by Joy Dettman
The woman behind the counter was still waiting for Jenny’s order. ‘Tea and a cheese and bacon toasted sandwich,’ she said.
If she lived to be a hundred, Jenny wouldn’t forgive America. Every time she heard that country mentioned, or read of it, she thought of waking naked on the Sydney beach, and the baby one of those drunken raping sailors had made.
While Georgie listened for more news on the assassination, Jenny stared out the window, seeing thick-necked Hank, baby-faced Billy-Bob.
Crazy names. Crazy country with a penchant for murdering their leaders.
The waitress brought their order; they ate fast, paid for their meal, and Georgie behind the wheel, they drove on.
The country roads had been all but deserted. Not so down here. Saturday or not, traffic sandwiched them in, traffic lights held them fast in jams of exhaust-spewing vehicles while Jenny played navigator, tracking main roads on her Melbourne road map, and Georgie amused herself by multiplying the capacity of petrol tanks in the stretch of vehicles hemming her in.
‘How can they keep sucking enough oil out of the ground, Jen? What’s filling up the spaces they leave behind? Do you reckon we’ll implode one day?’
Australia was pumping her own oil now; America had been pumping it out for years. Cavities had to fill with something, though Jen had enough cavities closer to home to worry about: Margot’s teeth were falling to bits.
Maisy swore she’d lost two teeth with each of her ten babies. Margot may not have acknowledged giving birth to Trudy, but if something wasn’t done soon about her teeth, she’d lose the lot. Doing anything with that girl was a problem.
It’s strange how the mind works, how, while it’s pondering one imponderable, an unrelated brain cell sparks.
‘Lincoln,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Abraham Lincoln. They assassinated him when Granny was a girl,’ Jenny said, realising the root of one crazy Yankee name. Link would have been short for Lincoln, Hank would have been a Henry, Billy-Bob would have been William Robert. She’d never given a thought to the roots of their crazy names, tried not to think about them. Put them away in a dark cave and posted one of Granny’s signs in front of it – Wrong way, go back. Hadn’t thought about them in years. Had told Jim everything, except about them. Told herself the Japs had sunk their boat and that sea snakes were playing in and out the windows through their eye sockets.
Could have told Jim. He was the gentlest of men – as he’d been the gentlest of boys. She’d never known his mother. Jim must have taken after her. Vern Hooper had been a hard old coot.
Jim hated the Japs. Jenny hadn’t known any to hate. She’d read about them throwing themselves off cliff tops to avoid surrender. She’d surrendered. At fourteen she’d surrendered on old Cecelia Morrison’s tombstone. She’d surrendered again on that Sydney beach. Surrendered to Vern Hooper’s blackmail.
You’ve got the recoil of a rubber band, Granny used to say.
How many times can a rubber band recoil before it perishes? This morning it felt worn out. Didn’t want what was waiting for her in Melbourne. They had a beautiful life, she, Jim and Trudy.
She hadn’t wanted to move back to Woody Creek. She’d done it for Jim – and Elsie, Trudy’s grandmother.
During their first weeks of living in Vern Hooper’s house she’d felt the old coot and his daughters in every room, felt them in bed with her too. Loved Frankston, loved the anonymity of Melbourne. Had loved Sydney – for a time.
Very different cities. Melbourne sprawled; it had a ditch instead of a harbour. Both had miles of suburbs, miles of streets.
Back in ’39 when she’d spent four months in Melbourne with Laurie Morgan, the buildings hadn’t been as tall, there’d been few cars on the roads. In ’46 and ’47, when she’d lived down here with Ray, horses had still commanded their fair share of the roads. No horses now. All died of exhaust fumes.
Wondered at times what Laurie was doing, if he was still taking what he’d considered his due, if he’d married, had other kids, if they looked like Georgie.
She was all Laurie – or seventy-five per cent of her was. A good, kind-hearted, beautiful kid, and capable with it. There was much Jenny regretted in her life. Marrying Ray came high on the list, though no higher than not signing Margot away at birth. Never, never had she regretted keeping Georgie.
Glanced at her, sitting behind the wheel, as patient as a judge. Jenny would have been cursing the cars hemming her in, cursing every traffic light.
They found the address given to them by the constable, found a parking space and Georgie backed that big car into it on her first attempt.
Jenny regretted giving Raelene into Florence’s care when she saw her. She barely recognised her. That kid was twelve years old and had the build of a woman – and was dressed like one: makeup, dangling earrings, high-heeled shoes.
‘What the hell have they done to you?’
‘I’m not going back to her,’ Raelene replied.
A long, long day that one. Florence and Clarrie turned up after midday, with small identical boys.
Jenny, out front, having a smoko, saw them approaching and walked down to meet and accuse them.
‘We can’t control her, Jenny,’ Florence said. And after their long drive to get there, Raelene refused to speak to her mother.
‘If I can’t live with you, I’ll stay here,’ she said to Jenny.
‘Six years is a long time, Raelene. You’ll be locked up until you’re eighteen.’
They left her with Georgie and walked out to a corridor, Jenny and Clarrie to light cigarettes, Florence to weep while tiny boys explored.
‘She won’t go to school, Jenny.’
‘She’s twelve years old!’
‘She’s very cruel to her little brothers.’
‘Slap her backside. She’s twelve years old!’
‘She’s got too much of her father in her,’ Clarrie said.
‘She’s half his size. Sit on her if you have to.’
‘Flo is having another one,’ Clarrie said. ‘She’s been as sick as a dog.’
The day ended with Jenny agreeing to take responsibility for Raelene until school went back next year. It ended with Clarrie Keating looking relieved, a twin on each arm, with Florence bawling, with Raelene refusing to say goodbye to her. But it ended, or the city part of it did, and too late to visit Donny, had they known where to find him. He’d been moved from the children’s home. He was thirteen, and according to Florence, almost as big as Ray.
It took an hour to get out of the city, and by six, when they pulled in to buy ice-creams, the news of John F. Kennedy’s death was on a small wall-mounted television, a crowd standing around watching it.
Technology, not empty oil wells, would shrink the planet. Across the world that day in November of 1963, newspaper, telephone, radio and television told the sorry tale of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Robert Norris’s radio was tuned in to the news. His attitude towards America differed from Jenny’s. The Americans had saved Australia; they’d ended the war. Little else on the news that night, until the tail end.
‘A twenty-two-year-old Traralgon man was arrested in Melbourne yesterday and last night charged with the carnal knowledge of a minor.’
‘They’ve got him!’ Robert said.
‘Those poor people,’ Myrtle said.
Not until the following day did they learn of Cara’s role in the arrest of James Collins, and not from her did they learn it. Two city police came early to the house and caught Myrtle in her dressing-gown.
For a week strange policemen wandered around Traralgon. For that week televisions replayed the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Viewers saw the bullet’s impact, saw Jackie throw her body across her husband’s. Lee Harvey Oswald became a household name. His subsequent murder was played and replayed.
For a time, the world pitied Jackie and her two fatherless children, but the world moves on. Christmas was coming and viewers had their ow
n problems to deal with.
There came a day when the constant replays no longer raised that initial response of stunned abhorrence. Too familiar with the tale of how Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president, then Jack Ruby shot Oswald, viewers began to see those replays as they might a commercial for a third-rate crime show, one in which the writers had failed dismally to suspend their audience’s disbelief. As if one bullet could pass through the president then get his bodyguard. As if the police would march the American president’s murderer through a corridor crowded with newsmen, past a crazed club owner toting a gun. It was all a bit too convenient, a bit too Shakespearian – he’d had a bad habit of reaching for the ‘kill ’em all off’ endings.
And what happened to Jack Ruby anyway? Did someone shoot him? Did he hang himself? Something happened to him, but by Christmas, who really cared? He was only a bit player in an unconvincing tale.
‘Change that bloody channel, Roy. There’ll be something better on than that.’
PARENTHOOD
If couples, young and starry-eyed,
Read contracts, signed by groom and bride,
They’d never don parental halter
But leave each other at the altar.
‘You take what kids which God might send,
Though they will drive you round the bend.
You’ll love, obey and vow to feed
Those monsters sprung from your own seed.
And you shall seek no escape clause
And in your labour never pause
Until you’re sixty, sixty-five –
If you should happen to survive.’
Oh parenthood
Cruel guarantee,
Of life-long sweat and drudgery.
Jenny read the poem again. It had won the Country Women’s poetry competition and they’d published it in one of their recipe books – her name beneath it. Jim’s fault, he’d typed it up, posted it to them.
Vern Hooper’s library was Jenny’s escape room, her reading, writing, sewing room, and since she’d brought Raelene home, Jim’s typewriter and paraphernalia had joined her own. A busy room that one, but not a hint of Vern Hooper in it. No room for him. Fabrics were piled on her large cutting table, with Jim’s typewritten pages. He was currently compiling a history of the town and surrounding district.
In Armadale Jenny had taken in sewing to survive. Miss Blunt, town draper and dressmaker for fifty years, had sent Jenny a list of her prices back in ’47. Two weeks after Jenny had moved back to town, Miss Blunt came to her door to ask if she’d be interested in taking on some of the finer work her own eyes couldn’t handle. It had led to a lot more than that.
As a girl Jenny had dreamed grand dreams of fame and fortune. For a few brief months of her life, her voice had fed her offspring. She’d achieved fame in Woody Creek, not for her voice, but for a big Italian wedding. She’d made the bridal gown, six bridesmaid and three flower-girl frocks – and charged Miss Blunt’s prices.
Not that she needed the money. Jim had money and what was his was hers, but she’d never learnt to be dependent on a man. It was more than that though. She delighted in inviting her customers into Vern Hooper’s library for fittings, and liked it even more if those customers were women who had once looked down their noses when Jenny Morrison had brought her illegitimate trio into town.
Loved offering them her accounts, every item, every zipper, button, reel of thread added to the bill, with her name, address and new telephone number professionally printed at the top. Miss Blunt had ordered the docket books for her.
Until she’d brought Raelene home, they’d managed without the telephone, but Raelene now had a city welfare dame allocated to her by the children’s court, a fifty-odd-year-old Miss Lewis, who was very good at rubbing in the guilt. According to her, Jenny and Florence were the ones at fault, not Raelene. Maybe they were, or maybe Florence and Clarrie were right about Raelene having too much of her father in her.
Living with that brat of a girl reminded Jenny of living with Sissy. She’d rarely thought about her sister in years. Thought of her daily now. Thought of Norman too. He’d possessed the patience of a judge. A week of Raelene and Jenny had run out of patience.
She had patience with her sewing, with her bookwork. Norman would have been proud of her bookwork. He’d kept itemised household account books, station books, books for the town committees. As a kid she’d loved watching him turn those big pages with his chubby fingers, then place a ruler beneath the day he’d last had a haircut. She could flip back through her carbon copies to the day she’d charged Joe Flanagan’s wife twelve pound for a new suit – or charged him. He’d delivered his wife for her fittings, had probably chosen the gruesome fabric. For years that mean old coot had refused to allow electricity wires to be taken across his land to Granny’s. She could flip through the pages to the day she’d charged Hooper’s farm manager’s snobby wife fifteen pound for a green flyaway outfit she’d worn to her daughter’s wedding – and her bill for the Italian wedding blew her mind. She’d charged him one hundred and twenty-three pound twelve and six, then spent a pile of it on Margot’s teeth – and would spend more on Tuesday.
Margot was twenty-four. She should have been well out of her parental guarantee, but she had no income and was never likely to have an income. Someone had to pay for her teeth.
Someone had to clothe her too. Jenny’s Christmas gifts, birthday gifts were clothing. Elsie fed her. Maisy took her with her to Willama every month or two. Teddy slept with her. She still denied Trudy, which was to the good.
Initially Jenny had planned to tell that little girl how she’d come into being, but the older she grew, the older Margot grew, the less Jenny thought about telling her. Trudy was a Hooper, and in town, only Georgie and the Halls knew that she wasn’t. Maybe they’d tell her she was adopted when she was older, and maybe they wouldn’t.
Every Friday, Maisy drove down to Willama. She had two married daughters down there and umpteen grandkids. Last Friday she’d taken Margot with her and had her hair and Margot’s permed.
Perms frizzed. Everyone knew it. Margot’s hair was too fine and Maisy should have known it. It had frizzed more than most, but did draw the eye away from her jaw and her rotting teeth. Then Elsie told her she looked like Jenny, and Raelene laughed and said, ‘More like Harpo Marx.’
Jenny should have known better than to take that brat down there. When Raelene was six years old, she and Margot had damn near burnt Granny’s house down with their arguing.
‘You’re a nasty-mouthed little bugger. That was cruel,’ Jenny said when Margot went ahzeeing across the paddock. ‘You won’t be going to Willama with us on Tuesday.’
Later, at home, Raelene, fighting angry, shoved Trudy, who slammed into a cupboard door, and Jim, who didn’t have a violent bone in his body, looked as if he wished he had a few. Jenny manhandled that brat of a girl into her bedroom and locked her in. That had been Norman’s way. It was the only way Jenny knew. Raelene would learn what they considered to be acceptable behaviour, or she’d go back to Florence.
Margot had never learnt. Jenny drove down to the old place at nine on Tuesday morning and found her wearing Gertrude’s old black felt hat, with what appeared to be a nursing uniform, and brown sandals with white ankle socks.
‘You’re not going like that, Margot. Get those socks and hat off,’ Jenny said.
‘I’ve tried, lovey,’ Elsie said.
Fifteen minutes Jenny wasted in trying, then had to give up. And Elsie wasn’t going with them. Maybe she’d had enough. And Margot wouldn’t sit with her. She got into the back seat.
Gertrude’s hat ended its life eight miles from Willama, when Jenny reached back, snatched and tossed it through an open window. The rear-vision mirror explained why Margot had refused to take it off. She’d attempted to cut off the frizz.
‘Jesus Christ, Margot!’
Diverted to Maisy’s daughter’s house. It was all she could do. Borrowed a pair of scissors and did what she co
uld with what was left, then wet it and hoped there was enough left to frizz. They sat on her then and got her socks off.
Neurotic, obnoxious, obsessive to the extreme, and to Jenny as a solid block of kryptonite is to Superman – Margot stripped Jenny of her powers, had given her a kryptonite headache before she got rid of her into the dentist’s surgery.
‘Do what you have to,’ she told him.
He’d anaesthetised her the last time, and she’d gone home with six fillings and three missing molars. On that Tuesday in January ’64, Jenny returned her to Elsie with more fillings, one less molar and only space and bloody cottonwool gripped between her eyeteeth.
‘He’ll make her a partial plate when her gums heal,’ Jenny said, and headed for home and a handful of aspros.
To find Lila Jones/Roberts and a young bloke sitting with Jim in the kitchen, Trudy on Jim’s lap and no sign of Raelene.
‘Steve Freeman, my new bloke,’ Lila introduced.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Jenny said, unpleased to meet him, reaching for aspros before screaming out the back door, ‘Raelene!’
Didn’t expect her to reply. She didn’t. Swallowed pills and turned to her visitors.
Lila was two years her junior, her new bloke looked twenty-five, and the last thing she needed today was visitors, and the last visitor in the world she ever needed was Lila Jones/Roberts, soon to be Freeman.
‘We’re getting hitched when the divorce is final,’ Lila said.
As girls they’d worked together at the clothing factory in Sydney. Lila knew Jenny had been pregnant when she’d left work. Way back, when Lila was married to Billy Roberts, Jenny had told her she’d aborted that baby, but abortion or not, she didn’t want Jim to know about it. She was scared stiff of Lila’s flapping mouth.
And they wouldn’t leave. At four, Raelene still not home, Lila had the gall to ask how she and Steve might be fixed for a bed for a night or two.
‘We’re full up. Try the hotel,’ Jenny said. ‘And I have to go and look for Raelene.’
