Thorn on the Rose

by Joy Dettman

  ‘I stink,’ she greeted Jim and the clean stroller. ‘We have to go back.’

  ‘We have to pick up the ring at four.’ He was keeping his eye on the jeweller’s lane, concerned that once lost from sight, it would be lost forever. ‘I’ll buy you a dress,’ he said.

  ‘I need soap. I can’t stand the smell of myself until four.’

  ‘I’ll get some soap. Wait here.’

  He disappeared into the crowd and she waited, watching the cars and the hordes moving about their business like bull ants on a claypan, listening to Sydney’s disapproving growl, while Jimmy chortled, happy now that he’d got rid of that cow’s milk. She wondered what Jim would buy her; probably a baggy brown frock, big enough to fit Sissy. At least it wouldn’t stink.

  He returned with a brown paper parcel, and it reminded her of Laurie’s parcels. He gave her a bar of green perfumed soap and a bottle of lavender water. There are few worse stinks than a baby’s regurgitated breakfast. He’d smelt her.

  She opened the parcel in the ladies’. He hadn’t bought brown. She tossed the string, the paper and shook the frock free. It was a beautiful deep green linen, and she loved it, loved the style, the colour — until she saw the price tag, which almost floored her. She rewrapped that frock fast and took it back to him.

  ‘That’s too expensive, you drongo. Take it back.’

  ‘I know what it cost, Jen.’

  ‘Then stop trying to buy me.’

  ‘It looked like you.’

  ‘I look like ten bob a week, what my father pays Granny to feed and clothe me and my kids. That dress cost three months worth of ten-bob notes. Take it back.’

  ‘You stink,’ he said. ‘Get changed.’

  ‘I know I stink. I’m eighteen years old and I’ve got three kids —’

  ‘And one of them is mine. Do you like it?’

  ‘Who cares what I like? Stop being so damn nice to me all the time.’

  ‘If you’d stop being so spiky with me, I might be able to stop being so nice. I bought it for you because I wanted to see you wearing it, so stop arguing and wear it.’

  ‘Stop trying to turn me into someone I’m not.’

  ‘Then stop trying to think yourself into being something you’re not.’

  She stood with her head down, juggling the parcel, while half of Sydney walked by, uncaring that she was dripping tears on the brown paper. No one stared up here. No one sneered. They were all too busy going about their own business to worry about a tall bloke in an army hat and a weeping girl in a sicked-on navy print — and a baby determined to get out of his stroller. She shook the tears from her lashes, sat Jimmy down and opened her handbag. She’d saved her talent quest money for something special. That dress was special. She flicked away more tears with her index finger and removed the envelope, removed the still-crisp five-pound note and pushed it at him.

  He didn’t want her money but took the envelope he’d seen presented to her on stage at the Willama Theatre. ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘Who else but you would carry a five-pound note around for five years?’

  ‘Take it.’

  ‘All I want is what that announcer chap said the night you won it, Jen: the golden girl with the golden voice . . . and I want to see Henry Fonda’s new movie. It’s on at a theatre around the corner. Get washed up while we grab some tickets.’

  He left her standing. She watched him disappear with Jimmy around the corner before she walked back to the public toilet and stripped to her petticoat. Washed with the perfumed soap, sprinkled lavender water on her bra, splashed it all over her petticoat. She washed Jimmy’s sicked-on things with perfumed soap, wrapped them wet into wet napkins, with the soap, then wrapped the lot in brown paper and tied it with string. Lavender water bottle in her handbag, handbag over her shoulder — it was still a classy handbag, good enough for that dress. Wished she could see more of that dress than she could in a mouldy eighteen by twelve inch mirror.

  She loved the colour, which was too dark to be a grass green and too blue to be emerald green. And the shoulder pads, not big ones, enough though to make it sit as it was supposed to sit. She loved the weight of it, the way the skirt fell, not quite straight, but not yet flared, maybe cut on the bias. Granny would know. A quality fabric, she’d say. The belt was as stiff as a board, its buckle covered with the green linen, the small buttons on the bodice covered too. She loved him thinking that it looked like her.

  Did men look through different eyes, see the same person differently? Did a man’s taste in women’s clothing reflect the way he saw the woman or just what he liked? Vern had bought a classy classic suit for Gertrude and the prettiest blouses. Laurie had bought low-cut, tight-fitting red for Jenny, a gruesome lime green that stood out in a crowd, a snakeskin handbag — expensive handbag.

  She slipped it over her shoulder and felt like Princess Elizabeth, as long as she didn’t look down. Her walking shoes didn’t look like Princess Elizabeth’s.

  There was no sign of Jim and Jimmy. She stood alone on that city street in the heart of Sydney, but he’d said the theatre was just around the corner. That was where he’d be.

  And maybe she’d been meant to walk alone to him, because on the corner there was a shop window full of shoes, and if she’d still believed there was a fair God up there watching over his children, she would have thanked him for putting that shoe shop where he had. Jim’s frock deserved better than worn walking shoes.

  She was eighteen years old, and for the first time in her life she entered a shoe shop and chose a pair of shoes. Not the school clodhoppers Norman had bought for her, or the solid walking shoes Granny bought, not Laurie’s tarty red sandals either, but a pair of black court shoes with two-inch heels. They weren’t cheap. She received sixpence change from a one-pound note, but they were worth it.

  The shop man wrapped her walking shoes, and she continued on around the corner, walking like Princess Elizabeth, walking so proud to where Jim stood waiting beside a poster advertising Henry Fonda — and his smile wider than Henry Fonda could ever smile, those china cup teeth looking beautiful, looking like he’d finally grown into them, or they’d grown into being a part of him.

  She shoved her damp brown paper parcel into the string bag with her walking shoes, then looked him in the eye.

  ‘Just in case I don’t ever get around to saying it to you again, you’re probably the only truly beautiful man in this world,’ she said.

  ‘And you’re marrying me tomorrow.’

  ‘I need my father’s permission.’

  ‘Wear that dress and that smile and they won’t care how old you are,’ he said.

  The movie was good. Jimmy sat wide eyed through the first ten minutes, swapped laps for the next fifteen, then napped in Jim’s arms until it ended just after four thirty.

  It was five o’clock when they picked up the ring. The jeweller had engraved the inside. Jen and Jim, 1942. She hadn’t known Jim had asked for it to be engraved. Tiny, perfect copperplate writing, and how could anyone write that perfectly with an engraving tool? Hidden though, once it was on her finger, their secret. Jen and Jim, 1942. Jenny Morrison and Jimmy Hooper all grown up.

  She took it off and they looked at it again on the train ride home, then he slid it back onto her finger and she felt married to him.

  There was a crowd on that train, but the crowd looked more familiar. The streets from station to boarding house, even the traffic on the roads looked more familiar.

  They saw no sign of Nobby and Rosemary that night. Jenny fried yesterday’s bread in lard and they ate it with Gertrude’s apricot jam while Jimmy demolished two Weet-Bix and washed them down with a banana.

  ‘He’s half ape,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Look at his father,’ Jim said.

  They tucked him into his cot with a bottle of his condensed milk brew. After his effort today, he’d drink condensed milk until he was back home with Granny’s goats. They stood together then, leaning out of their open window, looking at rooftops,
over rooftops, pointing to landmarks, the church they’d seen, the road that led down to the local shopping centre, Jenny knowing where she was now, where the station was, the butcher, where she’d bought the lard, the greengrocer where they’d bought bananas.

  Jimmy’s empty bottle hit the cot rails, and seconds later hit the floor, then Jim reached for her hand, his thumb playing with the gold band. Jen and Jim, 1942. They stood close until Jimmy rolled over onto his stomach. Minutes later, his breathing told them he was down for the count.

  They kissed then. Words were no longer necessary, there was no more right or wrong. It was, and that’s all that was. They were Jen and Jim, 1942, and Jen and Jim were always meant to be.

  It wasn’t like in the cellar. The bed was wide and comfortable, a wash of moonlight stole in through the window, playing over them, a slim slit of passage light peeped beneath the door, noises in the passage, the wireless playing downstairs. He used two of his army-supplied rubbers. The army had the best of everything; they’d supply the best rubbers.

  It wasn’t like in the cellar at all. It was like drowning in paradise, then a resurrection to life. And whatever mixed-up beings they might have been in their former lives, they metamorphosed that night into one perfect and complete entity.

  VERN AND GERTRUDE

  ‘Are you trying to break a poor bloody man?’ Vern said.

  ‘Nice to see you too,’ Gertrude said.

  The car’s nose had come to a halt beside the chicken-wire fence. Gertrude stood behind her gate watching him extricate himself from behind the steering wheel. She’d heard his car coming, had steeled herself to deal with his daughters. When the car hadn’t stopped where it usually stopped, she’d steeled herself for the impact. No impact and no daughters with him today.

  ‘You knew that boy was getting leave and you let that little trollop chase up there after him?’

  ‘If you’re getting out of that car to make war, then stay in it,’ she said, but he was on his feet. She stood long enough to see his leg-throwing walk, to notice his walking stick and trodden down bedroom slippers, long enough to feel the wash of sadness, of pity, then she turned away and walked back to her house, leaving him to negotiate the short distance alone.

  ‘Don’t you close that door on me!’

  It hadn’t been in her mind to close her door — until he told her not to close it. She left a gap wide enough for his walking stick. He came inside.

  ‘You’re not welcome here if you’re in an argumentative mood,’ she said.

  ‘How much leave did they give him?’

  ‘A week.’

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘If you’d stop trying to dictate how that boy lives his life, he might have told you he was getting leave. He might have come home to spend it with you.’

  ‘Where are they staying?’

  ‘You’re hardly in a fit state to go up there and drag him home.’

  ‘I asked you where they are staying.’

  ‘In Sydney.’

  ‘Where in bloody Sydney, you frustrating bloody woman?’

  ‘Go home, Vern. I’ve got better things to do than put up with your ill humour.’

  ‘I’ve been welcome in this house all my life, and I’m not allowing that hot-pants little slut to ruin it.’

  ‘You’ve done a fair to middling job of ruining it yourself.’

  ‘All I asked is where they’re staying.’

  ‘I don’t know where they’re staying. All I know is that Jenny is sharing a room with the wife of one of Jim’s army mates. Now go home.’

  ‘Like hell, she is.’

  ‘Call me a liar again and I’ll hit you with your own cursed walking stick.’

  ‘You take offence too bloody easily, that’s your trouble. A man was half crippled, heartbroken, half out of his mind and he finds out in a letter that his brainless bloody son has got himself involved with her and joined up to get away from her. What the bloody hell was he supposed to think — even if he’d been capable of thinking?’

  ‘He was supposed to know better than to call me a liar — three times.’

  ‘You knew something was going on between them.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t — and if you think I didn’t feel as bad as you about what happened, then think again. He started coming down here on Sunday nights to play penny poker with Harry and Joey.’

  ‘And with her.’

  ‘She lives here! Did you expect her to dodge him like she had to dodge you?’

  ‘You’ve known for weeks that they’re sending him overseas and you didn’t tell me. I had to hear it third or fourth hand through Maisy Macdonald.’

  ‘You expect me to go crawling back to the door of a man who calls me a liar — three times — then gets his solicitor to send me letters, threatening to take me to court? A man who told me he’d have my grandson raised decently?’

  ‘I had those letters sent to her, not to you — and she’s sixteen bloody years old and not capable of raising dogs.’

  ‘She’s eighteen years old and doing a better job of raising that little boy than you did with your own — or he would have wanted to come home to spend his leave with you instead of pleading with her to save him from wasting his week in arguing with you, if you want to know the truth of it.’

  ‘You want to see that little trollop married to him.’

  Gertrude turned to the stove and moved her whistling kettle — minus its whistle — over the central hotplate. She picked up her teapot. ‘You’ve got two choices, Vern. You can sit down and drink tea with me or stand there ranting at my empty walls. Like your son, I’ve got better things to do than waste my time arguing with you. Make up your mind while I empty my teapot.’

  He was sitting when she returned, his walking stick propped against her table. She gave an inch.

  ‘Maisy told you that they’d gone up to Sydney?’

  ‘She told Margaret. She cuts her hair every week or two.’

  ‘Maisy booked the ticket. She drove Jenny in to the station. I didn’t want her going up there.’

  ‘When are they sending him overseas?’

  ‘He’s got leave until the twenty-sixth. I know no more than that.’

  ‘You don’t know where they’re sending him to?’

  ‘I doubt he knows. He wrote that they were sending his unit over to have a go at the Japs.’

  ‘He’s told that bloody solicitor to ignore my instructions, that he’s engaged to marry her.’

  ‘He could do a lot worse — and damn near did.’

  ‘Born of a dago trollop and your bastard of a husband, raised by your lunatic daughter and your fool of a son-in-law —’

  ‘If you and Margaret had kept your big mouths shut, Jim would never have known she’d had Jimmy. He must have written to her a dozen times or more after he left. She never wrote back to him. She had no intention of marrying him until you started threatening us with court.’

  She measured tea into the pot, poured boiling water, lifted his favourite mug from the dresser hook, fetched the milk from the Coolgardie.

  ‘You gave her the money for the trip.’

  ‘Jim sent money. Maisy paid for her ticket.’

  ‘Interfering bitch of a woman.’

  ‘She’s got a good heart — unlike a few I know.’

  ‘That boy is worth thousands —’

  ‘So are you. It doesn’t make you any easier to take.’ She slid the sugar basin down the table, sent a spoon after it. ‘If you’d listened to Jim when he’d tried to tell you he was breaking off his engagement instead of roaring yourself into a stroke, we wouldn’t have had a grandson. There was nothing between those two before your stroke. While you were in hospital, he started coming down here every night talking his heart out about you to someone who’d listen, which is more than you ever did, you selfish, pig-headed, money-hungry sod of a man.’

  He sugared his tea, stirred it longer than necessary. ‘Who’s looking after the other two?’

  �
��Who do you think?’

  ‘They’re not here.’

  ‘They sleep here. Maisy and Elsie have them during the day.’

  Maybe he sneered. Maybe it was his partial paralysis. She ignored the sneer and sat, drank her tea, wondering if all that was left between them after seventy years was blood — and a grandson of their blood. Watched him pick up his mug with his right hand, pleased to see him using it. Watched him support it with the left. She hadn’t expected him to regain a lot of use of his right hand, hadn’t expected to see him walking as well as he did.

  ‘What are you doing slopping around town in bedroom slippers?’

  ‘You don’t live in town.’

  ‘You’ve never worn bedroom slippers in your life.’

  ‘You never spent enough time in my bedroom to know what I wore.’

  ‘I spent enough —’

  ‘I don’t have to do the bloody things up, do I?’

  ‘If you got rid of some of that belly you’d be able to reach your feet to do them up.’

  ‘That’s right. Kick a man when he’s down.’

  ‘Get a pair of boots on your feet and you might feel like a man.’

  ‘You’re rubbing it in that I’m not a bloody man —’

  ‘I’m telling you to get a pair of boots on your feet.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you marry me?’

  ‘I would have left you in a week — and the longer I know you the better I know it.’

  ‘All I ever wanted was you.’

  ‘Only because you couldn’t have me.’ She drank her tea, watched his mouth at the mug. Maybe she loved him. Maybe you can’t kill that sort of love. ‘We’ve got a grandson, Vern; a beautiful, smart little boy who can wed us tighter than any wedding ring ever could — if you’ll let him.’

  ‘He hasn’t got a drop of your blood in him.’

  ‘Don’t let the name I go by fool you into forgetting who I am — and whatever blood is running in that fool of a girl’s veins, then a damn good dose of it got itself transfused into me. She’s mine — as much as, more than, Amber ever was.’