Thorn on the Rose

by Joy Dettman

  He’d given Maisy pretty much all that her heart had desired. If he hadn’t already given her eight daughters, who between four of them had already produced umpteen granddaughters, he may have given in on their raising of Margot. Had the infant been a male he would have relented. The two little bastards he’d bred to take over his mill were wearing khaki, or they were the last time their parents had heard from them; they’d never taken a liking to pen and ink. They hadn’t come home for Jessica’s wedding either — were probably in the stockade.

  Then Maisy shanghaied him. They’d been out to visit Patricia and instead of driving him home, she turned down the forest road.

  Some of George’s worst memories were associated with Gertrude’s land. That day his illegitimate granddaughter added another one. Maisy, convinced of Margot’s charms, handed her to George. The baby took one look at him, slapped him in the eye and screamed blue murder, screamed herself purple until Elsie put her to the breast to shut her up.

  ‘She’s not even weaned,’ George said, safe in the car.

  ‘Elsie started to wean her but she got bad diarrhoea . . .’

  ‘You want to take on washing shitty napkins again?’

  ‘She’s our son’s daughter, George. Someone has to be responsible for her.’

  ‘I was past kid-raising when those little bastards were born. I’m a damn sight further past it now, and that’s the last I’m saying on the matter.’

  ‘I told Mrs Foote we’d raise her, and I’m going to.’

  ‘Not in my house, you’re not. Buy yourself that fridge you’ve been magging about and leave that kid where she is.’

  Gertrude’s apricots always ripened between Christmas and New Year; the plums were at their peak for jam-making a week later than the apricots. Elsie spent several nights in Gertrude’s kitchen helping to prepare fruit for jam-making. Jenny sat with her at the table, a knife in hand, halving the fruit, tossing it into the preserving pan and tossing the seed into a bucket.

  She wrote the labels for the jam jars and saw the jars sealed with a skin of paraffin wax before the lids went on. Last January she had been here through the jam-making and she’d seen nothing of it.

  Jar after jar was stored behind a canvas curtain in the shed, along with a few jars of preserved apricots and plums. The fruit season didn’t last long, but while it lasted, they laboured.

  Nothing was wasted in Gertrude’s house. The chooks ate the rotting fruit, then Joey shovelled out their pens and dug chook dung into the garden beds. He raked up the goat and horse dung and made piles of it down behind the orchard.

  Nothing was wasted. Beer bottles, discarded by drinkers and picked up by Lenny on his way home from school, were washed and used for the storing of tomato sauce.

  Australia sent her first troops over to the Middle East in January. Maisy came with the news that George had decided that he was too old to raise another child. He raised Harry’s wages and offered Joey a job, no doubt to assuage his guilt. They missed Joey when he started going to work in the mornings with Harry.

  ‘There’s no reason now why I can’t sign her away, Granny.’

  ‘Harry and Elsie,’ Gertrude said.

  Vern stayed away, but maybe that was to the good. February was as busy as January. Tomato chutney to be made and they’d used up their available jars. That presented no problem to Gertrude and Elsie. Jenny watched them tie circles of string below the narrow necks of beer bottles, watched them soak the string with methylated spirits and hold the necks to a candle flame until that string was burning in a circle, then a fast plunge into a bucket of cold water; the necks snapped off clean and they had their chutney bottles.

  A withering onion was planted to grow babies. A shooting potato could yield up a bucketful of its own kind. Water wasn’t wasted, hand-washing, dishwashing, bathing water was emptied onto the garden.

  Everything must have been the same last summer but Jenny couldn’t remember last summer — couldn’t remember if her belly had been as big, if her back had ached when she stood too long.

  She could remember the Christmas before the Macdonald had been born. She could remember the night she’d been born. But those months between Christmas and April were gone. How could someone forget three months? It scared her. What if she was mad like Amber?

  Reading stopped her thinking. Gertrude had a trunkful of Itchy-foot’s books and one after the other she read them, the good, the bad and the indifferent.

  They made more tomato sauce in late February, and the storage shelves in the shed became crowded, then the late peaches were ready.

  Elsie was at the table helping to prepare peaches the night Jenny found a newspaper bookmark in one of Archie Foote’s novels.

  ‘It’s from 1924, Granny.’

  Gertrude came to look over her shoulder at the newspaper photograph of the foreign woman who had died in her kitchen sixteen years ago, and her heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘In his book.’

  A terrible photograph; the rough pine box, the eye sockets twin dark smudges, the high-necked frock, hair pulled back hard from her face, ringless hands crossed on her breast.

  ‘When did Itchy-foot die, Granny?’

  ‘The family said he went missing in ’24,’ Gertrude said.

  ‘He was reading this book, reading this page in 1924. It feels weird, like he’s sent a message from the grave.’

  Maybe he had, to Gertrude. The night was hot but Gertrude shivered as the ghost of that woman walked over her grave. If there had been any doubt left in her mind as to who had fathered Jenny, that page of newspaper killed it.

  Sooner or later, Jenny had to be told, and if it didn’t come from Gertrude, it would come from someone else. There were dozens who knew the truth of her birth. Gertrude watched her read and tried to think of a way to begin.

  ‘It’s about that J.C. tombstone, Granny. You know, that little grey one. j.c. left this life 31.12.1923.’ Gertrude knew it. She’d been there when they’d put that poor soul in the ground. ‘That’s why there’s no name on it. They didn’t know who she was.’

  Gertrude glanced at Elsie. She knew the facts of Jenny’s birth. She’d been here the night Nancy and Lonnie Bryant had brought the woman and baby down here.

  Jenny didn’t see the glance. ‘You must remember it. It says here about the midwife,’ she said.

  ‘I remember it well, darlin’,’ Gertrude said. Elsie shook her head and chose another peach.

  Maybe she was right. What would be gained by telling that girl the truth right now? And when all was said and done, what was there to tell? That she’d been born to an unwed foreign woman — that Archie was probably her father. Why else would he have ripped that page from the newspaper?

  It was the sort of knowledge that might push her over the edge, and just when she’d started clawing her way back.

  ‘Did you put it in the book?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Who knows, darlin’,’ Gertrude said. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  WOMAN POWER

  On 26 March 1940, Sissy Morrison would become an adult, for all intents and purposes. She could vote, even wed without her father’s permission — if someone asked her to wed, which appeared unlikely.

  Sissy, a bitch of a girl, had grown into a bitch of a woman, who, nearing twenty-one, was no less bitchy and no more popular than she’d been at five, eight, fifteen. The local boys steered clear of her; their sisters, having learnt in kindergarten to give her a wide berth, gave her a wider berth now. Most crossed the road when they saw Sissy approaching.

  Her only friend was Margaret Hooper; nine years Sissy’s senior, and as desperate for companionship as she. At sixteen, Sissy had decided to marry Jim Hooper. Her friendship with Margaret gave her limited access to him. He accompanied them to dances, to balls. He drove them to Willama to go shopping. Then he dropped Sissy off before driving home with Margaret.

  Everyone was getting engaged and married. Jessie Macdonald, who was Sissy�
�s age, was getting a new house opposite the cemetery — as if anyone would want to live opposite a cemetery.

  As if anyone would want to live in a railway house, practically on the train line. As if anyone would want to live with Norman, who Sissy had to crawl to for every pair of stockings. She wanted to live in the Hoopers’ house, to be Margaret Hooper, who had an inside toilet and could buy a new ball gown whenever she felt like buying one. In March of 1940, Sissy decided to do something about getting what she wanted.

  The idea had come to her at Jessica Macdonald’s wedding party. She was going to have a huge twenty-first birthday party at the town hall, hire the band and invite everyone, get heaps of presents and return what she didn’t want for refunds.

  She told Norman to book the hall, to book the band. He told her she could have a small party at home.

  ‘I’m having it at the town hall, and that’s final,’ she said.

  In her youth, Norman had attempted to guide that girl down the paths of moderation. Many years ago he had retired defeated. He gave in early now and paid for his weakness in hard cash and embarrassment. Since Jenny’s misfortune, he had spent his life in cowering shame. Only at the station, clad in his stationmaster’s uniform, did he take on the approximate shape of a man.

  He booked the hall for the Friday night but didn’t hire the band. Maisy owned a portable gramophone and multiple records. He didn’t allow Sissy to invite everyone. He told her the country was at war and that all must trim their sails to suit the available canvas. He bought three dozen stamps and told her to write invitations.

  She used every stamp, and as each invitation was addressed to husband and wife, to old classmate and partner, the three dozen could mean seventy-two guests to feed and water. She wanted wine for the toasts, like Jessie had wine for the toasts. Norman purchased twelve bottles, convinced he could squeeze six toasts from each. His wife, the whore, had a light hand with pastry. She cooked all week, and on the Friday afternoon, she iced and creamed the cakes, made multiple sandwiches.

  A hot and steamy Friday, the butter melted to oil, whipped cream refused to hold its shape, the ice in the bucket of fruit punch melted, but as Norman carried it across to the hall, a clap of thunder caused some spillage — which left room for more ice.

  All day the storm circled the town threatening, and as night came down, the sky over Woody Creek turned on a fireworks display for Sissy Morrison’s twenty-first. The invited guests came; a party was a party, the guest of honour unimportant. Gifts were offered, weighed, placed unopened on a trestle table beside Maisy’s portable gramophone, which was playing a waltz, when at nine lightning lit the town and thunder rocked the town hall. The waltz died. As did the lights.

  Norman had been organising Woody Creek functions for years. He lit lamps and candles; a few boys who lived nearby went home to fetch lanterns. It became a better party in the half-dark.

  Gertrude had not been invited, which was as well. She was needed at home.

  ‘I don’t know any honest labour a woman can do on her back. Giving birth is labour,’ she said. ‘Stay on your feet for as long as you can, darlin’.’

  Jenny’s six and a half pound infant came before midnight. A lesser newborn may have gone unheard above the rain now thundering down on Woody Creek, hammering on the low tin roof of the lean-to, but the babe arrived with red hair six inches long and a temper to match it. For fifteen minutes she attempted to outdo the storm, until the storm found its way inside. Old gaps between the roof and chimney had opened up. Water was spilling, hissing to the stove.

  ‘Hang on to her for a second, darlin’. I think we’ve got a flood in the kitchen,’ Gertrude said, and she ran to place her pots and pans to catch the water. Her old chimney was prone to movement. She’d known that storm was coming. She should have asked Harry or Joey to get up on the roof and check it out for her this afternoon.

  If not for the late hour and the storm, she would have called Elsie over and had a second pair of hands. If not for the torrent pouring down on her stove, the newborn would not have been placed on the bed. It would be going to Willama in the morning, going to some childless couple.

  If not for that mop of red hair, Jenny may never have set eye on that now silent scrap of life. The Macdonald had been born bald, was still bald. She couldn’t believe a baby could be born with so much hair. Wondered if it had his green eyes. She wasn’t going to touch it to find out, but using the corner of the sheet, she brushed the hair back from its brow.

  It looked like the baby orang-utan she’d seen at the zoo, its brow creased in a frown, its hands clawing, attempting to get a grip on its mother’s fur. One slightly dazed eye looked at her, but she couldn’t see its colour.

  If not for one of its clawing hands, Jenny wouldn’t have touched it. She didn’t mean to, but it wouldn’t keep its hands still.

  ‘Granny!’

  ‘Just a minute, darlin’. I’ll have to get Harry onto that roof first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Do hands change?’

  ‘What do you mean change?’ Gertrude was on her knees mopping up water from her hearth.

  ‘Just change.’

  Gertrude rose from her knees, emptied the contents of a small pot into a bucket and set it back beneath the trickle; she rinsed her hands in the bucket and walked down to the loopedback curtain.

  ‘What’s wrong with her hands?’

  ‘It’s got my square-topped fingers.’

  Gertrude’s eyesight wasn’t good by lamplight, but the doorway was close enough to see Jenny holding open what could have been a miniaturised replica of her own hand.

  ‘Do they change after they’re born?’

  ‘She’s the finished article,’ Gertrude said. ‘He was a redhead?’

  ‘Not red, more like melted pennies, and he didn’t have one freckle on his face. She hasn’t got any freckles.’

  ‘She hasn’t seen a lot of sun yet,’ Gertrude pointed out.

  ‘Can you . . .’ Jenny tried to ease the red-topped bundle towards Gertrude.

  ‘Give me five minutes,’ Gertrude said as she returned to mopping up — and she took her time about it.

  Lorna Hooper was at Sissy’s party, only to keep an eye on her scatterbrained sister. A tall ungainly woman, Lorna spent the evening at the piano. She’d had ten years of lessons and played as she had been taught to play, note perfect, but without imagination.

  Jim was there, taller than his totem pole sister, better looking, though perhaps not as manly. He had one dance with Sissy, two with Peggy Fulton and one each with three of her sisters, while Sissy sat glowering at him, willing him to her side.

  Margaret was at her side, plump Margaret who would never be the sharpest tack in the box, nor did she carry a trickle of Hooper blood, though she was unaware of her failings. She loved to laugh and to dance. Norman danced with her. He danced with Sissy. There were rules to dancing, steps to learn, instruction manuals. Norman danced correctly. He didn’t dance with his wife; he ate the supper she provided.

  The Hoopers had walked across the lines to the town hall. They’d walk home through mud — unless Vern got the car out and drove around to pick them up. He sat on his verandah, watching the rain and considering getting the car out.

  He was thinking of Gertrude, too, wondering if they’d invited her to the party and knowing they hadn’t — knowing she’d be appreciating the rain, celebrating a full tank. He knew her too well. He missed her too much.

  And he didn’t want to miss that arguing, bugger of a woman. He told himself ten, twenty times a day that he wasn’t missing her. He couldn’t tell a lie to save his life. He couldn’t even convince himself.

  They’d had a good thing going before her hot-pants granddaughter had come home and ruined it. He might have been heading fast for seventy-one, but he was a big man with a man’s needs, and the only woman who had ever filled those needs was that independent bugger of a woman. He loved her, and tell himself what he might, he missed her in the mornings, at night, on fine Sa
turday afternoons and during rain storms. Missed her.

  And the rain kept pouring down. He didn’t get his car out.

  Norman had booked the hall from seven to midnight. Midnight was long gone, but no one could be expected to walk home in that storm. They were still there at one, Norman yawning, desperate to blow out the candles, to sweep the floors, to lock the doors.

  One fifteen before the rain eased off. One fifty before he swept the last of the guests out with the cigarette butts, the trodden-in pastries and some of the mud, before he blew out the last of the lamps and candles.

  Woody Creek was awash; its fine sandy soil didn’t know what to do with water given too fast. Cemetery Road looked like Cemetery Lake and South Street was no better. He squelched home carrying the punch bucket, heavy now with presents, a tin dish heavy with more.

  His wife, the whore, and Maisy, had made numerous trips across the road with gifts, plates, glasses. Amber was washing dishes at the sink when he entered. Sissy, clad in her nightgown, sat watching her and complaining about Jim Hooper, about an embroidered tablecloth given to her by the Fulton family.

  ‘What do I need with a tablecloth and serviettes?’

  Norman placed the tin dish and bucket on the table then leaned in the doorway watching Sissy riffling through the new assortment of gifts, greedy hands seeking something of value. Another girl may have delighted in placing a sugar basin, a pretty dish, into her hope chest. Sissy had no hope chest and tonight Norman had little hope of her ever needing one.

  As he turned to stare at the back of the scrawny whore at the sink, a tidal wave of despair washed up from his muddy shoes to his brow and he swayed while the kitchen swam in nauseating circles. He gripped the doorframe and turned away, forced his feet to carry him across the passage to his junk room where he sat heavily on his bed, the room circling, the memory of gentle hands removing the studs from his collar, circling.

  Pretty songbird, shot through the heart by time’s arrow. Head in his hands, hot and exhausted tears dripped to muddy shoes he had no strength to remove.