Thorn on the Rose

by Joy Dettman

  No one saw it, not the next day, not the next week.

  Norman rarely went to the cemetery. He was a lost man, mourning the lost wedding no less than his wife — mourning the money spent on it, and his father of the bride speech, written months ago, edited several times, now never to be orated. He mourned the cost of three crates of wine, stacked one on top of the other in the corner of his junk room, though by May he was doing his best to get rid of it, the red and white, the sweet and dry. There was enough left to see him beyond the cancelled wedding date.

  He ignored his wife, the whore, who was not herself, and his daughter, the toffee-crunching banshee, who was so much more than herself. He ignored and dodged them, slept at the house, helped himself to bottles of wine from the house, but otherwise kept to his station.

  By mid-May he was cooking his meals at the station on a twin burner primus stove. He’d purchased an electric toaster, a china jug that boiled water in minutes — the inventiveness of mankind never failing to amaze him. He purchased a small wireless so he might listen in peace to the news broadcasts, was considering a small electric heater. The nights were cool.

  On the Friday evening prior to the cancelled wedding day, he sipped red wine while his dinner, a cheese sandwich, fried and poker players gathered at the Macdonalds’ house, directly opposite his station.

  He had attended those gatherings for a time, had been a part of that card-slapping raucous male company — for a time. He sipped red wine and sighed for the loss of laughter and fine brandy, for the cheese sandwich suppers eaten in his kitchen with his golden child — now tarnished gold.

  He ate his sandwich when he deemed it ready; he poured more wine into his mug. It was not a pleasant wine, and though his eyes watered for good brandy, he took his punishment like a man.

  ‘How long since I have held a card, hazarded a silver coin on the turn of a card?’ he asked the night, then answered his own question, ‘Since the golden child lost her glitter. How long since I have shared laughter? Since the golden child lost her glitter.’

  Only a madman talks to himself. He attempted a laugh. Only a madman laughs alone. He emptied his mug and poured more.

  Was there laughter before the golden child’s coming? Very little. His mother had been in residence. A few rare moments of laughter, a few stolen moments of pleasure.

  He sighed, looked towards his house, drank.

  He had not expected his wife, the whore, to remain in that house once Cecelia was wed. That girl could cut bread, spread jam, make toffee. Her mother would have gone with her, to cook, to clean. Knowing this, he had paid willingly, each cheque signed a down payment on freedom, a down payment on two wide beds, a kitchen stove to offer warmth, and perhaps a hand of poker on Friday nights.

  Laughter rose from across the road and he poured more wine.

  By nine forty-five, his bottle empty, the last light at his house turned off, his narrow bed called to him. He rose unsteadily, placed his empty bottle beneath the platform with others of its ilk, and made his careful way along the path he had worn between the station and his side gate.

  His bed was not as he had left it. Pillows flung, mattress on the floor, blankets and sheets strewn — and not for the first time. He heaved the ticking mattress back to a hump on the bed, collected the sheets and the blankets, knowing that the chore of bed-making was beyond him tonight. His eye settled on the crates of wine. More red than white remained. Tonight he had attempted to create a balance and been left with the metallic taste of that last bottle on his tongue. He reached for a bottle of white.

  A corkscrew was on the windowsill, hidden by the curtain. He’d become quite the expert at cork removal. He got this one out intact, tasted the wine from the bottle. Sweet and fruity. Picked up his pillow from the tumble of bedding, dragged a blanket free, turned off his light before opening the door, then felt his way along the passage wall to the parlour. The couch made a serviceable bed.

  Bottle in hand, he attempted to undo a shoelace. Difficult to do with one hand, in the dark, and why bother. There would be another train in the morning. Always another train. Always a reason to get out of bed.

  He sipped from the bottle, toasted the bridal gown, mouthed his wedding speech, all three pages of it, sipped and mentally edited that final page.

  At some stage of the night he must have placed that bottle on the floor and laid his head down. At some stage of the night his thoughts of the lost wedding turned to dreams, a confusion of wine-soaked dreams. At some stage of the early morning, his dreams took him back to his own wedding, to his own wedding night — more satisfying in dream than in reality. He smiled as he drew the satin sheet over his pretty bride’s naked form, the dream so real he could feel the slip of satin between his fingers.

  His eyes sprang open.

  The glaring white light of morning is a hard light when the sun is aiming its beams directly in through a glass window to dance on a white satin wedding gown.

  He flung it from him, and with barely focused eyes followed its flight as he attempted to rise, only to be felled by opposing teams of drummers fighting for supremacy inside his skull. He clutched his head, rolled his feet on the floor, onto white satin. The consequent untangling of his shoe upset his forgotten wine bottle, which spilled its contents —

  Too fast he reached to retrieve the bottle and his head bounced from his shoulder to the ceiling. Sat, swaying, headless until it landed, until he had eyes to see, to place the bottle onto the small table. Thankfully, he had selected a white wine.

  He sat a moment, staring at the mound of white on the floor, willing it to rise up and hang itself. It did not, and when he again attempted to rise, his head exploded. He got his feet beneath him, and with one hand lending support on the arm of the couch, he stood. Listened. Not a sound.

  With great care he stooped, gathered in that glaring white, shook it, and felt the fine rain of wine on his face. Perhaps better eyes than his may have seen from whence the wine-rain had issued. He saw no stain and chose not to don his spectacles — not that he knew where they were.

  The hanger remained hooked over the curtain rod. Drummers battling, he raised his chin to study it. Only to study. To hang the dress would require him to mount the couch. Norman was a man who knew his limitations, so he stood, feet planted, while the hundred drummers in his head were felled by one master drummer belting out a solo rhythm on the base of his skull. His mother had dropped dead of a possible stroke. He hoped his would be fast and complete. When it was not immediate, he rolled the gown into a ball and carried it with him to his junk room where he hid it in the carton of hand-me-downs he saved for . . . for a rainy day.

  His spectacles were on the small table beside his bed. He settled them onto his nose and surveyed the chaos of his bed. He would keep his door locked in future. Slowly then, each step a considered thing, he returned to his station to boil water, to drink black tea and swallow aspirin.

  The train went through at ten, by which time his head was again perched, if precariously, on his shoulders, though his stomach was threatening to leave home. A methodical man, Norman, he saw the train on its way before running to the tin shed station lavatory, where his night of dissipation exploded into the pan.

  At ten twenty-five the banshee came wailing across the railway yard for her gown. Norman ushered her home. The key to his room was in his pocket. He unlocked his door, gave up the crushed gown, and while the banshee screamed at him, cursed him, he reassembled his bedding, made up a neat enough bed, locked his door and placed the key in his pocket once more.

  His stomach craving a dose of liver salts, he braved the kitchen. No sign of the whore, not in two days. He hoped she had gone. His potion mixed at the sink, he drank it while his daughter stood bawling into her wedding gown.

  ‘Miss Havisham!’ he said. ‘The name of that book . . . It momentarily escapes my mind.’

  Cecelia had not progressed beyond the fourth grade reader. The volume of her bellow increased.

  And his
wife, the whore, had not gone. She came into the kitchen, colourless, her straw hair uncombed, her dead eyes accusing him as she took charge of the crumpled gown.

  ‘It is past time that the thing was put away, Mrs Morrison,’ he said.

  ‘If you were half a man you’d sue that mongrel for breach of promise!’ the whore snarled.

  ‘If I were half a man, I would not be here to sue him, Mrs Morrison.’

  ‘Ugly, useless —’

  ‘And yet you remain to torment me,’ he said, and returned to his station.

  A BAD HABIT OF KILLING

  A confusing year, 1941. Australia was at war, but untouched by war, apart from a couple of German raiders laying down a couple of mines. Fashions changed as they are apt to, given any opportunity. Women took a liking to olive green, navy blue, dark brown and khaki.

  A lot of boys came home on leave in khaki. One of the Dobson boys wore air force blue. Bobby Vevers was in the navy. Army trucks travelled through town from time to time on their way to someplace else. More planes flew over and kids learned to recognise their various shapes.

  There were three fast weddings, and a farmer’s daughter who should have had a fast wedding before her fiancée was killed in an army accident, though no one called her a slut when her babe was born out of wedlock.

  Petrol was rationed, but there weren’t enough cars in Woody Creek for that to be a major concern. A few horses due for retirement were back in harness. There was more money about. Folk paid their rent on time, and a few paid Charlie what they’d owed him for years.

  Yes, there was a war. Yes, in distant Europe young men were dying, cities were being bombed, but the mill saws kept on screaming, the price of wool went up, crops still grew, chooks still laid eggs.

  In August, Bob Menzies retired from the country’s top job and Arthur Fadden took it on until October, when John Curtin was voted in. He’d been anti-conscription during the last war, and vocal about it. There were those who didn’t believe Curtin was the right man to lead a country through wartime, and others who knew they’d finally picked the right man for the job.

  Vern didn’t care who was leading the country. For the first time in half a century, he hadn’t cast his vote. He was a dead man walking, though not often seen walking. Petrol rationing no longer concerned him. Two cars stood idle in his backyard, grass growing beneath them, weeds grabbing at their axles.

  He’d always worn a lopsided smile. He no longer smiled but his mouth was permanently lopsided, the lower corner inclined to drool. One eyelid drooped in sympathy with his mouth. He’d taken to wearing glasses to disguise his drooping eyelid — and the buggers allowed him to see more than he wanted to see.

  He could thank his lucky stars the damage hadn’t been worse, the young doctor said. Vern told him to go to hell, but the doctor kept coming back.

  ‘Get outside. Get some sun on your skin,’ the doctor said.

  Vern asked him if he’d ever been brained with a walking stick.

  He could get around with his walking stick, but refused to be seen hobbling around with the bloody thing. He rarely left the house. He never left his yard. Spent his days sitting, listening to the wireless, measured his days with meals: breakfast, morning tea, afternoon tea, dinner, then supper. What else was a man expected to do?

  There were moments when he wished he hadn’t called Gertrude a liar, more moments when he wished he’d called her worse.

  And he had trouble at the mill. Lorna’s fault. No man would stand for a woman telling him what to do. Tom Palmer, Vern’s foreman, had taken it for longer than most. In September, George Macdonald poached him along with two of Vern’s best men. Finding a good man to replace Tom wasn’t easy. Finding manpower enough to run the country was becoming a major problem by the latter months of ’41.

  The young doctor drove up in September. He told Vern he was well enough to drive, that the only way to get over being a cripple was to stop thinking of himself as a cripple. He told him about one old chap at the hospital whose only means of communication was poking his tongue out for yes and keeping it in for no.

  ‘Do him a favour and put him down,’ Vern said.

  ‘Keep putting on weight, Mr Hooper, and I won’t need to put you down. You’ll do it yourself. I’ll see you in October. In Willama.’

  And how the bloody hell was a man supposed to drive with one hand as weak as a kitten’s paw, with one leg that refused to do what he told it to do? He’d end up killing himself or some other bugger.

  Lorna offered to drive him. He’d sworn the day she’d driven him home from the hospital that he’d never repeat that experience.

  There were a few modern thinkers around in 1941. They spoke of the country needing to rely on her women to fill the gaps left behind by the fighting men. There were others who knew that a woman trained to do a man’s job in wartime wouldn’t return happily to her aprons once the war was over.

  Vern had never been a modern thinker; his stroke hadn’t altered his outlook. Fair enough, a man couldn’t live well without a woman, but her place was in his bed or in his kitchen, not behind the steering wheel of his bloody car. If not for Jim, those girls would never have been allowed anywhere near a steering wheel.

  For a week before he was to see his doctor, he considered his options. He had no control over Lorna. He’d made the mistake of educating that girl. Margaret he’d attempted to educate without success. He could control her. The night before his appointment, he told her she’d be driving him down to his appointment. Margaret never argued.

  Lorna argued. She argued until her sister slid in behind the steering wheel, then she stopped arguing, took off her hat and strode back to the house.

  Within a hundred yards, Vern knew why. That dithering fool of a girl made the left-hand turn into North Street too fast, as the bank manager’s dog took his diagonal meander across the road. She braked, missed the dog, but a kid on a bike hit the rear bumper bar and flew over the car. Margaret ran for home howling and Vern sat like a bloody crippled old fool in the passenger seat, exposed before the town — and a crowd gathering to stare at him — and the dog that caused the accident laughing at him.

  The kid wasn’t laughing. He was gravel-rashed from ear to ankle.

  ‘Is your bike all right, lad?’ Vern asked.

  ‘What?’

  Vern wasn’t repeating his words. He took a quid from his wallet and offered it. The kid understood money. He pocketed it and Vern heaved himself across to the driver’s seat and in behind the wheel.

  He got the car home, where he told Lorna to put her bloody hat on. She drove like a maniac with a death wish, and God help man or dog who tried to get in her way, but she got him to his doctor, who had the gall to ask why his blood pressure had gone sky high.

  He was sitting on the verandah on Friday when Gertrude rode by. She didn’t see him, or maybe she did and ignored him. He resented the way she sat astride that horse.

  He watched George Macdonald walk by twice each day, on his way to and from his mill. Bull-necked, bull-shouldered, short-legged, compact; his blood didn’t need to travel far from heart to head to feet. Vern resented George’s circulatory system, and his bandy gorilla legs, and his I’m off to someplace stride.

  And Charlie White, still riding that bike like a madman, the bike looking bigger every year — or Charlie looking smaller. Vern resented Charlie’s scrawny muscle-bound legs pumping those pedals, and resented more than his circulatory system; he knew where that white-headed old bugger was spending his Saturday afternoons.

  Self-pity can erode the soul. Vern was eroding. He’d had it all. He’d had it all and now he had nothing. He hobbled around like a man of ninety, braces over his shoulders to stop his trousers from falling down, one daughter attempting to kill him with kindness, the other an overbearing, self-serving bugger of a woman just willing him dead. He hoped one of them would be successful before Christmas. He didn’t want to see another Christmas.

  He was on his western verandah on the third da
y of December when a kid came wobbling up to the corner on a bike too large for him; he wobbled into Vern’s fence and both kid and bike disappeared from view. The rosebushes, neglected last winter, were attempting to turn into trees. Roses have thorns. Vern thought about getting up to see if the kid was all right but the effort was too great.

  He heard knocking at his front door, wondered if the kid’s mother had come to complain about his overgrown roses blocking the footpath. A few had. Lorna handled it. He heard her telling whoever it was to remove himself forthwith before she fetched a bucket of dishwater.

  Heard Margaret, too. ‘Father is not well, dear.’ He’d never appreciated Margaret. He relied on her now.

  ‘The garage man isn’t home,’ the kid said.

  ‘Speak to the constable, dear,’ she said.

  Lenny Hall walked back to the bike, his fingernail digging at a rose thorn embedded in his forearm. Granny hadn’t mentioned getting the constable; he rode a motorbike anyway, and Granny had said to get someone with a car.

  Maisy would know what to do. He mounted his bike and wobbled up North Road and over the lines. Maisy’s car wasn’t there. He was heading for Charlie’s shop when he saw Maisy turn out of Cemetery Road and pull up out front of Charlie’s. He caught her as she was walking through the door.

  ‘Granny said someone has to get Jenny to the hospital and the garage man’s not there,’ Lenny said.

  Hilda, Charlie’s daughter, busy serving Peggy Fulton, stopped serving to walk down to the end of the counter. Peggy got there first. They heard little more, other than something about Hoopers killing their mothers — which was enough to start a rumour.

  ‘That kid is one of Harry Hall’s, isn’t he?’ Peggy said.

  ‘She’s done it again,’ Hilda said. ‘That’s why Jim left.’

  They watched Maisy back out to the road, watched her drive away, watched the kid work at mounting the too-large bike, then with nothing more to see they returned to their respective sides of the counter.

  ‘It could be something to do with Amber. They took her down to the hospital three days ago,’ Hilda said.