Thorn on the Rose

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Then keep your doubts to yourself.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come to me when it happened? If you had the boy’s name, why didn’t you report him to the police?’

  ‘Because if I’d come to you, you would have said to go to the police. And because they would have found out I had three kids and told you, and you would have thought I was lying like you think I’m lying now — and because Wilfred didn’t want to report it. He’s one of those poofter blokes, and the police probably would have locked him up for sodomy — if there is such a thing in your pristine little world.’

  Myrtle ran for the wireless to turn the volume higher. Jenny pursued her, turned her own knob, and lost the station.

  ‘I was lucky I didn’t catch VD. That’s what I was worried about. They reckon that half the Yanks have got it.’

  Myrtle fought for control of the wireless. She found a screeching soprano and Jenny sang ‘Ave Maria’ with her, but an octave lower.

  ‘You have a beautiful voice. A beautiful voice!’

  ‘So they tell me. I had a beautiful life with you and Jimmy, too, until they spat on it. As if I’d ever want any man touching me after Jim. As if I could ever stand another man touching me. I hate every one of them.’ She picked up the watch and pitched into Myrtle’s rubbish bin.

  ‘That’s an expensive watch, Jenny!’

  ‘Which must make it a bit better. I mean, a rapist who wears an expensive watch can’t be all bad, can he?’

  ‘I can’t deal with your sarcasm. I asked the wrong question and I’m sorry. You hear stories about the American Negroes going with our girls. I —’

  ‘Don’t want a half-black baby, Myrt?’

  ‘Everything I say is wrong.’

  ‘It will be white. The black Yanks don’t get around with the white Yanks. Billy-Bob was a baby-faced blond. Now give me my cigarettes and leave me alone.’

  She took her cigarettes and sat before the fire, watching the smoke being drawn up the chimney. Myrtle came to fiddle with the photographs spread along her mantelpiece. Robert was there, clad in shirt and cravat, a younger Myrtle beside him. Jimmy was there. The Yank baby would be up there one day, waving his stars and stripes — and probably the image of Hank the Yank.

  ‘This . . . this deception, this waiting is so very stressful for me, Jenny. You must understand.’

  ‘I understand that your stress is driving me mad. I could at least walk at night.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous on the streets at night.’

  ‘What worse can happen to me, Myrt?’

  ‘Women are murdered.’ She took the photograph of Robert from its place and stood a while looking it in the eye. ‘I have such terrible fear, for you, for the child and for Robert. God chose for me to be barren. Am I going against his will? Will he punish me for my lies?’

  ‘Any God who sits up there flipping through the pages of his account book working out who to punish next isn’t worth worrying about.’

  ‘I was raised in the church.’

  ‘Me too. My father has been a church fanatic all his life. I sat in church every Sunday from when I was three years old and absolutely believed that God was sitting up on a cloud, watching over me and my missing mummy. I woke up to him when they found my missing mummy in a madhouse and sent her home to us cured — except she wasn’t. I was ten years old and she loathed the sight of me and I never knew why.’

  Her cigarette was gone. She tossed it into the coals and watched it spurt green flame — wondered for a moment if Myrtle’s theory on smokes being poisonous might be fact, then shrugged and lit another.

  ‘I was fourteen, still at school, when our neighbours’ twins raped me. They were drunk. That was their excuse. My mother wasn’t. She lied about me going after the twins, lied to my father, the church fanatic, who was too ashamed to come near me, and who ended up trying to marry me off to one of the bastards — for my good name’s sake — or his.

  ‘I let them plan their wedding. I let them fix up my mother’s wedding dress for me and make a wedding cake, then the night before I was supposed to get married, I threw her wedding dress down Granny’s lavatory pit and took off to Melbourne. I ended up pregnant again. It was my fault that time, but if they hadn’t been trying to marry me off, I wouldn’t have gone to Melbourne. Not that anyone cared about that. After the second one, I wasn’t fit to walk the streets according to most in town, including my own sister.

  ‘Then along came Jim. I’d known him nearly all my life. He knew everything about me, but he reached down into the dunghill everyone had made of my life and he pulled out some lost part of me. He got me singing again. And I loved him. I loved everything about him. I loved making love with him. Do you know why he died, Myrt?’

  Myrtle didn’t know why. She shook her head.

  ‘Because God has got my name written down on a dog-eared page in his account book and it keeps on falling open at that same page, so he has to punish me again for my most grievous sin of living. I was supposed to die like my three brothers and sister died at birth.’

  ‘Don’t —’

  ‘It’s true. But don’t worry, your page is clean. He won’t kill Robert. And he’s not trying to kill me either. He’d miss his favourite punching bag. Now I’m going for a walk.’

  Tonight Myrtle didn’t attempt to stop her. She followed her out to the gate, pleaded with her to take care, then watched at her window, at her gate for an hour, until Jenny returned with four large packets of cigarettes.

  ‘Are you trying to kill that child?’

  ‘I’m trying to survive it. Go to bed and leave me alone tonight — please, Myrt.’

  It was their worst night. Come morning, Myrtle was afraid to enter her own parlour. She attempted to open the squeaking door silently, and was hit by the maroon velvet cushion, white tape dangling from it like spiders’ legs.

  ‘You said you’d do anything and this morning you’re doing it.’

  ‘Don’t start, Jenny.’

  ‘You’re almost nine months pregnant. It could come any time and no one will believe you.’

  ‘We should have gone down to Melbourne.’

  ‘God wants you to have a baby, Myrt. He’ll work it out for you. Now put it on.’

  Myrtle placed the cushion on a chair and turned on the wireless.

  Again it flew, and Jenny sang, to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’.

  There was a landlady named Myrtle,

  who lived in a shell like a turtle.

  Until one fine day, she decided to play,

  and Myrtle, the turtle proved fertile.

  ‘They’ll hear you upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll get louder, unless you put your cushion on.’

  ‘Please, Jenny —’

  ‘Myrtle the turtle was glowing, her stomach was definitely showing . . . Just try it on for me.’

  ‘Shush!’

  Brussels had been liberated. It was on the news! The Allies had the Germans on the run. ‘There’ll be an end to it soon,’ Myrtle said.

  ‘I was having my hair cut when it started. I was fifteen.’

  ‘Shush.’

  German retreats, pitched battles in the Pacific, then Myrtle surrendered. She slid her arms through the shoulder straps and allowed Jenny to tie the dangling tapes, tie on a coverall pinny.

  ‘You look ten years younger,’ Jenny said. ‘You look thinner, too — well, everywhere else you do.’

  Was it any wonder? Myrtle’s nerves were at breaking point.

  A long, long month September and the Yank baby was making no attempt to leave security for the unknown. Jenny wanted it out. Wanted it done.

  ‘Jimmy came early. Margot came early.’

  Every day Myrtle rose in hope that this would be the day. Every night she went to bed, hoping to be awakened before dawn.

  Then, in the late afternoon of the third day in October, the pains began. They’d been coming on and off for a couple of days but this time they were stronger and they kept on coming.

  Myrtle g
ot Jimmy to bed at seven then returned to the kitchen to sit watching the clock.

  ‘Is it . . .?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘You might spread a few old towels around the bathroom floor.’ That’s what Granny had done with Georgie, spread towels on the lean-to floor.

  Myrtle did as she was bid then returned to stare at that swollen belly, almost ripe for the picking. And suddenly she knew that, like Adam, she had been tempted by forbidden fruit.

  ‘I can’t . . . I can’t do it, Jenny.’

  ‘Don’t take too much notice of that cushion. I’m the one doing it.’

  ‘It’s against God’s will.’

  ‘Man created God, not the other way around, and I’m having a baby, which is not the time for a religious discussion.’

  Myrtle went to the bedroom. Jenny pleased to be rid her, rode down another pain and watched the clock hand tick around the face. Long, aching, grinding pains and not enough space between them to walk to the bedroom. Held onto the doorframe and rode down a big one. Myrtle was on her knees beside her bed, head bowed.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable there. I’m going to need you very soon.’

  The bedroom floor was carpeted. She returned to the kitchen to ride down a bone-cruncher. Hank the Yank, slow to make a start, now seemed eager to vacate the premises.

  ‘I’ll come in there and have it on your carpet,’ Jenny yelled, and another pain hit, right on the tail of the last. She grasped the table, wondering if something had gone wrong, or if rapists’ babies knew what their fathers had done and just wanted it over. She could feel its head coming down as she’d felt Margot’s head coming down.

  Bathroom. ‘Myrtle!’ No time for the bathroom. Snatched the newspaper, tried to spread a few but it was coming out.

  She squatted. Granny had made her squat to deliver Georgie. No cast-iron bed to grip so she gripped the handles of the sink cupboard, and as another pain hit, she pushed. Gripped those handles too hard. The doors flew open and she fell to her backside, slamming her head against the refrigerator’s door.

  Like a turtle on its back; like a beetle with its legs in the air. But beetles and turtles don’t turn the air blue with their cursing of la-di-da landladies.

  ‘Save your breath, darlin’,’ Granny would say. ‘Save your breath and push it out. Stay calm, and use your head. The women in Africa have their babies in the fields then go straight back to work.’

  Thinking of Granny helped. Granny hadn’t allowed her to lie on her back when Georgie was born.

  ‘Giving birth is labour and I don’t know of any respectable labour you can do on your back,’ she’d said.

  Margot had come while she was standing up. God only knew what she’d been doing when they’d dragged Jimmy out.

  She rolled to her side, got her knees beneath her, then using the table leg for support, planted her feet in a squat. And she could see into that open sink cupboard. She could see a packet of cornflour, a packet of tea — and two large packets of cigarettes.

  ‘You la-di-da bugger of a woman!’ she yelled. ‘You said you hadn’t bought any.’

  Myrtle was at the wireless, turning the volume higher. Joseph Schmidt was belting out ‘A Star Fell From Heaven’ when the birth waters gushed to the kitchen floor. Myrtle stood frozen, fearing God’s retribution, fearing Robert was at that moment lying dead somewhere, punished for her deception; she was blind to what was going on in her kitchen between table and refrigerator. And without Granny’s hands to catch it, Hank the Yank nosedived to the floor, landing on the saturated headlines of the morning’s Herald.

  PACIFIC BATTLE. JAPANESE LOSSES HEAVY. US CASUALTIES LIGHT.

  That was as close as the infant was likely to get to its fathers — on a US boat somewhere in the Pacific.

  Flat on her backside, legs spread, Jenny eyed the bloody, white-coated thing, a cord still connecting it to her. She didn’t want to touch it. Wanted to yell, Get it away from me! but Granny wasn’t here to get it away. She had to touch it.

  Myrtle had boiled a pair of scissors, had boiled narrow white tape, wrapped scissors and tape in a sterile towel — and put them in the bathroom. But Jenny and the baby weren’t in the bathroom. She couldn’t remember what had happened with the others after the lump of them was out. Had something got stuck inside her? Would they have to call the ambulance and ruin everything?

  Joseph Schmidt hit a high note when she pushed again. The afterbirth slopped to the floor and it looked like a calf’s liver. Hoping it wasn’t her own liver. Jenny grabbed a tea towel, a green and white striped thing used a few hours earlier to dry the dinner dishes, and with it lifted the lump of life that should have been squawking and wasn’t. She peeled newspaper from it, wiped its face with the tea towel. Poor featureless little Yank, tiny face, flat nose. She wiped its nose. Maybe it had been in there too long, it was overdone or something.

  She gave it a shake. It didn’t like that. It wailed.

  Joseph Schmidt stopped singing to listen. Myrtle stopped trembling and ran to the kitchen.

  Her entry into the battlefield was too fast; soft-soled shoes on wet newspaper slide. She skated half a yard across the floor, arms flailing, then her feet went from beneath her and she landed hard, heavy, on her backside, skirt up, knee-length bloomers exposed.

  Two women sitting side by side, one of them holding the baby.

  ‘You’re a useless bugger of a woman, Myrt,’ Jenny sighed as she reached up to open a kitchen drawer. The scissors were kept in there, and a roll of kitchen twine. She used a length of twine to tie two granny knots, to tie a bow, to tie a knot in the bow while some famous tenor sang ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ loud enough to make a glass on the sink vibrate.

  Flesh is tough. Myrtle’s kitchen scissors weren’t sharp, but they chewed Hank the Yank free from that calf’s liver, each bite of those chewing scissors sending tremors through Jenny’s bowel. She was wrapping him in the striped tea towel when she noticed he had no rapist’s tools.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ she said, transferring the bundle into Myrtle’s arms.

  Almost done. She lit a cigarette and leaned back against the refrigerator door. It was almost done. She’d do the rest in a minute, or maybe in five minutes. It was almost over.

  IT’S A GIRL

  Wet and bloody newspapers strewn around her, the green and white wrapped gift in her arms, Myrtle was sobbing her heart out when Jenny turned the volume down on Richard Crooks.

  One night while in my bed I lay, there came to me a dream . . .

  She crossed the passage to the bathroom, taking her time. She washed, dressed, put on a touch of makeup, knowing now exactly how they were going to make the swap.

  An angel walked before me to guide my weary way . . .

  She took one last look at Myrtle and the striped tea towel. ‘Don’t you move a muscle.’

  Myrtle wasn’t sure she could move and had no intention of trying.

  The sun rose in the heavens, the street was paved with gold . . .

  African women had their babies and went straight back to work in the fields. They didn’t have to climb a staircase. Jenny climbed and counted those steps, walked down the passage to Miss Robertson’s door, the unquestionably respectable, maidenly Miss Robertson, teacher of Latin and arithmetic at a posh girl’s school.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you so late, Miss Robbo. I just popped in to give Myrt some money for Jimmy’s keep and found her with a baby on the kitchen floor. I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’

  Miss Robertson knew, and disapproved strongly of such goings-on in a woman of Myrtle’s age. She was, however, a Christian woman and thus prepared to do what must be done. She woke Mrs Collins.

  Myrtle looked sufficiently shaken, as did her kitchen, to have given birth. Miss Robertson wanted to call an ambulance. Myrtle told her she’d call her own doctor in the morning, that she required only a little help to the bathroom.

  Mrs Collins cleaned up the worst of the mess, Miss Robertson fetched the kitchen mop and bucket, while Jenn
y, more familiar with infants than they, sat holding the little Yank.

  By the time the big hall clock struck midnight, Myrtle and her infant were tucked up in bed, the two teachers had returned to their rooms and Jenny was allowed to collapse on Myrtle’s bed.

  They slept that night with the little Yank between them.

  Milk leaked from Jenny’s breasts while the infant sucked on a weak solution of boiled water and condensed milk, Jimmy watching from a distance, wondering what his women were doing with that white-clad bawling thing.

  ‘Roberta Anne,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Marion Louise?’ Myrtle said.

  ‘Deborah?’

  ‘Julia?’

  ‘Rebecca.’

  ‘Gladys.’

  ‘Cara Jeanette.’

  ‘Robert’s mother’s name is Jean. She’d like that.’

  So it was done. The baby was registered as Cara Jeanette Norris. Mother: Myrtle Joyce. Father: Robert John. Witnesses: Miss Matilda D. Robertson and Mrs Margaret J. Collins.

  The little Yank was three weeks old the day Jenny left Sydney. Myrtle booked and paid for Jenny’s ticket; packed Jimmy’s clothes into one of her own small cases while Jenny crushed what she could into the red case. The napkins wouldn’t be travelling south; they were in use again. The stroller wouldn’t be travelling; Jimmy was a big boy now.

  Myrtle ordered a taxi. She rode with them to the station. Jimmy didn’t like the white thing that had become stuck to his Myrtie but he liked riding in the taxi and he loved trains. He didn’t understand when Myrtie kissed him goodbye, when she kissed Jenny goodbye and attempted to press two ten-pound notes into her hand.

  ‘Don’t dirty it with money,’ Jenny said.

  ‘It’s for the hotel in Melbourne, for the napkins and your stroller.’

  ‘You’ve fed us for three months. We’ll call it even.’

  Myrtle placed the folded notes into Jimmy’s pants pocket. He liked things in his pockets, but Jenny took them. She had a great respect for money.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t promised to go home.’

  ‘Until I’m caring for her alone, I won’t believe she is mine. Each time you hold her I’m terrified you’ll change your mind.’