Thorn on the Rose

by Joy Dettman

  On Friday morning she walked down to the telephone box and ordered a taxi, and while waiting for it to arrive she carried her belongings downstairs and piled them beside the stroller outside the lodgers’ side door.

  Lila lived at a boarding house not far from the factory. They had no vacant rooms but Jenny could leave her belongings in Lila’s room while she looked for a place of her own. The taxi driver carried her case to the door, maybe thinking she’d come down in the world. He held his hand out for the money anyway. She paid him. Jimmy didn’t like the atmosphere. He clung to her skirt while she dragged her case inside and down the back to number eleven, where she left her load in the corner behind Lila’s door. Keys weren’t necessary in Myrtle’s house. In this place they probably were.

  She spent the day searching for a room. She could get one at a hotel, but couldn’t afford to stay there for two months. She and Jimmy spent the night in Lila’s bed, and three in one bed didn’t make for a good night’s sleep. On Saturday the girls went room hunting together. There were no empty rooms in Sydney, or not to be had by pregnant widows with two-year-old sons. There were signs in a few windows advertising private board, but one look at Jimmy and the rooms were no longer available. It was hopeless.

  On Monday, when Lila left for work, Jenny left to find a Salvation Army uniform. Maybe they could find her a room. She wasn’t asking for charity.

  Then the sky started leaking, and it seemed every Salvo in Sydney must have been inside keeping dry, or doing whatever they did when they weren’t rattling tins. She had a phone number, but not with her; she hadn’t been thinking straight when she’d left Lila’s, had just wanted to leave.

  And as if they weren’t wet enough, Jimmy had to go and wet his pants. And she should have thought of that, too.

  He was a big boy. He didn’t like wetting his pants. He howled. ‘I wan’ Myrtie’s house. I wan’ Myrtie.’

  ‘She’s gone, darlin’. We’re going to find another house.’

  ‘I wan’ Myrtie’s house.’

  ‘It’s no use wanting, so stop your wanting.’

  ‘I wan’ marta soup,’ he bawled.

  ‘We’ll get some tomato soup at Lila’s house.’

  ‘I not wan’ dat soup. I wan’ Myrtie’s marta soup.’

  On some future day, when someone says Sydney, I’ll think of tomato soup, the smell of urine and pushing this stroller, Jenny thought as she pushed on through heavier rain. In some future year, this is all I’ll remember of Sydney.

  It came to her, out of the rain, out of the cramp in her belly, and it was so obvious she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before, or maybe her brain had frozen solid and that’s why she’d thought of it.

  They caught a train to Myrtle’s station. Jimmy recognised it and stopped whingeing. Jenny was finally taking him home where he belonged.

  She pushed him up to the front door he was more familiar with than she. She lifted him from the stroller, so he might plead her case, then she lit a cigarette. Sometimes there is no place else to go but into a cigarette packet.

  Little hands slapping that fancy door. ‘Myrtie, I wan you. Myrtie,’ he called. ‘Myrtie. I wan’ marta soup.’

  He got that door open. A little. Enough.

  ‘You love him, Myrt. If I can stay here until this one is born, you can have your own baby to love.’

  THE LANDLADY

  ‘How dare you?’ Raised in a mansion, educated at an exclusive school for girls, given all that her young heart desired until her marriage failed to produce a child, the wound of her failure was raw. ‘How dare you bring that little boy back here?’

  Never, never had she let her rooms to couples with children. The sound of her nephew’s tears had been an abrasion on her barren womb. She’d locked the door of number five the day Richard and his wife had returned to New Zealand. It had remained locked — until the Hoopers, and had Robert not been home on leave, it wouldn’t have been unlocked.

  ‘It’s only for a week,’ he’d said.

  The room was directly over her parlour. She heard too much of what went on in it. And that dear smiling little boy crawling to her across the lawn. And the feel of him in her arms.

  She’d made a mistake and would not make another.

  Myrtle had watched Jimmy leave in the taxi on Friday, a blur of a day. She’d wept when she’d stripped the bed in number five, when she’d locked that door; had howled into a small sweater she’d been knitting for him.

  She’d tried to write to Robert, attempting to justify to him, and to herself, what she’d done.

  That girl is not who I had believed her to be. She has got herself with child and Lord knows who is the father. She has no idea of a child’s needs. Jimmy has been more my child . . . my heart is breaking.

  Page after page she’d written, a tirade of accusations and self-pity, which she’d later shredded.

  A terrible weekend.

  This morning, she’d found some justification for her actions. That girl needed to be with her family at a time like this. She should have gone home months ago. In forcing the issue, Myrtle had done the right thing. She’d felt better this morning.

  And now they were back, and that little boy’s arms were reaching out to her, eager to cuddle away that desperately lonely weekend. She stepped away from him, steeling herself against him.

  But she left the door ajar, and Jimmy didn’t need much of a gap to squeeze through. Jenny looked the other way and drew on her cigarette, aware he would need to win this battle for her. And he was winning. He was in, his arms wrapped around one of Myrtle’s solid legs, melting her. She lifted him, and he knocked her reading glasses askew with his kisses.

  ‘You’ve let him wet his pants.’

  ‘I’m going to do the same in a minute. Could I . . .’

  Myrtle cleared the doorway and Jenny entered, making haste to Myrtle’s private bathroom. She was slow to vacate it, and when she did, they were standing where she’d left them, Jimmy demolishing a banana. Jenny watched it grow shorter, wanting a bite before it was all gone, but Myrtle clung to Jimmy and he clung to his banana.

  ‘You were born to be someone’s mother,’ Jenny said as she stepped around them and outside to the porch’s small shelter. ‘It seems so logical. I need somewhere to stay until a baby I don’t want is born; you’ve got an empty room and want a baby you can’t have. Between us, we’ve got the perfect solution to each other’s problems.’

  Myrtle attempted to put Jimmy down but he didn’t want to go down. Something he couldn’t understand was going on. Myrtie’s house was warm and she had bananas and tomato soup. Outside was wet and cold. He clung to warmth — and to Myrtle.

  ‘I love this little boy,’ she wailed. ‘I’d take him as my own today.’

  ‘I know you would, but he’s mine.’

  Myrtle disentangled Jimmy’s arms from her neck. ‘You have to go, my darling boy.’

  ‘Two months, that’s all I’m asking for, Myrt. In two months’ time you can have your own baby.’

  ‘Please leave, Mrs Hooper.’

  ‘I’m still Jenny, just pregnant. And it’s raining.’ Though not raining enough. She needed a downpour.

  ‘I wan’ marta soup,’ Jimmy said to Myrtle’s back. She was getting away.

  ‘She hasn’t got any soup, darling. She’s used it all up in her veins — and she didn’t even bother heating it up.’

  The sky came to her rescue. It released its water. Even Jimmy knew she wasn’t taking him out in that. He scrambled from the stroller and was back up the steps.

  ‘He knows what he wants and he’s not too proud to beg for it,’ Jenny said, watching him throw himself at Myrtle’s leg.

  ‘Lord help me . . .’

  ‘He won’t, but the Salvos will. They’ve got places for unmarried mothers. The phone number for them will be in your phone book.’ Jenny leaned against the brick wall, taking a smidgen of weight from her feet while removing another cigarette. ‘They find homes for the babies.’ />
  ‘What sort of girl are you?’

  Jenny shrugged, struck a match and, guarding the flame with cupped hands, she got her cigarette burning and drew in a gasp of smoke. ‘Pregnant, desperate,’ she said. ‘At the end of my tether. Tired, wet —’

  ‘To give your own flesh and blood to a stranger?’

  ‘Until you found out I was pregnant, you weren’t a stranger. So far I’ve only offered it to you.’

  ‘Children are not currency to be exchanged.’

  ‘Trading came before shops and lawyers. Trading something you’ve got too much of for something the other one hasn’t got is as old as time.’

  ‘You give me this little boy today and I’d defy God to take him from me,’ Myrtle howled, crushing him to her breasts.

  Jenny drew in more smoke. ‘I considered jumping off the bridge and leaving him to you in my will, but his grandfather would take him away from you.’

  ‘Then take him home to his grandfather.’

  ‘He’s mine.’ She sucked on that cigarette, looked at the length of it, annoyed that it was burning away so fast. ‘And I can’t go home, not like this.’

  ‘If you were, as you say, taken advantage of, your family will understand.’

  ‘Sure.’ She sucked more of the cigarette’s length away. ‘Jimmy’s grandfather will have me in court in a week and Granny will probably give evidence for him.’

  Myrtle didn’t believe her. It was written all over her face. Jenny sighed, too tired for this, feet too cold, backbone becoming unhinged from her hip bones. She had to sit down and there was no place to sit down, so she leaned against cold bricks, sighed and inhaled more smoke.

  ‘It’s all about lightning not striking twice in the same place. I was raped when I was fourteen. The girls my grandmother looks after are mine.’

  ‘You disgust me.’

  ‘That’s not news,’ she said, pitching her butt into the rain. Sheets of rain falling now, water rushing from the roof down a pipe and into the earth. Where did it all go to? So much she didn’t know. But she knew she wasn’t staying here to see Myrtle’s disgust. She stepped out into the rain.

  ‘If you can bring yourself to look after him for half an hour, I’ll get the Salvos’ number from the exchange.’

  ‘Get out of that rain.’

  Hair flattened, rain running down her neck, shoes leaking, Jenny walked through the downpour to the gate, refusing to look back.

  ‘Get out of the rain, you fool of a girl! You can make your phone call inside.’

  Myrtle gave her a towel, then disappeared with Jimmy into her bedroom. Jenny left her shoes to drip on the doorstep, took her coat off and shook it, hung it up and walked barefoot into the parlour.

  The telephone was on the wall. She glanced at it as she walked to the fire, where, supporting herself with a hand on the mantelpiece, she warmed each foot. Across the passage, Myrtle was attempting to talk Jimmy into a nice warm bath. Jenny wouldn’t have refused the offer but Jimmy wanted soup first.

  ‘We’ll make you nice and warm, my pet. Then we’ll make some tomato soup.’

  ‘Dat’s my bed,’ he said, reclaiming his world.

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘Dat’s my car.’

  ‘You can play with your cars while I make soup. Come now.’

  ‘I wan’ soup now!’

  ‘Do as you’re told, Jimmy, or we’ll go back to Lila’s house,’ Jenny said.

  He didn’t want Lila’s house. He stopped arguing.

  There was a telephone book on a shelf beneath the phone. She was flipping through it when they entered the parlour, Jimmy bathed and clad in an unfamiliar sweater and serge overalls, red bunny-ear slippers. Myrtle went to the kitchen. Jimmy ran to Jenny. He wanted Myrtle’s soup, but he wanted Jenny to have soup with him. Little diplomat, James Hooper Morrison, he’d manoeuvre his women back together.

  Jenny allowed him to lead her by the hand as far as the kitchen door. Myrtle had cut the crusts from a slice of bread and was pouring soup over it, turning it to a pink sop. Jenny would have offered the soup in a cup, offered the bread uncut, crusts left on for dipping. Myrtle lifted him up to his high chair, tied on his pinny — like her own coverall pinny.

  ‘Have you made your call?’

  ‘I can pay you two months’ rent in advance.’

  ‘It’s out of the question.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s out of the question.’

  ‘You’ve got a barbed-wire fence built around you, Myrt. You can’t climb over it and won’t crawl under it, not even when there’s a baby waiting for you on the other side.’

  Little bird mouth open, waiting for soup. Myrtle’s hand shaking, she spooned soup in, treating him like a baby when he was Jenny’s little man.

  ‘You’re locked into some safe little world by lack of imagination.’ Myrtle spooned soup and Jimmy swallowed. ‘If the church offered you a baby, you’d take it fast enough,’ Jenny said.

  ‘There are laws to life. There are procedures that must be followed,’ Myrtle said. ‘Jimmy can stay with me. He’ll be better off in familiar surroundings.’

  ‘And when I come back for him he’ll be yours. If I go, he goes. That’s the law to my life, my procedure that must be followed,’ she said, and she left them to it and walked to the telephone.

  Myrtle’s eyes followed that swollen stomach, greedy for what lay curled within it. Her feeding spoon wavered. Jimmy’s bird mouth was forced to chase.

  If her feeding style was erratic, her thoughts were chaotic. Was it out of the question, the room for two more months? Was a baby out of the question?

  Adoption was. She’d known that the day Robert had put on his uniform. They’d be considered too old when he came home — if he came home. Trade. That fool of a girl! As if you could barter babies. Just an ignorant factory girl, that’s all she was.

  A factory girl, yes, ignorant, no, but a fool of a girl anyway. As if Myrtle would be a party to . . . to . . . to . . .

  It had been done, and done many times without benefit of judge or lawyer. A girl she’d gone to school with had been raised by a well-off aunt while her tribe of brothers and sisters had fought daily for basic survival.

  If Jenny was prepared to disappear . . .

  Ridiculous. She’d come back and claim the child. That had happened here in Sydney not long ago. It was in the newspaper. A grandmother had raised her granddaughter as her own for seven long years, then the mother, having wed, was given the child by the courts. Far better never to have a child than to have one only to lose it. The heartbreak would kill.

  ‘All gone, pet. All gone,’ she said.

  Jenny was back at the door, watching her wipe Jimmy’s face, remove his pinny. ‘You were born to be a mother.’

  ‘God has a plan for us all. Motherhood was not in his plan for me.’

  ‘How do you know that I’m not part of his plan for you, that this isn’t exactly what he had planned for you all along?’ Myrtle turned away to the sink and Jenny leaned against the doorjamb, too tired for this but persevering. ‘What has changed so much about me in a week? You seemed to like me. Apart from my shape, how have I changed, Myrt?’

  Myrtle swung to face her. She was weeping. ‘You weren’t honest with me.’

  ‘I’ve always been honest with you.’

  ‘I asked about those girls you sewed for. You could have told me then.’

  ‘I told you they were mistakes Granny was raising — which is the truth. And if you knew my life, you wouldn’t expect me to go around telling everyone every single detail about it.’

  ‘Look at the state you’ve got yourself into!’

  ‘Get me your Bible and I’ll swear on it that I was raped on New Year’s Eve. Call Mr Whiteford at work tomorrow. He’ll tell you.’

  ‘Tell me what you no doubt told him —’

  ‘He’ll tell you he was there, that they stole his car!’ Jenny said, turning back to the telephone. But she changed her mind. ‘I thought you were di
fferent, Myrt, but you’re just like every la-di-da Mother Grundy I’ve ever met. You see a lump of something on the footpath and because it’s the right colour and shape you think, oops, dog’s dung. Nine times out of ten it isn’t dung at all, but you’re not going to put your foot in it to find out, are you? Hold your nose and walk around it, Myrt.’

  ‘You have no right to attack me!’ Myrtle howled.

  ‘And you’ve got no right not to believe me either. I went to the club on New Year’s Eve with Wilfred and I sang my heart out all night. We were in the car, on our way home, when five Yank sailors opened the door, threw Wilfred out on his head and drove me down to a beach and raped me. Five of them. They were taking turns on me when I passed out.’

  A green and white striped tea towel mopping her tears, Myrtle attempted to flee the room but Jenny blocked the doorway.

  ‘I woke up naked, my bra twisted around my neck, my dress half the beach away and my underwear gone. How would you like to catch a taxi home with no pants on? How would you like to know that a pair of pink pants you repaired with white cotton are some Yankee boy’s souvenir from Sydney?’

  Myrtle tried to push her way free, but Jenny stood firm.

  ‘You’d feel violated, Myrt. That’s how you’d feel. You’d feel so violated that you’d burn a brand-new dress you loved. And every time you put on a similar pair of pants, you’d want to vomit, so you’d throw them in the incinerator too, and every time you thought about it, you’d want to jump off the bridge so it would finally be over and you wouldn’t have to see yourself being treated like the town slut. You’re so bloody pure, so full up with your holier than thou sensibilities, there’s no room left inside you for anything new to grow. That’s why you’ve never had your own baby. It’s got nothing to do with God’s plan.’

  Jimmy was worried; he didn’t know what was going on. Jenny let Myrtle out of the kitchen. She heard the bedroom door slam, heard the fancy passage light fitting rattle its glass, then she lifted Jimmy from his high chair and carried him to a chair close to the parlour fire, held him close and rocked him. In minutes he was asleep, as was she.