Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  I hope after you read this that you won’t look too unkindly on me and that you’ll understand a bit of what my situation was at the time.

  I’d be a good mother to her and Clarrie would be a good father. He’s got a foreman’s job at a factory and he brings home a decent wage. We built a nice house six months ago. She’d have her own room. The school is quite close by.

  Clarrie and I would like to meet you and talk face to face. We’ve got a car. We can come up there, or you can come out here, or if you’d rather, we could meet at the solicitor’s office.

  Yours faithfully,

  Florence Keating

  Just when you think it’s over, it starts again. Jenny felt sick in the stomach. Raelene had never heard of Florence Dawson.

  The handwritten page placed face down, she glanced at the poems Georgie had enclosed, uninterested . . . until she started reading.

  GIRL [1934]

  I know you, girl.

  Feet in the dust, eye in the sky,

  watching the eagle fly,

  wondering why

  he flies so free.

  You dare to dream, my girl.

  They’re free.

  You pick them from the roadside like dandelions.

  and weave your daisy chains

  of dreams.

  I have lived where you play, my beauty.

  I’ve followed the flight of the eagle,

  my eyes upon the sky.

  Dreams, as the dandelions, die.

  Now wilted daisy chains

  bind my feet

  to the dust.

  TIME’S SOVEREIGNTY [’51]

  Old dreaming, mother fantasy

  Dissembler of all boundary

  The earth, the sky, the open sea

  The world, my one true destiny

  I swung on the rim of old rainbows, stole moon-dust to paint a dawn sky

  Filled up my pockets with embryo stars, stole from a cherubim’s eye.

  I soared in the clouds with the eagle, at one with his supreme nobility.

  Then time’s arrow stilled my flight,

  And a dark place stole my light

  Now hell invades each day’s totality

  For the tyrant god Reality,

  Hid well beneath the masonry of cold red-brick conformity,

  He outlawed my sweet fantasy and placed a ban on dreaming.

  It’s lost.

  It’s gone.

  In vain I stalk the boundaries of my life and strive to raise a dreaming

  From an ever-widening gulch of yawing dislocation and despair

  There’s nothing there.

  No more to suck on fate, nor breathe its draught of chance.

  No more on borrowed wings to soar on high above the earth’s cold floor.

  Oh, hear my cry.

  No more.

  No more.

  Oh, gift to me Aladdin’s lamp and polish cloth,

  Wove of the evening spiders, spinning in the banks of mist at river’s end

  That I may raise that ancient genie into life

  And beg of he my promised wishes three.

  Wish one: return deep dreaming.

  Wish two: come home sweet dreaming.

  And thrice my plea is dreaming.

  Oh, fill this void with dreaming.

  Cast out reality.

  For fantasy alone can free time’s prisoner of machinery

  A rusting clock. No tock-tick-tock

  Its main spring snapped

  Old hands spread wide

  From nine to three

  The crucifix.

  The final plea.

  Grim tale, time’s cruel sovereignty.

  Jenny sat unmoving, disbelieving those words were from the pen of Archie Foote, her sire, Granny’s crazy quack with itchy feet. For minutes she sat, one hand cupping her mouth, holding inside her the knowledge that there, on that table was irrefutable proof that she was of his seed. She wrote poems, similar poems with no rhythm and little rhyme, just a spilling of words, inner words that came from some well of truth within.

  It was weird, and weirdly moving, like she was peering in through a secret window and seeing Archie Foote exposed, his varied personas removed and placed away. No jazz club singer jacket, no doctor suit, no kindly grandfather’s blue tie to match his eyes, not behind that window. Just an old, old man, maybe a lonely old man, aware of his wasted years, aware that his lifetime party would soon be over and that he’d left no one behind to miss him when he was gone.

  Only her.

  Jennifer.

  She hadn’t missed or mourned him, had rarely thought about him. When Granny had heard he was dead, she’d taken her cheeky hat out of its box . . .

  He’d drugged her, had aborted her first baby . . .

  Jenny shook her head, attempting to remove a thought before it surfaced. But it was there, would always be there. She’d aborted two of Ray’s babies, and until she’d lost Jimmy, had felt no guilt. A tree sprung from a seed may not produce identical fruit to the parent tree, but they are usually akin to it.

  She liked to tell herself she was the daughter of Juliana, the tenacious woman. Granny had always said she’d had staying power, and good recoil.

  ‘You’ve got the recoil of a rubber band,’ she’d say. ‘You, my girl, can be as obstinate as a mule.’

  Obstinate? Who was Granny to name anyone obstinate? She’d wanted to burn Archie’s diaries the day they’d arrived. ‘That man never put anything on paper that was fit to read.’

  Not Granny’s to burn, though Jenny had done little more than flip through a couple, in the dark of the bedroom. Since ’52, since the Foote family’s solicitor had posted them to Jennifer Morrison, Woody Creek, those diaries had lived in a carton on top of Granny’s wardrobe. It had taken Georgie to bring them out into the light of day, to find . . . maybe to find the inner man.

  And Juliana, seventeen-year-old bride . . .

  I have to go home, Jenny thought. I have to read those diaries. I have to get some distance between Raelene and Florence Keating too.

  Her mother. Her blood.

  Ray’s seed.

  ‘God! Where does it end?’

  GREEN PLUMS

  Joany Hall gave birth to a son after two girls. Tony, her husband, worked for Dave Foster fifteen miles out alongThree Pines Road, and on a Saturday afternoon in September, Elsie, Harry, Brian and Josie drove out to visit the new arrival. They didn’t ask Margot to go with them. Brian and Josie now referred to her as that ‘pain in the arse’. They’d asked Teddy to go. He didn’t. Lenny and Ronnie were going to the Willama dance and he wanted to go with them. They didn’t want him. They were meeting girls at the dance, and the last time they’d taken Teddy he’d got into a brawl outside the dance hall.

  Ten minutes after Lenny and Ronnie drove off, Jack Thompson arrived to take Georgie for a driving lesson.

  Envy gnaws like a rat at a sack of grain, and, once in, it despoils. By eight o’clock, and still no sign of Georgie, envy was consuming Margot’s entrails. Teddy wouldn’t let her listen to Pick-A-Box, and she couldn’t even go over the paddock to listen to it on Granny’s wireless because Georgie didn’t want to get the battery charged. She said the wireless reminded her of Donny.

  At five past eight, Margot fought Teddy for the station, shoved him, pulled his hair. He caught her wrists and held them while she struggled.

  ‘You’re hurting me. I’m telling Harry on you.’

  Early in life, Harry’s boys had learnt to never lay a finger on the girls. Teddy wasn’t hurting her, only controlling that snarly little bitch and enjoying watching her struggle. He was a year older than Margot. They’d suckled together for a brief period before he’d been weaned to a cup, which may have coloured his attitude towards her. He couldn’t stand her.

  She kicked him and he released her wrists, grasped her around the waist and carried her out the back door.

  ‘Go home, you pain in the bum. You put my teeth on edge.’

  ‘It
’th my home here ath well ath yourth.’

  And the snarly little bitch came back. He gave in. She changed the station, and sat damn near on top of the wireless to listen. So he stopped her listening.

  ‘Is Georgie going out with that copper?’

  Margot turned the volume higher. ‘Thut up, will you.’

  ‘Well, is she?’

  ‘He’th giving her a driving lethon. Now thut up.’

  ‘That’s what she tells you.’

  Margot didn’t reply, didn’t say another word until the bloke took the money instead of the box and missed out on getting a new car.

  ‘Why doesn’t he take her for a lesson in the daylight?’

  ‘He workth.’

  She sat beside the wireless until the show ended, then she rose and walked to the back door. Still no lights at Granny’s house, and why did he take her for driving lessons in the dark? Margot stood watching the house, imagining Georgie kissing Jack Thompson over there in the dark — his hand like a dark shadow . . .

  ‘Is she home?’ Teddy was behind her.

  ‘I can’t thee, can I.’

  He changed the station over to the wrestling, and she left the house, high-stepping along the track through the goat paddock, scared of snakes, of cobwebs, but wanting to creep up on Georgie and catch her kissing the copper.

  A torch beam lit her feet.

  ‘Coppers don’t teach people to drive.’

  ‘Well, he ith.’

  ‘If you think driving lessons is all he’s giving her, you’ve got rocks in your head.’

  ‘I’m devathtated,’ she said.

  No car in the yard. She opened the door and he turned the torch off.

  ‘Turn it on, will you?’

  ‘Try saying please for once in your life,’ he said.

  ‘I want to light the lamp . . . pleath.’

  He turned it on and focused its beam on her face. ‘Do you know what he’s doing to her, Marsie?’

  Brian and Josie used to call her Marsie, never Teddy. He called her a snarly bitch. He’d liked putting her outside though; liked the feel of her against him. It had stirred him up.

  ‘Want to know what he’s doing, Marsie?’

  The torch beam died and he grabbed her, aimed his face at her face, worked his way around to her mouth, got a grip on it and hung on.

  A first kiss is soul-shaking to a twenty-year-old youth. He ran from it.

  ‘I’m telling Elthie and Harry on you,’ Margot yelled after him.

  Gone, with his torch, and Margot left to feel along the mantelpiece for a box of matches . . . left to feel . . .

  Her heartbeat was a throbbing drum in her breast . . .

  Margot was throbbing, but not in her breast.

  Teddy’s hormones raging, he walked into town, looking for the copper’s car, thinking of his brothers dancing with girls in Willama, or parked with them, kissing them, probably doing more than kissing them, like that copper was probably doing more than giving Georgie driving lessons. They’d been gone for two hours. Teddy had been in love with Georgie since she’d turned twelve and he wanted to smash that pie-faced copper’s head in.

  He shouldn’t have done what he’d done. He sweated over what he’d done, relived it, but stayed away from the house until Harry and Elsie came home.

  When he did go home, he couldn’t sleep. Margot slept in Maudy’s room, a wall away. Tossed, turned, was awake when Lenny and Ronnie came in. Tossed until dawn, when he got on his bike and rode. He stayed away until nightfall, Georgie was sitting in the kitchen, Elsie serving up one of her curries. No one looked at him as if he was a leper.

  Margot came in. He sat, waiting for that little bitch to open her mouth. Barely tasted his meal, his heart lurching every time she opened her mouth.

  She didn’t dob.

  All week she stayed out of his way, or he stayed out of her way. Then the following Saturday, Lenny was playing football out of town, Ronnie, Brian and Josie went with him to watch the game, the copper turned up to take Georgie for her lesson, and Elsie, Harry and Margot wanted to play cards, wanted Teddy to make up the four.

  He let them nag him into suffering one game. Harry and Elsie always played on the same team, which left him to partner the snarly bitch. And they won. They thrashed them. He liked winning. He sat on in the kitchen when Harry and Elsie went to bed, watching Margot play a game of Patience, pleased when she didn’t win.

  ‘How come you didn’t dob on me?’

  ‘I will nextht time,’ she said.

  ‘Want there to be a next time, do you?’

  ‘You thut up, Teddy Hall, or I will dob now.’

  *

  Elsie never could get enough of babies. The following Saturday, Harry and Elsie drove again out to visit Joany. Jack Thompson came by for Georgie, and Ronnie and Lenny left for the Willama dance. Teddy waited until they were well gone, then he turned the wireless to his favourite station, and waited for Margot to change it to Pick-A-Box.

  She did at eight. And he grabbed her around the waist, pulled her with him to a chair and held her on his lap. Her backside rubbing up against him drove him back to having another go at her mouth. She didn’t yell, didn’t scratch his eyes out, didn’t say a word when he pushed her from him and went out to the kitchen to get a drink, and imagine what the copper was doing to Georgie.

  The bloke with the box refused to take Bob Dyer’s money and ended up with a packet of washing powder.

  ‘Thtupid fool,’ Margot said. She turned the wireless off.

  He walked in, turned it back on and changed the station, eyeing her as the loser might be eyeing his packet of washing powder.

  ‘Get out of my sight,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t have to.’

  ‘I’ll make you.’

  He came at her. She stood her ground. He grabbed her, got a grip on her mouth. She was too short for him. Georgie would have been tall enough. Georgie had something under her sweater that he’d feel against him too. If Margot had anything beneath her bulky sweater, it was against his lower rib bones, but he sucked on her mouth and she pushed whatever was under her sweater into him, and maybe there were little green plums there. He kissed her, rubbed against her until he was busting out of his pants and he had to run.

  Teddy was a mechanic, apprenticed to the garage man. Working on cars got his addled brain together during the day, held it together all week. Not at night. He’d start off imagining Georgie’s breasts rubbing against him, and end up feeling Margot’s little green plums. He tried to imagine kissing Georgie’s lipsticked mouth. No imagination necessary when he thought of Margot’s dry little mouth.

  He’d got rid of her though. She moved back across the paddock that week; the rebuilding delayed for a month or two — Arthur Hogan was in a city hospital with a smashed hand.

  She stayed home on Saturday night, listening to her own wireless. Harry had brought their battery in to be charged up. Teddy couldn’t stand Pick-A-Box. He hated the hope of it, the dashed hope. Harry and Elsie never missed it, and when Bob Dyer’s voice came on, Teddy took off outside.

  Georgie and her copper were at the pictures. They’d given Brian and Josie a lift into town.

  He stood staring across the paddock, considering a ride into town and letting the air out of the copper’s car tyres. Or maybe he’d walk, cut through Flanagan’s.

  He made it as far as the orchard. The light from the old kitchen window was like a beacon on a black night, lit by wreckers to draw ships onto rocky shores. It drew Teddy towards the rocks, or to the window.

  Margot was sitting at the table, turning the pages of a magazine while Bob Dyer howled, ‘The money or the box’. He was offering a thousand pounds. No question what Teddy would have done. He’d take the money and run.

  He liked watching her lick those dry lips, smile, living her life through the people on that show. She had nothing else. Harry had had enough of her, as had Elsie, though she wouldn’t admit it. Teddy hadn’t. He walked around to the door and let him
self in.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to hear if he takes the thousand.’

  ‘You could have knocked,’ she said.

  ‘Like you do when you come over there.’

  ‘Shut up and lithen then.’

  Bob Dyer upped the price to one thousand, five hundred, and the bloke took it, and missed out on a can of baked beans. And that’s the way it ought to be. You take what you can get your hands on.

  He got his hands on her, tilted her chair back. Its front legs off the floor, she grabbed at the chair as he reached for the lamp and turned the wick low.

  ‘Yell out for Mum, Marsie?’

  Wick spluttering. Flame fighting for a while to live. Margot fighting to get off that chair. Then dark.

  It all came down to accessibility in the end. Margot was accessible, and why had she moved back across the paddock if not to make herself accessible?

  The back of the chair between them, he got a hand up under the front of her sweater and found his way up the rolls of pudge to those little green plums. Got his fingers down her petticoat to the soft silky cup of her bra. Not skin. Warm like skin, but his fingers wanted skin, and he got two inside her bra, and found a plum stalk.

  Maybe she turned her head to protest. He gave her no time to speak, got a grip on her mouth and sucked while his four fingers found their way into that cup. Got the plum in his hand then, rubbing, kissing, until rubbing and kissing wasn’t enough.

  The chair dropped back to its four legs, he pulled her to her feet, pulled her sweater up, off, and pitched it; lifted her onto the table. High enough for him then; he licked that goat’s-milk-andcocoa-tasting little mouth, fought her bra clips open, her petticoat straps down. And he had both of them to play with, to lick and suck on.

  Sweet, sweet Jesus, he’d opened the box and struck gold.

  Ripped his own sweater off, his singlet off, opened his fly, and that little bitch panting for his mouth — and maybe more. She whined when he opened up her knees and got between them, rubbed his naked heat against her pudgy thigh, rubbing until he had to run — and where had he pitched his sweater?

  He drew away from her to find it, and she whined and her hands made a grab for him. He hated that whine above all else. All his life, he’d hated it. Not tonight. He went back to suck the whine out of her.