says he’ll be in napkins when he’s thirty. Go home. There are places in Melbourne that will take care of him.’

  ‘He’s m-mine, J-Jenny.’

  Hated those words. Hated him saying her name. Pitied his eyes.

  ‘We’ve got no room here!’

  ‘I’ll b-b-build on. I’ve g-got m-money.’

  She let it slide. Didn’t know why. Guilt? Pity? Restitution for her sins? More rooms maybe. Or maybe she was Norman’s daughter. He’d taken Amber back. He hadn’t shared her room, or not at first. She’d cooked and cleaned for him.

  ‘What are you going to do about him, darlin’?’

  ‘I don’t know, Granny.’

  ‘Elsie’s got no room for those babies.’

  ‘I know.’

  Harry and Lenny carried the old green cot across the paddock. Jenny carried Raelene. Ray carried poor little Donny. They set the cot up at the bottom end of the kitchen; the old pram found a space in Gertrude’s bedroom, beside Jenny’s bed. Ray, the lodger, slept in the shed.

  A crowded house, a crowded kitchen, five now seated each night around the battered kitchen table.

  ‘What do you want to do, darlin’?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m . . . floating, Granny.’

  LORNA’S DEFEAT

  Back in ’42, when Vern learned of Jim’s involvement with the Morrison tramp, he’d made a new will. Both Lorna and Margaret had been confident he’d name them joint beneficiaries — until they’d opened his will, the contents of which had sent Lorna to bed with a three-day migraine. The farm, the entire estate, along with his daughters, were to be passed on to Vern’s half-brother, Howard Hooper. When Howard passed on in ’45, a new will was made. Margaret and Lorna were convinced Vern had realised their true value. Lorna had run the sawmill, if from a distance, had kept his books. She’d driven him to Willama to make the new will — which left his all to his nephew, Ian, son of Howard Hooper.