by Joy Dettman
He’d been six years old when his mother died, and worth in excess of a hundred thousand pounds, which he’d had no knowledge of until his twenty-first birthday when letters addressed to him started arriving from his mother’s solicitor.
He’d gone off to war in ’41 then lost a lot of years in hospitals after the war. Not until ’59 had he accessed his money, and as Jenny had discovered with Ray’s insurance payout, if you can manage to get enough of the stuff together in one place and leave it untouched, it had a habit of breeding. Jim’s hundred thousand pounds had doubled long before Australia changed its pounds to dollars, an event that seemed to double his balance yet again. Jenny found herself looking at figures she’d previously related to the rich and famous, not to Jenny Morrison, who ran her kitchen as she ever had, frugally, who grew her own produce, because she preferred to eat her own produce, who each year made her own jams and preserves the way Granny had taught her to. Until she’d started playing shopkeeper, she made her own money too. Customers travelled from Willama to pay inflated prices for Jenny’s dressmaking services and what she earned with her hands felt more real to her than the figures on Jim’s bank statements.
She owned two bankbooks, one opened when Ray was killed in a sawmill accident. The mills had insured their workers. On paper, she’d been Ray’s widow but she’d always thought of that money as Raelene’s and Donny’s.
It had paid for Donny’s funeral, had bought a stone for his and his father’s graves. Jenny had withdrawn more from that account to pay for Raelene’s funeral, though not for a stone. Far better that the girl be forgotten in this town.
The second bankbook had been opened for her by Jim when they’d been together in Sydney during the war. It had become Jimmy’s blood money account since ’47 when Vern Hooper, with Ray’s assistance, paid two thousand pounds into it, Vern’s idea of compensation when he and his daughters stole Jenny’s son. ‘No grandson of Vern Hooper would be raised a bastard in this town,’ he’d said.
Jenny had never touched that blood money. The book was untouched, except in June when the bank paid in its annual interest; she handed it to a teller then so he might update its balance – which had grown each year since ’47 – as had her beautiful boy, somewhere.
Jim never mentioned the son he’d known for that brief week in Sydney when Jimmy had been ten months old. Jenny knew why. He blamed himself for losing him. Had he returned to his family after the war he could have played a role in Jimmy’s raising, but he’d chosen Jenny. Jim never mentioned his family – all dead now, other than Lorna. He never mentioned the war. Jenny understood that too – or most of the time she understood. Maisy didn’t. Jim dodged Maisy’s visits when he could.
John and Amy McPherson had become his friends; Amy, a retired schoolteacher, John, Woody Creek’s shy photographer, who had fifty years of photographs and negatives stored in one of his bedrooms. It had only been a matter of time before Jim, Woody Creek’s historian, and John had got their heads together. They’d created an incredible book for Woody Creek’s centenary, a pictorial history of the town, and the men had worked on other projects since – a hobby, rather than a profession, until Amy came up with an idea for a children’s book.
She’d been born with fairy dust in her eyes. She’d turned John’s two and a half acres into a fairy land garden, had turned John’s talent with a camera into magical wedding albums, then one Sunday morning, she’d come to the house with a batch of photographs and an idea to build a children’s book around one of Jenny’s rhymes.
Jim, a facts and figures man, had come on board – at first he’d been reluctant, but since posting their fourth children’s book, Butterfly Kingdom, off to their Sydney publisher, he’d been nagging as hard as Amy for another rhyme.
They were an odd foursome. John was seventeen years Jenny’s senior, Amy six or eight years senior to John, but they’d become family to Jenny, close family.
Jenny glanced at her watch. Still plenty of time. She’d dug up Vern Hooper’s back lawn to the east of the house and turned it into a vegetable patch, a too large vegetable patch, and this morning she’d come out here to pick the extra produce to sell at the shop, not to weed and dream.
Wished Georgie would call. She didn’t wish her back. For the last ten years she’d been telling her to get out of Woody Creek and do something with her life. She had beauty, confidence and brains enough to do anything she wanted, and she’d wasted too many of her years already in this town, in that shop she’d inherited from Charlie White.
Hoped she was well. Feared she wasn’t. She’d lost her sister, her home, her possessions, and been lucky not to lose her life. When you lose that much, it might be easy to walk away from the rest.
She’d left a note Jenny had read so many times she could quote it.
Dear Jen,
Ta for the bed. I’m off to get my stitches out and to do something about getting a new licence. The shop is open. Leave it open if you like. I don’t want it.
We sweep up what’s left over after each holocaust and glue it back into something that resembles what we might have been, then we go on. You said it, mate. I’ve done my sweeping, now I’m off to do the gluing bit.
Love ya,
Georgie
Two weeks ago they’d put the shop in the hands of a Willama agent, as a rental property. To date he’d had one nibble from a Bendigo couple, though why any Bendigo couple would consider moving to Woody Creek, Jenny didn’t know. She would have moved to Bendigo. She would have moved to Ringwood, to Willama – anywhere. She loathed this town.
And its business centre was dying. Back when she’d been a kid, the shops had been crowded on Fridays and Saturday mornings. There’d been few cars about, but plenty of bikes and horses. They’d had a shoe shop, a barber. Until the thirties, Woody Creek had its own undertaker cum cabinet-maker. These days cabinets were purchased ready-made in Willama, where Woody Creek’s dead now queued to be buried. Until the thirties, they’d had a saddler and a bakery, its pastries and fancy cakes set out in the window on pretty paper doilies. Miss Blunt and her father had run a thriving drapery and dressmaking business and Fulton’s feed and grain store had done a roaring trade. According to Emma, her brother Robert barely kept his head above water these days.
Reliable transport was killing this town. With doctors, dentists, chemists and most of the big name stores in Willama, there was a stream of cars heading east on Stock Route Road each morning.
The two big supermarkets had killed off a lot of Willama’s smaller businesses. At one time there must have been five small grocery shops scattered around. There’d been three butcheries in the main street, at least three bakeries and several small hardware shops. Most had closed their door and reopened as gift shops, hairdressers, clothing boutiques, coffee shops. Coles and Woolworths sold pretty much everything else.
Hearing water sluicing down the pipes, Jenny looked over her shoulder. Jim had arisen. He’d never been an early riser. Granny had, and Jenny had caught her habit and couldn’t break it. She spent most of her mornings in the garden, another of Granny’s habits.
She’d picked a dozen zucchinis. Prolific breeders, fast growers, she’d picked a dozen only yesterday, but the more she picked the more desperate those plants became to seed the next generation.
She’d shed her seeds before the plant had reached maturity, and at times wasn’t certain she’d ever got around to maturing. Four kids she’d given life. Hadn’t wanted any of them, not when they’d been conceived. All gone now – not that she’d ever had Cara to lose. She’d walked away from her in ’44 and hadn’t set eyes on her again until ’66 – and couldn’t believe her eyes the night she had seen her. Cara looked like her. She’d had her hair, her brow, eyes, hands. Jimmy had looked a little like her, but he’d had Jim’s hair and hands. Georgie and Margot looked like their fathers.
Cara had produced seed, that beautiful skinny-necked boy. Raelene had produced little Tracy who, according to the newspapers, she’d signed away to
Cara, then changed her mind and stolen her from her bed. Both Jenny and Georgie had jumped to the conclusion that Tracy was Dino Collins’ daughter, and were relieved to learn he’d been in jail when that little girl was conceived.
It was Collins who’d masterminded the kidnap, Jenny was certain of that. He’d been on Granny’s land that night, had been driving a car registered to Raelene when he’d crashed into a police roadblock on the Mission Bridge – and the doctors shouldn’t have wasted taxpayer money on putting that swine back together. They had. She’d followed his story in the newspapers.
Margot had shed her seed, and every day of Jenny’s life since, she’d thanked God for Trudy – and thanked him for making her look more Hall than Macdonald.
Did love by proxy count? Did loving Trudy do anything at all to cancel out not loving Margot?
Knew it didn’t. From day one, Margot had denied she’d been pregnant. She’d blamed indigestion for her swelling belly. She’d denied Trudy until the day she died. If she’d caught one sight, one sniff of her, she’d throw one of her screaming, foot stamping attacks. Jenny had kept them well apart.
Teddy Hall had fathered Trudy. He’d signed away his parental rights before the adoption but still showed too much interest in her. He’d picked up a good little car for her eighteenth birthday and been determined to give it to her, from him and his parents. Jim could be determined too. He’d paid Teddy for the car.
Jenny picked another zucchini. Two plants would have been enough to feed her, Jim and the McPhersons. She’d planted a dozen.
Jimmy would have had a family by now. He’d married a schoolteacher three or four days before Margaret Hooper’s death. Ian Hooper, Jim’s cousin, met the wife at Margaret’s funeral. Karen, he’d said, or was it Carlene? A pretty girl, he’d said, a teacher.
‘Jen? Are you still out there?’
Jenny’s mind jarring back to the moment, she turned towards his voice. ‘I’m picking vegies for the shop,’ she called.
‘It’s almost nine.’
‘My watch says . . .’ It still said almost eight o’clock. ‘It’s stopped,’ she said.
‘It’s had its day, Jen.’
‘It keeps perfect time when I find time to wind it. I’ll have to run. Can you finish the picking? There’s a ton of tomatoes too. Strip off anything that’s turning pink.’
TOMBSTONES
Losing Margot, then Dawn and now Macka, shattered Maisy. Bernie, not the shattering type and once again welcome in Freddy Bowen’s bar, spent his evenings there, drinking enough to put him to sleep.
There is little joy in sucking down a skinful alone while bastards who’ve owed you one since classroom days congregate in flocks like vultures, waiting to rip the flesh off your bones when you fall down.
He was down; he was so far down a nest of worms had started burrowing into his head. He scratched his bald scalp constantly, attempting to rid it of the crawling sensation. In places he’d scratched it raw, then picked the tops off the scabs and named them skin cancer, and blamed Macka for his skin cancers. That brainless bastard was up in Queensland and he didn’t have the skin type that stood up to too much sun.
Bernie went to sleep thinking cancer, woke with cancer on his mind. He knew it killed, but it had previously killed others, not Macdonalds.
He went to bed with Macka on his mind and dreamed he was in the room, then he woke and found he wasn’t. He missed the ugly bastard. He missed knowing what he was thinking before he thought it. He missed seeing himself wandering around at the mill. Missed him like a man might miss the left arm he’d been attached to since birth.
Then the business with that girl they’d fathered started eating its way through the wormholes and into his head. When Macka had been around, half of the blame for what they’d done to Jenny Morrison had been his to wear. It belonged solely to Bernie now and it crawled with the worms in his brain.
Jenny had been at Dawny’s funeral with her lanky, limping Jim. He’d almost met her eyes when he’d been standing beside the coffin trying to find something to say. She’d looked away fast. Always had. For thirty-odd years she’d been crossing over the street when she’d seen him coming.
He should have closed the mill the day of that girl’s funeral. Maisy had told them to close it down. She’d told them that for once in their godforsaken lives they were going to do the right thing. They hadn’t done it.
He’d stood with Macka watching the fire that killed that girl. An old habit of theirs, following the fire truck. He, Macka and fifty more followed the truck out Forest Road that night, where someone told them that one of the Morrison girls was trapped inside Gertrude Foote’s house. Bernie had known which one was trapped. He’d seen the redhead standing with her back against the walnut tree.
No one wants to watch a man, dog or kangaroo burn, but had he or Macka given ten seconds’ thought that night to the fact that it was their own flesh and blood that was burning?
Not ten seconds of thought, nor one second. It might have meant no more to them if the redhead had been trapped in that inferno. They’d been buying their smokes from her for twenty years, during which time Bernie had set eyes on her sister just once, on the night of Teddy Hall’s engagement to Vonnie Boyle. He’d seen a bit of her when she’d been eight or ten, when for months she’d stayed in town with Maisy – a lisping, whingeing bitch of a girl he’d dodged when he could.
She should have worn his name – or Macka’s. At eighteen, they’d both been willing to do the right thing, or maybe just willing to help themselves to legal rights to Jenny Morrison. She’d done a runner the night before the wedding day, had left Bernie standing at the altar, choking in his wedding suit.
For a lot of years, he’d convinced himself that he’d been the one made a fool of. It had worked well enough until he’d got out of the army. During the years since, he’d blamed being young, being drunk, which had worked well enough too when there’d been the two of them, when they’d been drunk. There were no longer two of them and a man couldn’t stay drunk twenty-four hours a day – unless he was old Shaky Lewis.
Bernie stopped going to the pub, stopped going to work, lay on his bed dozing, scratching his skin cancers and thinking. Thinking hurts those not accustomed to doing too much of it. He was lying on his back scratching and thinking when Maisy came to the bedroom door to nag him about driving her down to Willama to choose a tombstone for Dawny.
‘Drive yourself,’ he said.
‘If I felt up to driving myself I wouldn’t have asked you to drive me, would I?’
Her admission got him out of bed. Until Dawn’s death, Maisy had spent more time on the roads than she had at home. She sat watching television and swallowing aspros these days, and she held on to walls when she walked up the passage.
He drove her to Willama. He was tailing her back to the stonemason’s office when she went down.
An inflated ball will bounce. Maisy bounced. She lost a bit of skin off her hands and maybe off her backside, but he and the stonemason got her back onto her feet with Maisy still fighting to pay for Dawny’s tombstone.
‘You’re going to see a doctor,’ Bernie said.
‘I haven’t got an appointment.’
‘Then you’re going to the hospital. You’re not dropping dead on me, you old bugger.’
‘I’m not going near a hospital. Dawny was all right until they operated on her.’
The stonemason phoned. An Indian doctor fitted her in. Bernie walked her to his office and stayed on to dob about how she bounced off walls and swallowed aspro by the packetful.
The Indian took her blood pressure and told her it was sky high.
‘I buried my granddaughter, my daughter and I lost my son to a Sydney trollop. What do you expect my blood pressure to be doing?’ Maisy asked.
‘On the scales, if you please, Mrs Macdonald.’
‘I didn’t come in here for you to have a go at my weight.’
‘That is your choice, but hiding your face from the figure will
not make it less,’ he said in the singsong voice of Indian immigrants. ‘If you persist in carrying that weight around, your husband will be losing you,’ he said, and he started writing scripts.
‘Her son,’ Bernie corrected, and attempted to suck in his gut.
The doctor eyed him, then asked him to sit down so he might check his blood pressure.
‘Be buggered,’ Bernie said.
‘A man of your height cannot carry the weight you are carrying and expect to live a long life, Mr Macdonald,’ the Indian said.
‘It’s all muscle,’ Bernie said, and he returned to the waiting room until Maisy came out with her prescriptions, a diet sheet and a leaflet advertising Weight Watchers.
They had lunch with Rachael. She always put on a good spread. Midway through eating it, he mentioned the Weight Watchers leaflet and Rachael agreed with the Indian that Maisy could afford to lose a few kilos.
Maisy, who ignored kilos, walked away from the conversation to turn on the television. She never missed Days of Our Lives.
Bernie left the women watching their soap opera and drove back to give the stonemason a cheque and the words the women had decided they wanted put on Dawny’s tombstone. He had his mother’s scripts filled at the pharmacy then drove home.
*
There were rich families and poor in Woody Creek. There were families edging their way up to being comfortably off, and others who had once been comfortable sliding closer to the breadline with each generation. The Hoopers had always been rich. The Macdonalds had become rich after the first war.
Between the two great wars, Paul Jenner had started his married life scratching a bare living from dry land. Twenty years ago, he’d scratched up enough money to buy Lonny Bryant’s riverfront property, where his labour, along with that of his three sons, had started paying off. Paul Jenner was living proof that if a man is prepared to work his guts out, he’ll get to where he wants to be. He now owned the old Hooper farm, and if his bid was successful, he’d own Monk’s acres, which would make him the biggest landowner in the district.
