Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Are you going to dob, Marsie?’

  Not a word out of her, but one of her arms was around his neck, stopping him from . . . from stopping, and, far beyond fear of consequences, he went for the goalposts. She could have stopped him when he pulled her pants down, when he dropped his own around his ankles. She didn’t. He might have kicked that goal on Gertrude’s kitchen table had either one of them known what they were doing. They didn’t.

  He had to get her down. Plenty of beds in this place. Try finding a bed with a pair of trousers tangled around your boots, when thrown off-balance by raging hormones, with utopia wrapped around you. He tried to shake one boot free, she slid, and pow! He blew the roof off. Blew his roof off.

  ‘Bugger fuck,’ he said as he fell to his backside, Margot on top of him. ‘Bugger shit fuck.’

  Maybe she came to her senses. She scrambled free.

  It wasn’t ending like that. He wasn’t letting it end like that.

  He took his boots off, pulled his trousers off. Located her by her breathing, her movement. She’d pulled her petticoat up, had one arm through its strap. He stubbed his toe on a chair leg, but he got her into the lean-to, sat her on the bed, got her skirt off, her petticoat off, then pushed her down and got down on her, every part of her pudge touching a part of him, his right hand exploring what was touching, his tongue exploring inside her mouth, a panting hot little mouth, soft with wanting what he was giving her. Holding him, even helping him to get inside her.

  Margot was nineteen, had been reading True Romance magazines for five years. Tonight she was experiencing the bits the magazines didn’t print. She’d always known about the male bit going inside. The sex book had talked a lot about the mating habits of rabbits, but had said nothing about things exploding in the female rabbit even before the male got in. None of the True Romance magazines had written anything about that. Earth-shattering, one of them had said, or waves crashing against the shore, or stars bursting in the sky. That’s what it was like: earth-shattering, waves, Guy Fawkes-night fireworks at the same time, over and over and over, until the whole world was rocked by an exploding volcano that spewed out red-hot lava and buried her alive.

  She couldn’t move. He lay on top, panting into Georgie’s pillow, lay for a long time, crushing her. And she didn’t want him to move.

  He did when he got his breath. He untangled himself and she lay as he’d left her, on her back, limbs spread. Thought he’d get dressed and go home. He didn’t. He came back.

  ‘Are you dead or something, Marsie?’

  Maybe she was. Maybe she’d died and was floating in heaven.

  ‘Where do you keep the matches?’

  No words in her. Nothing. Just so beautiful. She was so beautiful.

  He found his trousers, found matches in his pocket, and came back to the lean-to where he struck one. She had to move then to shade her eyes from the glare.

  ‘I thought I’d killed you. Are you all right?’

  ‘Put it out.’

  ‘You look like one of those old-fashioned paintings of nudes lying there.’

  ‘Put it out, I thaid.’

  The spoilt bitch came back with that lisp. He’d always hated it. Wanted to touch that flesh and blood nude though. Wanted to get on that bed and do it all over again. Too late. The pictures came out at eleven. Fifteen minutes to, if the old clock was right.

  He returned to the kitchen to find the rest of his clothes, and hers. He tossed a bundle to the bed.

  ‘The pictures will be over. Georgie will be home soon.’

  ‘That clock’th fatht,’ she said.

  ‘How fast?’

  ‘It thaid quarter patht when Pick-A-Box thtarted.’

  They did it again.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he warned.

  ‘Don’t you either.’

  ‘You’ll have to do something about that bedspread,’ he said.

  And he got dressed, and he left.

  Only the smell of his sweat then, and that other smell. Stupid magazines.

  She rose. The lean-to bed was Georgie’s. She lit the lamp and found out what Teddy had meant about the bedcover. The magazines hadn’t told her what would happen to faded green chenille bedspreads either. She removed it, rolled, and pushed it deep into the wardrobe, straightened the blankets, the pillow.

  Georgie would notice the missing bedspread.

  Not if Margot was in her bed, she wouldn’t.

  An experienced girl might have smelt a rat when she came in ten minutes later and found her bed occupied. At eighteen, Georgie had evaded a few aimed kisses, most of them aimed by Jack Thompson, but was by no means experienced. She smelled fly spray and guessed Margot had found a spider in Granny’s bedroom. Margot didn’t spray spiders. She drowned them in spray.

  Granny’s bed was the more comfortable of the two beds on offer, its mattress, the one they’d brought home from Armadale. Georgie slid into it and slept like a log.

  TRAGEDY DOGS WOODY CREEK FAMILY

  A working bee to rehouse the family of the late Raymond King, killed in a horrifying mill accident in July, is being organised by Mrs Maisy Macdonald. The King residence, one of the first homes built in Woody Creek, will require considerable restoration, Mrs Macdonald said. Donations can be forwarded to the address below. Tradesmen willing to donate their time are asked to contact . . .

  The newspaper cutting, pinned to Maisy’s calendar in July, was yellowing, curling at the edges. The Willama Gazette had given her rehousing project three columns, had given her address and phone number. That paper had a wide circulation. For a week her telephone had run hot. Fifty per cent of the calls had been genuine. The second fifty per cent had been from women wanting to speak to someone about their own tragedy or from sickos who liked breathing heavily. Maisy had enjoyed telling them where to go. She’d received a lot of letters, fifty per cent of which had contained donations, a few had come from tradesmen offering their help.

  Giving out her address was a mistake. In hindsight, she knew she should have said donations could be sent care of the post office. Since August, bits and pieces of furniture had started arriving on her doorstep. A month on, and every stick of unwanted junk in a thirty-mile radius was stacked beneath her verandas. She’d barely mentioned furniture to the Willama Gazette chap. ‘Building materials will be most welcome,’ she’d said. ‘Any good furniture won’t go astray.’

  There are varying degrees of good. Her own idea of good was two or three years old. The depression had made hoarders of her generation; they’d saved their junk for a rainy day. The rains had come and gone, Ray King was near forgotten, Jenny had shaken the dust of Woody Creek off her feet, and Maisy couldn’t get out her front door.

  Dawn, her unwed daughter, spent time clearing a pathway through the junk. Maisy spent time sorting it, and taking the worst of it to the tip. George, now well into his eighties, spent much of his time kicking it out of his way.

  It should have been gone by now, or the renovations at least started. Paul Jenner had offered his old house, Lonny Bryant’s old house. The newer section was in reasonable repair. Arthur and his men had already disconnected two rooms and a small front porch; had removed windows and door from the back rooms. All work had stopped since Arthur had his accident.

  There was a second news item pinned to Maisy’s calendar.

  WILLAMA BUILDER SUSTAINS SERIOUS ACCIDENT

  The working bee to rehouse the family of the late Raymond King, killed in a horrifying mill accident in July, was delayed when Arthur Hogan, Willama carpenter, was rushed to Melbourne where surgeons are fighting tonight to save his hand.

  The Willama Gazette had made more of Arthur’s injury than it was, but a second trickle of donations had come in, along with a moth-eaten couch and two easy chairs.

  Every man in town pledged his support when the rehousing committee was formed, but life had a way of getting in the way. One of Pat Carter’s boys died in a car accident in Sydney. Then Charlie White tripped over in his storero
om and broke his arm. And Maisy started having women’s troubles.

  Breeding ten kids in ten years hadn’t done her insides a lot of good, and Doctor Frazer said she had to do something about it. He made the appointment in Melbourne. Dawn tossed a coin to see which twin would drive her down there. Macka won. Dawn was going with them. Bernie got the booby prize. Someone had to stay home to keep an eye on George.

  ‘She should have struck while the iron was hot,’ George said.

  A flying carton emphasised his words. It disintegrated. Pots flew; pots deemed useful by Maisy.

  ‘She would have got rid of it weeks ago if your useless bloody son-in-law hadn’t smashed his hand. And stop kicking shit around, or I’ll stop picking it up.’

  Bernie retrieved the set of saucepans and the caved-in carton as his father picked up a three-legged chair and pitched it at the fence. The chair had possessed four legs yesterday.

  His mother had elected herself president and treasurer of the housing committee, so Bernie elected himself her deputy and called a meeting at the pub. They totalled up the available cash; opened the collection tins placed for weeks on shop counters. A few felt weighty, most of the weight was in pennies.

  ‘Mum’s going to be down there for two or three weeks,’ Bernie reported. ‘Hogan’s hand will be out of action for months. What about you, Clive? Can you do it?’

  Clive Lewis, referred to, when he wasn’t around, as Shaky, had joined the committee because of the free beer. He’d been a builder before the grog got him.

  ‘Nothing to it,’ Shaky replied.

  He was usually steady, even coherent, by nightfall, though you can’t build a house by lantern light.

  ‘Righto then. We do it next weekend.’

  They had enough money. Maisy had started the fund off with a cheque for fifty quid. Freddy Bowen added a twenty, a few folk had put in a tenner. Most of the envelopes from out of town were lucky to contain ten-bob notes but they’d got a few decent cheques. A hardware store in Willama had delivered eight sheets of asbestos, the corners missing from a few. Another had donated three big tins of paint. A blow-in from Melbourne, who’d bought ten acres of creek frontage out past Davies’s sawmill, where he was setting up a camping ground, had donated bricks for the chimney, delivered to the site, or to the road out front of Hall’s. And thanks to the blow-in, they could need one of the Willama electricians. Melbourne campers might like roughing it, but they preferred to do their roughing with all mod cons. The blow-in, worth millions, was paying to have electric poles put in. They’d pass by Gertrude’s front fence.

  There are days in every man’s life when he would have been better off staying in bed. Saturday, 20 September was such a day for Bernie Macdonald. It was Grand Final day, and his team was playing Macka’s, and bloody Macka was staying down in Melbourne to go to the game — and he’d probably paid for an all-night last night. And there was Bernie, standing bum high in grass, watching his new log buggy hooked up to Bryant’s front rooms.

  Harry was behind the wheel. He got the load moving, moving at a snail’s pace, riding on logs they’d wired and chained to the floor supports, logs that cut twin gutters through grass to the fence line.

  It took half an hour to get those rooms out to the road, where they started their slow skid towards town, leaving twin gutters behind them. Log skids aren’t wheels. They were too slow for Bernie. He drove on ahead to check on the crew at the site.

  No sign of Shaky Lewis. He was supposed to be supervising the levelling, the spreading of sheep dip — Woody Creek’s first defence against termites.

  ‘Those bloody rooms are not far behind me!’ Bernie said.

  They were a good hour behind him. They’d reached the bridge and could go no further, the railings too narrow for the load. Bernie left his ute on the far side and walked over.

  ‘Why didn’t someone think about that bloody bridge?’

  ‘Ask your mother and Arthur bloody Hogan,’ Weasel Lewis replied.

  ‘Nobody bloody expects you to think about anything, you dumb bastard,’ Bernie said, and joined Joss Palmer and Harry who had the measuring tape out.

  ‘If we get rid of that veranda thing, she’d squeeze through,’ Joss said.

  ‘Otherwise it’s the bridge railing,’ Harry said.

  They stood rolling smokes while Weasel bitched. A car pulled up behind Bernie’s ute. The driver sat for a time, watching interested enough, until a third vehicle joined the queue, then the two drivers walked across to see what was holding them up.

  ‘She’s too narrow,’ Harry said.

  ‘You’ll have to back her up,’ a farmer said. ‘I can’t hang around here all day.’

  A house on log skids can only go one way. They considered the front porch/veranda, but knock it off and half the roof could go with it. That hadn’t been in Hogan’s plan.

  The farmer tested a bridge railing with his boot. With little effort, it fell overboard and he damn near went with it. Harry watched the railing sink, bob up, turn itself around and float off downstream.

  ‘She’s still running swift,’ he said, giving a post an experimental kick. It followed the railing.

  A dozen boots kicking, and Harry stepped back up to the cabin. The truck and its load continued forward, men walking ahead, kicking posts and railing. That bridge had been in need of repairs for years.

  The turn into the forest road took some doing. A tree had to come down. Plenty of experienced tree fellers in the group.

  Away again, the logs gouging their twin gutters through Gertrude’s top paddock, sliding across long grass in a straight line.

  By ten thirty, Lonny Bryant’s front bedroom, a portion of his passage, a decent-sized sitting room and his little front veranda had been manoeuvred into place, against Gertrude’s eastern kitchen wall.

  The troublesome iron chimney was down, along with its sinking foundations. The back of the stove sat flush against Bryant’s room.

  ‘What was Arthur going to do about that stove?’ someone asked.

  ‘A bit of asbestos will fix it,’ Bernie said.

  With still no sign of Shaky, he sent crews up to fix the fences they’d had to take down, while he drove back into town to get his builder, Harry behind him in the log buggy.

  Shaky lived behind the pub. Bernie found him supporting one of its veranda posts, waiting for the bar-room door to open.

  ‘We’re waiting on you down there, Clive.’

  Too early for Shaky to get his tongue working. He opened his mouth to say he was on his way, and exposed two canines glinting like pearls in a diseased oyster.

  And that’s the trouble with living in a bloody country town all your life, Bernie thought. You watch your heroes rot and your enemies prosper.

  Few remembered who Shaky had been. Bernie remembered him as the only local ever to play first-class football in the Melbourne league. As kids, he and Macka used to piss off from their boarding school to watch him play. He’d been a champion until he’d buggered his knee, had been an average drinker until his wife pissed off with his kids.

  Bernie belted on the pub door until Freddy came, trouser-clad, bare-chested, bare feet.

  ‘We need him down there, Freddy. Fix him fast and put it on my tab. I’ll be back.’

  Shaky gone in for his fix, Bernie headed around to Lena Fulton’s. Jorge, her Albanian, could lay bricks. Bryant’s lounge room would need a chimney.

  He was driving by the mill when Harry walked out, rolling a smoke. Bernie stopped. He could save him a walk back. He hated admitting it, but that rusty-headed, skeletal bastard had a head on his shoulders. He had four sons too, one of them a bloody good footballer. Three daughters too, two wed and one breeding. The bastard had a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And what did Bernie have? Bugger all, that’s what he had — except for an illegitimate kid.

  That was another trouble with living in a bloody country town. You grew old there; woke up one day knowing that you’d reached the halfway mark of your life and had nothi
ng to show for it.

  They drove back to the site, Shaky shaking, the Albanian jabbering. Harry took charge of the Albanian, led him over to the pile of bricks and offered him a wheelbarrow. Bernie took Shaky on a guided tour of the roofs and told him to work out some way of joining them. Shaky tossed his hands in the air and went inside to poke a broom handle across the stove and into Lonny Bryant’s wall.

  ‘We’ll shove a sheet of asbestos behind it,’ Bernie said.

  ‘Burn them in their beds,’ Shaky said.

  ‘Not much loss, Shaky,’ Weasel Lewis sniggered.

  No one called him Shaky to his face. And another Lewis shouldn’t have been down here. Everyone knew what was likely to happen if you got two of them in the same room. There was ten or fifteen years between uncle and nephew and a good height difference. Weasel might have made a good jockey, had he ridden a horse.

  Shaky backhanded him. Weasel, looking for a way out, went through to the lean-to. No way out of there, until Shaky pitched him halfway through the back wall. It had to come down anyway.

  Weasel was wed to Irene, Joss Palmer’s sister. Joss got between the combatants.

  ‘We’re supposed to be constructing down here, not destructing.’

  Weasel extricated himself from the wall; armed himself with a piece of it, which he swung at his uncle’s head. Bernie needed his builder. He bulldozed the smaller Lewis through a side wall.

  Twenty-odd men saw the lean-to roof begin its fall. Twenty-odd men dodged. Two didn’t.

  Bernie rose from beneath a sheet of corrugated iron. They dragged Weasel out; he swore he’d broken his back and went home, walked and twenty-odd men wished they could go with him.

  Not Shaky. He was feeling better. He stepped over and on the fallen roof to peer into the washhouse-cum-bathroom, to walk through Ray’s and Donny’s bedroom.