Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  Margot knew the seed bit; the male bit that went in. Jenny had bought a book about it a few years back. Most of it was about rabbits. Margot preferred people stories.

  She’d read an old-fashioned one tonight about the sailing ship days, and a girl called Dianna who was on a boat with her family and the boat hit a reef and sank. Everybody died except Dianna and Roger, her stepfather, who had almost drowned in trying to save his wife and the other children, so Dianna, who was a champion swimmer, had to save him. There was an uninhabited island not far away, and she’d got him to it. No dark lanes on that island; plenty of beaches and coconuts and bananas and fish. Eventually a ship came to save them, but by then Dianna had a baby so they couldn’t go home. They ended up turning the island into a banana plantation and they got rich.

  She had another favourite, about a girl named Mary who was orphaned when her mother and father and all of her family were burnt to death in a house fire. Mary was in hospital for weeks, disfigured by burns until the son of a rich uncle found her and paid thousands of pounds to a famous doctor in Switzerland to remove every one of her terrible scars. While she was wrapped up in bandages, the rich uncle’s son fell in love with her, not knowing she was beautiful beneath the bandages. He’d fallen in love with her beautiful mind, he said. As it turned out, he wasn’t her real cousin. The rich uncle had adopted him, and when he died, his son got all of his money.

  Margot was writing her own true romance story, which she’d named Love in the Ashes. Georgie and Granny were out, and Donny knocked the Coleman lantern over and the two back rooms exploded in flame. There was a blustering wind, and it blew the flames into the old part of the house where Jenny and Raelene were asleep. Ray was out somewhere. When he came home, he found Margot wandering through the ashes. ‘We’ll go back to Armadale where the bad memories won’t reach us,’ he said. He’d lost his stutter. The shock had cured it. They had to stay for the funerals. Three coffins were lined up in the church that day. That night, they were waiting at the station for the train, Granny and Elsie waving to them, when Georgie came running out of the dark, yelling, ‘Wait for me! I’m coming with you.’ The train was already moving. Georgie was left standing there. And serve her right too.

  Georgie was standing in the middle of the road with her bike, looking skyward, when Jenny approached.

  ‘Can you see it?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Nope. Just wondering if there’s anyone up there looking down and wondering if there’s anyone down here looking up.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Jenny said.

  ‘Anything seems possible at night, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What do you want to be possible?’

  ‘Everything that isn’t,’ Georgie said. ‘Want a dink?’

  Sixteen years separated them. A lot of living separated them. Two of a kind, Jenny and Georgie, not much separated them that night, Georgie riding the pedals, Jenny on the seat, holding on, laughing like a kid.

  NO MORE AMBERLEY

  November 1957. Dear diary, something is going on between Mummy and Daddy, which they’re keeping secret from me. And Mummy keeps spoiling me. I just looked at this diary in the newsagent’s and she bought it for me. I didn’t really want it, but now I’ve got it I suppose I have to use it.

  She’s let two of the downstairs rooms too, and she said years ago that she wasn’t ever going to let them. And Daddy’s mind is somewhere else. I told him on the way home from school that I’d got ten out of ten for an English test and he sort of looked straight through me as if he didn’t even hear me. Maybe Gran Norris is dying or something, and we’re going to move in with her.

  Sarah North’s grandmother is dying of cancer, which I found out today, which is why Sarah has been nasty to everyone, not just to me . . .

  Eight lodgers, then eleven. Two girls in Number Five, and there had never been anyone in Number Five, which was right above the parlour and had always been used as a storeroom. Now every time you sat in the parlour you could hear footsteps overhead. One of the downstairs new lodgers drove a car, and there were two cars and Robert’s new trailer parked in the backyard and no room to play basketball.

  One night at dinner, the phone rang, and Robert stood for fifteen minutes speaking to a man about wages and furnished rooms while his dinner got cold.

  ‘Who was that, Daddy?’

  ‘We’ve employed a man and his wife to manage the boarding house, poppet.’

  ‘Where are you going to fit them?’

  ‘We’ll be moving after Christmas,’ Myrtle said.

  ‘I’m not moving to Gran’s.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Robert said. ‘I’ve applied for three positions in Victoria.’

  ‘Gran may be coming with us,’ Myrtle said. ‘Then I’m not,’ Cara said.

  December 1957. I nicked off to the city with Sarah today and we went to a picture show. It was almost dark when we got home and I got lectured for hours about Sarah being a bad influence, and how it’s a good thing that we’re leaving if Sarah is going to lead me into such stupidity. It wasn’t even Sarah’s idea, and I told them so. I am not going to Victoria. I’m not moving from here . . .

  It’s still December and I don’t care what date it is. Instead of putting up the Christmas tree near the parlour window, they’re piling boxes up there. Boxes and boxes and boxes of everything, which the wife of the man who is supposed be going to manage the boarding house nearly fell into. She’s fat and so is he, and he smells of cigarettes, and I don’t want them living in our private rooms . . .

  ‘You lied to that man, Mummy. Daddy didn’t get a transfer. He applied for the job.’

  ‘A vice-principal’s job, pet. He never would have been the vice-principal if he stayed at his old school. Now please go through your books and decide which ones you want to take with you.’

  ‘Why did you lie to that man?’

  ‘You’ve always known that we’d move one day. You’ve heard us discussing it since you were a tiny girl.’

  ‘Yes, but we never did it.’

  ‘Just think, now you can have a real Bowser.’

  ‘I don’t want a dog if I can’t show it to my friends. I’m not going, Mummy.’

  ‘You’ll make new friends.’

  ‘I don’t want new friends. I want my old friends.’

  She had to go, and to a town she’d never even heard of, Traralgon, which she hated the sound of. They tried to make Gran Norris go with them but she dug her heels in, thank God, told them they knew what they could do with Traralgon, that she’d lived alone for most of her life and she’d die alone, deserted again by her firstborn.

  They spent Christmas Day with her and Uncle John and his family, then came home, fixed the trailer to the car and started loading boxes. The day after Boxing Day, they drove away from Amberley, the loaded trailer rattling behind them, Cara howling in the back seat, boxes beside her, boxes at her feet.

  She didn’t speak until they stopped at the Dog on the Tucker-box town, where she had to speak because she was starving and they would have bought her something she didn’t want to eat if she hadn’t spoken. Then they got back into the car and drove to Albury, to the house of some man Robert had known during the war. He had a big garage. They left the loaded trailer in it and went to a hotel for the night. Cara had to sleep in the same room as Myrtle and Robert, and she’d never, ever shared their room, or not since she could remember.

  ‘One of you snored all night,’ she said. ‘I’m not sleeping in your room again.’

  ‘You didn’t complain when we borrowed Uncle John’s caravan,’ Robert said.

  ‘That was holidays and Sarah was with me, and everybody does silly things when they’re on holidays, then they go home. We won’t be going home, and I want to go home,’ she howled.

  She howled for an hour, and didn’t even have anywhere to do it in private. She had to lock herself in the hotel bathroom, and people kept wanting to get in. She couldn’t even go for a walk because she didn’t know where to walk.

 
They stayed two nights at that hotel, and on their last night had dinner at Robert’s friend’s house. All of their kids were there, all of them older than Cara, except for one who had been born after the war. It was like there was a war space between the kids in that family, which Cara fitted perfectly into.

  Boring mile after boring mile the next day, and a worse hotel because Robert wanted to drive through the city early, before there was any traffic around. They left at daylight, got lost about six times before they got to the other side. And when they got there, Cara wished they’d stayed lost. The house looked like two matchboxes joined by a tin roof.

  ‘If that’s your idea of a nice little house then it’s not mine.’

  She wouldn’t get out of the car. They left her sitting while they unloaded boxes and introduced themselves to the neighbours.

  The sun forced her inside, and it was as hot inside as out, and the house stank of paint, and there was nothing but boxes in it, and the shop that was supposed to deliver the furniture before noon didn’t come until four, and the horrible stuff they brought in looked as if it had been ordered out of a catalogue, which it had. Nothing looked right. Nothing smelled right. Nothing fitted. They carried in a steel-legged kitchen table and four green vinyl chairs with metal legs. They carried in a bookshelf, and couldn’t find a wall to put it against. It ended up in the passage, which didn’t leave enough room for two people to pass. Nothing belonged and Cara didn’t belong.

  And the shops? It was like a wild west town, tacked up in a hurry. There was nowhere for the eyes to rest, nothing beautiful for them to rest on.

  January of 1958 was the worst, the loneliest, the hottest, most atrocious, most despicable, most unreal month of Cara’s life, and she couldn’t even curse Traralgon in her diary because she refused to unpack her boxes, and Robert, who was losing patience with her, told her she’d live with those boxes until she unpacked them.

  The day she started at the high school, where she was introduced to the kids as the new vice-principal’s daughter, had to be ten times worse than the worst day of her life. Kids hate schoolteachers, so they hated her. She heard two girls mimicking the way she spoke, and she couldn’t help how she spoke. It was her mother’s fault for teaching her to speak like that. Everything was her mother’s fault.

  ‘Tell me why we had to leave Sydney, Mummy.’

  ‘We’ve always planned to leave, pet.’

  ‘Why? You hate this house as much as I do.’

  Unable to deny Cara’s words, Myrtle’s big soft eyes turned to a lettuce she’d paid too much for and couldn’t find an edible leaf on. She wanted to cry for Amberley, for her little greengrocer on the corner, for her own kitchen. She missed the lodgers, missed the traffic on the street, missed Sarah North’s barking dog.

  ‘We’ll make some phone calls when we get settled and see if we can find Bowser,’ Robert said.

  ‘I’m too old to bribe with puppies.’

  ‘We know it’s difficult for you, poppet, but imagine how good it will be for Mummy once we settle in. For the first time in years, she’ll have time for herself.’

  ‘To do what, Daddy? There’s nothing to do here.’

  ‘It’s not a bad little town. We have to give it a chance,’ Myrtle said, slicing onion, giving her eyes an excuse to weep.

  ‘Tell me what happened in Sydney that caused you to suddenly decide to leave. Something must have happened. Did you get the sack for something?’

  ‘I applied for a promotion.’

  ‘Something bad happened up there and we’ve come down here to hide. What are we hiding from?’

  ‘Go to your room and unpack your boxes,’ Robert said.

  ‘My room is in Sydney, and I’m never unpacking, or not until you take me home. This is the rottenest town, and the rottenest house in the entire world and I hate it.’

  ‘You mean the most rotten, perhaps, poppet?’

  ‘Stop calling me poppet! And I mean the shittiest town in the entire universe!’

  ‘Go to your room!’ Myrtle said.

  ‘Stop calling it my room. It’s not my room.’

  ‘Then go to the room at the end of the passage, brat, and unpack your boxes. We’ve had enough of your tongue for today.’

  She went, and slammed the stupid door almost off its hinges. Stupid cream door, stupid flat walls, stupid ceilings a tall man could almost hit his head on. She didn’t unpack her boxes. She lay face down on her new bed and howled.

  It was as if an atomic bomb had gone off beneath her family and blown everything that was good away, and they wouldn’t even tell her who had dropped the bomb. It was like they were refugees from World War Three, immigrants in their own country. And you could smell the stink of that bomb in the air — or the stink from the place where they made electricity.

  For three weeks she drove to school with the vice-principal and barely spoke to him. For three weeks she barely spoke to Myrtle or to her teachers, or to anyone else.

  Then Rosie Taylor came running into the school toilets howling while Cara was hiding in there. That was the day she found out Sarah North had been responsible for dropping that atomic bomb on her family.

  *

  28 February 1958. Dear diary, I haven’t written a word for months because you were packed into a box, which you were safer in than out of, because life has been so rotten I probably would have filled all of your pages with swear words.

  I’ve got something huge to tell you. Rosie Taylor is adopted and so are her two brothers and they didn’t even know it. Their cousin, who was having a war at school with Rosie’s brother, told everyone, and her brother, who is sixteen, tackled his parents about it and they admitted that it was true. None of the kids are even related.

  And I bet all of the money I’ve got in the bank that I’m adopted, and Mrs Rowe knew about it, and that’s why we left Amberley to come to this rotten place, because they were scared I’d find out.

  If Rosie’s brother could tackle his parents, so could she. She waited until Sunday dinner, until the roast was served and her parents were sitting down, then she looked Myrtle in the eye and said it.

  ‘Mrs Rowe knew I’m adopted, didn’t she?’

  Their eyes and actions told her the truth even if their mouths didn’t. They both stopped eating, looked at each other, then quickly down at their meals.

  ‘You are not adopted, Cara,’ Myrtle said.

  ‘I don’t care if I am. I just want to know.’

  Robert went to their bedroom and returned with Cara’s birth certificate. He handed it to her. Their names were on it.

  ‘How would I know if the adoption people put your names on it when they gave me to you?’

  ‘It’s your original birth certificate.’

  Maybe it was, but a piece of paper meant nothing because being adopted explained everything. It explained why Gran Norris liked Uncle John’s kids better than she liked Cara; it explained why she was taller than her female cousins, when Myrtle and Robert were shorter even than Aunty Beth and Uncle John. It explained why she was the only one in the entire Norris family with fair hair and blue eyes. Big, cornflower-blue eyes, curly golden blonde hair that glinted with copper highlights when the sun caught it.

  Every single thing about her was different. Myrtle’s hands were plump, her fingers tapering to points, her fingernails small perfectly shaped almonds. Robert’s hands were broad, his fingers short. Cara’s fingers were long and shapeless, square-topped; her fingernails were the weakest, most shapeless, atrociously ugly fingernails anyone in the world had ever been cursed with. Every single thing about her was different — hands, legs, the shape of her face. Why had she never noticed that before?

  In Sydney, there hadn’t been time to notice anything. In Victoria there was nothing but time.

  March 1958. I just played tennis, just thrashed a fourth-form girl off the court, and it was so good. Mum bought me a new tennis skirt. I wish Sarah North could see it. We used to play tennis at home and she always wanted one of thos
e skirts. Rosie Taylor doesn’t play. She said that only snobs join tennis clubs. I can’t stand her sometimes but she’s the only friend I’ve got. I’m going to write and ask Sarah to ask her mother exactly what Mrs Rowe knows about me, except I can’t right now because Mrs Collins wrote to Mum and told her that old Mrs North died.

  April 1958. There’s this boy everyone calls Deano — because he looks a bit like Jimmy Dean, sort of sneers like him, pouts, tries to walk like him. Anyway, he’s a friend of Kevin Cooper, who everyone used to call Chicken Coop, until he bought a car. Anyway, Coop is a friend of Rosie’s brother and all of them were hanging out at the milk bar yesterday, playing the jukebox, when Rosie and I went in to get a milkshake, and Coop started mucking around with Rosie, like wanting her to rock and roll with him, and then Deano asked me if I could rock. Rosie and I practise together at her place, so we danced with them. She’s liked Coop for ages, and before we went home, she said we’d sit with them at the pictures on Saturday, which is like a sort of first date, I suppose.

  GONE WITH THE WINTER

  Gertrude was two months away from her eighty-ninth birthday when the posters for National Velvet went up out front of the town hall. Jenny and the girls were going.

  ‘Get a bottle of dye while you’re in town, darlin’,’ Gertrude said. ‘I’m going with you.’

  ‘You told me movies were ratbag things when I wanted you to go with me to Gone With The Wind,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Then it’s past time I found out if I was right or wrong, isn’t it, and this one is about horses not wars.’

  They watched that movie on an evening when winds buffeted the town, threatening to blow the power lines down and end the show. The movie didn’t end until it ended, and Gertrude didn’t want to move when it did. Lenny drove them home, and the night too cold to go to their beds, they sat by the stove, Gertrude talking about the movie and that beautiful horse.