Pearl in a Cage

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Far better, Jenny-wren.’

  ‘Far better, Duddy-wen,’ she agreed.

  ‘Copy cat from Ballarat, stole a hat and wore it back,’ he chanted.

  ‘Copy fwog, sat on a log,’ she said and she laughed, and he laughed and kissed her curly head. Was there ever such an exquisite child? Was a man ever as happy as he?

  He wrote a cheque to the doctor, then a second, with a brief note, to the supplier of medical equipment in Richmond. He wrote a third to a large city store, enclosing with this one an order form found in a recent catalogue. He’d never owned a bicycle. His mother had considered them both ungainly and dangerous. Frequently now he found himself looking back to those halcyon days of boyhood, those five months of laughter in Box Hill.

  Never had Norman enjoyed Woody Creek winters. They were frosty, foggy and bitterly cold, but surely winter did not come that year? Surely July could not be at its end? A package arrived for him one Wednesday, a not so small square package. His bike arrived on the first Friday in August, and what a glorious month August was turning out to be.

  With no train to meet on Sunday, Norman mounted his shiny red bike early, Jenny tied into a child’s seat the bicycle company had fixed over the rear wheel. He hadn’t ridden in twenty years but, as with poker, he had not forgotten how.

  They rode to the bridge that first Sunday, Jenny chuckling when they hit a rut and all but came to grief, her eyes wide with wonder when they stopped to stare at two spoonbills, at a family of musk ducks at play. Norman had made a study of Woody Creek’s bird life. For half an hour they watched birds come and go, her little hands applauding their flight.

  Near midday he lifted her back into her seat, tied her in, then pedalled off down the forest road to Gertrude’s house, arriving pink-faced, bright-eyed and windblown. An enjoyable morning, filled with chuckles and learning, and when he lifted her down from the bicycle, her tiny arms clung a while.

  The unlovable who chance on love in odd places find it a soul-cleansing elixir. She was not of his blood, his line, but somehow of him, this magical, miraculous being.

  They ventured into the forest again the following Sunday and played guessing games when they heard the staccato sound of a hammer echoing through the trees. They found Vern Hooper’s car parked in the shade of the walnut tree beside a pile of sappy red timber. Norman leaned his bike against the fence, then, hand in hand, they crept up on the hammerers at the rear of Gertrude’s house.

  ‘Booo!’ they cried in unison, laughed when Gertrude dropped the beam she’d been supporting. She and Vern were constructing a lean-to.

  ‘Amber?’ Gertrude asked.

  ‘From all reports, very well, Mother Foote. It seems that my cousin is now squiring her around to theatres.’

  ‘When are they coming home?’

  ‘I imagine it will not be long. Reginald followed his father into the ministry. It seems that he will shortly be heading for the tropics, no doubt to save some black souls,’ Norman said. Charles had written:

  Your wife has been taking full advantage of her time in the city, however, I would now suggest the time has come to bring the visit to a close. Reginald is leaving for Port Moresby and will be away for six months. As you will be aware, nephew, my wife and I have many commitments . . .

  ‘You’ll be going down to bring them home?’

  He sighed, looked at the construction. Certainly he had considered making the trip. ‘The timing,’ he said. ‘Work commitments . . .’

  And, more importantly, his house, which would require a severe going-over. However, that was a problem for another day. The construction they were adding to the rear of Gertrude’s kitchen appeared more problematical. He studied the existing roof, the work already done on the new construction, attempting to make some sense of what they were doing, but finding little. They appeared to be flinging together a shelter, not a room. He watched Vern measuring timber for a rafter.

  ‘Might I suggest you cut it a mote longer, Vern, if you intend joining it to the existing rafter. Leakage,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not joining her in.’

  Vern was a farmer. He knew how to fling up a shed in a hurry. He started the cut as Norman knocked on existing wood.

  ‘You’re thinking of cutting a doorway,’ Gertrude said.

  ‘Simple enough, I believe, Mother Foote. Your construction could . . . would then become a part of the house.’

  Vern eyed him. He’d planned to have the shed up by nightfall and to have Elsie and Joey installed in it. He stopped cutting and followed Gertrude and Norman inside to take a look at her kitchen’s rear wall.

  ‘If we could do it without damaging my roof it would be a damn sight more convenient, Vern,’ Gertrude said.

  Not for Vern. He had his own agenda, but he called a smoko and they walked out to look at the pile of raw timber, at the second-hand corrugated iron he’d purchased at an auction. There was more than enough.

  He eyed Norman, who was lifting one end of a four-by-two and sighting down it, as his Bendigo uncle had taught him to sight down new beams, seeking out the bow. His Bendigo uncle had taught him the rudiments of measuring, sawing, the basics of hammering. During one of his stays in Bendigo, he and his uncle had built a lean-to onto the milking shed, built it so it didn’t leak.

  Norman dusted his hands and removed his jacket, aware that he should leave Vern to it, but also aware that with a little time and labour, a useful addition might be constructed.

  ‘Perhaps I might . . .’ He removed a pencil from the pocket of his jacket and sketched the existing building on green timber. ‘With a little effort, the new rafters could be fixed with half-joins and bolts to the existing rafters.’

  ‘I didn’t buy bolts.’

  Norman looked at Vern, nodded, then continued. ‘The new roofing could then be slid in beneath the old, which will prevent any leakage. The doorway would be cut between existing wall supports . . . and a solid crossbeam . . . there. If I make myself clear, Mother Foote.’

  ‘Gertrude,’ she said. ‘Trude, Gert. You’ve known me long enough, Norm.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The floor —’

  ‘Floor?’ Vern said. He hadn’t been planning to floor it.

  ‘Could be supported by those four-by-twos. Placed on edge. The kitchen floor, as I recall is . . . as low?’

  ‘Lower in places,’ Gertrude said.

  Vern straightened his back and lit a second cigarette. He could see a day’s work turning into ten, could see Gertrude’s imagination had been captured — and see her bed growing further out of reach.

  They found bolts enough in the station shed. They found a near new ladder there, then, armed with Norman’s box of tools, the two men drove again to Gertrude’s land where they looked at the kitchen roof and decided to wait until next weekend before pulling any nails out. A few clouds had blown in.

  The corner posts were in and solid. They could get the walls up, get the floor supports down. The floorboards would wait for next weekend. They worked all afternoon, worked until rain started falling; at six they sat down to one of Elsie’s bacon and egg pies and a mound of fried potatoes. Stayed late, stayed until Jenny fell asleep on Norman’s lap. They drove home at ten, in Vern’s car, the bicycle tied to the trunk.

  Norman carried Jenny to her cot unwashed, then fell to his own bed, where he slept like the dead until his station lad came knocking at his door. Grit in his bed when he awakened, more in Jenny’s. Grit in her hair when he brushed it.

  ‘What a fine pair we are,’ he said. ‘But what a fine day we had, Jenny-wren.’

  The letter came that afternoon.

  Dear Nephew,

  Your presence in Melbourne would be appreciated . . .

  Dear Charles,

  I have important commitments this weekend. Please find enclosed a cheque . . .

  THE RETURN

  She gave no warning of her intention. When she stepped from the train, for an instant he saw a stranger — two strangers. Cecelia had grown in
breadth, and her hair, a functional bob when he’d left her with Charles, was longer and frightfully frizzed. Amber was clad in a smart brown hat and a beige suit he had not previously sighted.

  ‘You look very smart, my dear,’ he greeted her. ‘And you, Cecelia,’ he lied.

  ‘The wind’s blowing my hair everywhere, Mummy,’ Cecelia said.

  ‘It was a better day in Melbourne,’ Amber said, evading his kiss. ‘Our case came up in the goods van.’

  ‘I will . . . see to it,’ he said, glancing towards Jenny, busy reading the pictures in his newspaper. Perhaps she didn’t recognise the strangers. Perhaps they didn’t recognise her with hair. Amber didn’t greet her.

  Sissy recognised her. She stood hands on her hips, staring. ‘She’s got curly hair too, Mummy. Who curled her hair?’

  Too familiar, that nasal whine. Memory rushed him and acid rose in his throat. He flinched from it, glanced quickly towards his house and swallowed bile, aware that his rooms, so comfortable for man and child, would be judged unfit for human habitation by Amber.

  ‘You gave no warning of your arrival, my dear. I had planned . . .’ Planned to pay Miss Dobson for a few hours of cleaning.

  ‘Were you expecting a drum roll?’

  ‘A word. One word, perhaps.’

  She had no words for him. She was walking away from him. He turned to the train. He had commitments.

  ‘The house,’ he said, ‘is . . . untidy.’

  ‘He who expects nothing is never disappointed,’ she tossed over her shoulder.

  He shuddered, got that train on its way west, swallowed more bile, shuddered again as he watched the train disappear over Charlie’s crossing, aware he should have snatched his exquisite child and gone with it.

  Too late now.

  The station lad came with Amber’s case. ‘Do you want me to take it over to the house, Mr Morrison?’

  Norman shook his head. He took the case, then reached out a hand to Jenny, who scrambled to her feet.

  ‘Shall we run the gauntlet together, my fair, pretty maid?’ he said. ‘Or shall we . . . run?’

  ‘Wide on da bike, Duddy.’

  ‘Would that we could, my Jenny-wren,’ he said. ‘Would that we could.’

  Amber met them on the verandah, an unwashed pot in her hand. ‘There’s filth everywhere —’

  ‘Three months —’

  ‘You’ve lived like pigs.’

  ‘We have managed —’

  ‘You disgust me!’

  ‘That, my dear, is no longer newsworthy.’

  He placed the case on the verandah and returned to his station, Jenny toddling happily by his side. She was enough. She and his station would be enough.

  They didn’t go home for lunch. Norman sent his lad across to the bakery to purchase a large beef pastie, which the three shared at noon. At two, he saw Amber and Cecelia walking across the railway lines. He didn’t see them return. Hoped they’d vacated his filthy house — moved into one of the hotel rooms — gone home to Gertrude. No. No. He did not wish that on his mother-in-law.

  At five that evening, he braved his back door. And smelled something cooking. Led by his nose, he entered a kitchen no longer his own. She’d been scrubbing. She served four meals from her scoured pots. He did the wrong thing by swapping Jennifer’s meat for his potato and gravy, but balanced his sin quickly with a comment on Cecelia’s hair.

  ‘Mummy bought curling tongs you make hot on the gas stove.’

  ‘My word,’ he said.

  ‘We haven’t got any gas here.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  He attempted to wash the dishes, but Amber wanted him gone from her kitchen. He went into the parlour, as yet his own. He got Jenny into her nightgown and sat with her on his lap until she slept.

  Cecelia refused to walk down to the lavatory in the dark. Amber offered a chamber-pot. Cecelia wanted a proper lavatory like in Melbourne. It had begun! Norman escaped to his railway station for a cigarette and a cup of tea. He returned at nine thirty and went with alacrity to his bed, his door closed.

  But she opened it and slid in beside him.

  ‘Weary after your big day, no doubt,’ he said.

  ‘There’s nothing to do but sit on the train,’ she said.

  In the dark, she sounded like his Amber. Her hand on his chest felt like her hand. He held it a moment, expecting her to remove it, to turn her back. She didn’t. He took it to his lips, kissed it.

  Love exists in the heart. When old love dies, memory of it lingers long in the mind, and in lower regions. Norman’s memory stirred. The touch of her limbs in that bed, the scent of her skin, her hair, the feel of that chaste cotton gown — and the mental image of what was beneath that gown. He sighed, a hopeless shuddering sigh, and he rose up from his pillow to claim her mouth. She did not spurn him, did not draw away.

  Along with the bicycle, he had on the specialist’s advice secured for himself a supply of prophylactics, by mail order in a plain brown-paper wrapper. There would be no more dead infants. He’d unwrapped the items and hidden them in the corner of his underwear drawer, which was now not as tidy as it had been then. The rattle of his search was somewhat cooling to the blood. He was not surprised when she moved to her own side of the bed. He slid from his side, removed the drawer, emptied it to the floor. And his hand found what it sought, but while he was preparing himself, she left his bed, left his room, his door slammed behind her.

  He followed her to Cecelia’s bedroom. ‘The specialist advised —’

  ‘Go to hell,’ she said.

  He went to the hell of his now empty bed and for the first time in months it felt empty. He was a man with needs and she had raised those needs.

  He did not sleep well, but rose as usual, brushed and dressed Jenny, chose not to fry an egg, ate toast, fed Jenny toast, then took her to work with him. Again, they shared a beef pastie for lunch. Again, they returned to the house after five, but it was no longer their own. Their parlour had been turned around, each item of furniture moved, all dust removed, and the peacock feathers missing. Norman searched for them; he’d tickled Jenny’s nose with those feathers.

  They ate as well-mannered visitors in Amber’s kitchen that evening. Norman put Jennifer early into her cot, which had not yet received its share of Amber’s cleaning, then soon after he went to his own bed, where, with more hope than expectation, he placed one of his prophylactics in a folded handkerchief beneath his pillow. She did not come to his bed that night, and the following day his room was stripped. No doubt the contents of his handkerchief went with his sheets into the copper.

  That evening, in the brief minutes while he bathed and shaved, Jennifer was attacked . . . by the rose bush.

  ‘You should have cut it back in July,’ Amber said.

  ‘Perhaps you might consider cutting that girl’s fingernails back, Mrs Morrison.’

  ‘We’re in the house for two days and you’re already blaming her for everything that happens to your Jenny-wren. I told you, she did it on the rose bush.’

  ‘She did it on the rose bush.’ Sissy repeated her mother’s lie.

  ‘You are turning my child into a monster, Mrs Morrison — in body and deed.’

  ‘She’s your child. What did you expect her to turn into, Norman?’

  He went to his bed at eight. He was sleeping when she came to his room. The night was dark, the room black as pitch, but he required no eyes to see that she was stark naked. The woman was mad. She had as much as named him monster, and now this. She had never been an eager partner to his nocturnal habits, had never made the initial approach, had more often than not spurned his advances. Tonight, she made an attack on his person.

  What man, denied his natural release for near on twelve months, will not respond to a willing woman — in body. Certainly his manhood responded to her touch, but his mind was repelled. He removed her from his person. He held her wrists, held her at a distance.

  ‘I believe we need time to become reacquainted, Mrs Mor
rison,’ he said. ‘And we have been advised to use . . . protection.’

  ‘Getting all you need from your Jenny-wren,’ she said.

  He sprang from the bed like a virgin violated, snatched up his pillow and backed away from her, the pillow shielding his untrustworthy lower regions.

  ‘You have gone mad, Mrs Morrison. Remove yourself from my room.’

  Her reply may have been better received in a brothel, a well-insulated brothel. He ran from her to the nursery, to the narrow bed next to Jennifer’s cot. No sheets on that bed, but two blankets. He slid between them and lay watching that closed door, fearful it might open.

  Norman’s prophylactics — two packets of twelve with two missing — would perish in time, but his house was clean, his mother’s furniture gleamed, the scent of beeswax polish permeated his parlour, phenol flavoured his meals and, miraculously, his shaving mirror, where previously he had squinted to see, now offered a clear reflection.

  He cut his losses, took Jenny to work with him, and left his wife to her cleaning.

  Amber’s days were long. There is only so much dirt one can erase from a house. The dirt she pursued was internal. She sought it in dark wardrobes, beneath beds, on tiny nightgowns. Smelled them before dropping them into the boiling copper, stood for an hour one day her poking stick holding a tiny gown beneath boiling suds, convinced that the filth she pursued was on that nameless stray he’d brought into her house. She found traces of it everywhere. It clung like a scum to the chairs, the table, the walls.

  She found it on Cecelia.

  ‘I told you to stay away from her,’ she snarled as she scrubbed her girl in the bath, scrubbed her red while Cecelia screamed. Hating that bloated white body, that fat, flat face, wanting to push her down in the water, hold her down, but loving her too, loving the smell of her.