by Joy Dettman
She’d raised her girl to believe her father was a good man. How could she turn around and tell her he was the devil incarnate who had so violated his family’s trust they’d paid him to stay out of the country? She couldn’t. How could she stop a thirteen-year-old girl from hankering after her handsome doctor father? She’d tried.
He’d hung around town for a month, then disappeared, still owing Richard Blunt for Amber’s frock. Gertrude paid for it. Amber had worn it until it turned to rags. Bad months those, and the bad became worse. Amber blamed her because her father had gone, blamed Vern too. Angry months.
‘She’ll get over it faster if you stay away for a while, Vern,’ Gertrude had said — which had got Vern’s nose out of joint, and when it was out of joint he’d damn near cut it off to spite his face.
Lorna was two or three years old at that time. He’d employed Rita Jones, the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of Monk’s labourers, to nursemaid her. Rita must have been doing a bit more for him than she was paid to do, because the next thing Gertrude knew, Vern had wed her, on the quiet. The marriage lasted nine years, and during those nine years, Gertrude had rarely set eyes on Vern or his wife.
He’d come for her the day Rita died. There was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do. A crazed stallion had trampled her, smashed in the side of her head. She was dead within hours. She went to the funeral, heard later that he’d taken his girls down to a city boarding school, then a week or so after Rita’s funeral, he rode down to Gertrude’s and tossed a wedding ring at her.
‘Put that on your finger, or I’ll hold you down and hammer the thing home.’
‘It’s been a week, Vern!’
‘Eight days,’ he’d said. ‘Put it on.’
‘I won’t be a party to it. Six months is the least you can wait.’
‘Six months less eight days,’ he said.
He’d still been a farming man then, and living alone in their grandfather’s old timber house. Amber was in her twenties, working as a pastry cook at the hotel and spending her weekends in town with Maisy and George Macdonald, so Gertrude started spending her Saturday nights out at Vern’s farm. Happy months those, maybe the best of her life. She was in her late forties, but certain she’d have time to bear a son or two, and every month praying they’d got one started. Too happy, too involved with each other, they hadn’t noticed the Morrisons, hadn’t noticed Norman pursuing Amber.
Amber brought him down to meet her one Saturday afternoon. Gertrude had been rushing around getting things done so she could ride out to Vern, but she’d put off her chores, made a cup of tea and done her best to talk to Norman. They’d left for town at five, and by five thirty she’d saddled her horse and ridden off.
They were bird-watching on the bridge when she’d crossed over. ‘A pleasant night for a ride, Mrs Foote,’ Norman said. She’d agreed it was and continued on her way.
Amber was waiting for her on Sunday evening.
‘You’ve got the principles of a trollop,’ she said. ‘If the Morrisons find out that you’re on with Vern Hooper, and his wife hardly cold in her grave, they’ll have nothing more to do with me.’
Which, in hindsight, might have been a good thing.
‘Give her a month, Vern,’ she’d said.
‘That girl has been dictating my life and yours for too long, Trude. Pack your bags and leave her to her Morrisons.’
That’s what she should have done — should have moved in with him when the creek flooded that year. He’d wanted her to. She had two foot of water running through her house, ninety per cent of her land underwater. Her chooks took to the trees, Amber moved in with the Morrisons and Gertrude and her goats had moved in with the McPhersons — which had put a bee up Vern’s nose. He was a man who liked to get his own way, and when he didn’t, he took it hard. He hadn’t come near her for a month and she’d been too busy to concern herself with a grown man’s sulking.
Joanne Nicholas was widowed around the same time as Vern. Her husband had got himself caught up in one of the belts that drove the big mill saws. He’d died badly, and Joanne hadn’t taken well to widowhood. How Vern had become involved with her, Gertrude didn’t know, but he had, and within two months they were wed. Then Amber wed Norman and, to rub salt into a weeping wound, Joanne became pregnant. She was over forty, too old to be having her first child, even if its father had been a midget — which Vern was not. By seven months, she was at bursting point.
‘If you don’t want to lose her, you’ll get her down to the city doctors,’ Gertrude had told Vern. He’d taken her advice.
Amber gave birth to Cecelia in March. Six weeks later, in a city hospital, Vern’s son was cut early from Joanne. She’d never got over that operation.
‘I had the height, the hips,’ Gertrude told an owl as he whispered by. ‘I had the strength to give him a dozen sons.’
Should have defied their grandfather, run off and wed at eighteen. Should have. Too late now. She had a good life down here. She loved her accidental grandson, loved Elsie.
What other reason did she have to stay down here? A life of hard labour, that’s all. And for how much longer could she keep it up? Ten years? Fifteen? And what happens when I’m too old to labour?
Joey will be old enough, she argued.
She could have a good life with Vern. They’d grown together. They laughed at the same humour. In so many ways they were two of a kind.
He’s pig-headed, she argued. He doesn’t sulk often but, by God, when he does, he takes his time getting over it.
He’s an honourable man, honest to a fault. I trust him.
You swore once that you’d never trust your life to another man.
I’m only fifty-nine. I’m young enough to need a man. And Norman needs help with those girls. And Jimmy might grow on me.
And Joey? Your dreams for Joey?
She sighed for lack of an answer and for all of her sons unborn, sighed for the daughter she’d dreamed for, and the dead grandsons she’d brought into the world and watched die. She sighed for Cecelia, the only blood she had to continue her line, then sighed more deeply because the only line that girl would ever continue would be the Duckworth line.
The dregs of her mug flung in the face of the night, she stood and reached for her water ladle, dipped out half a mug of water, dipped her finger into the salt pig she kept on her dresser and walked outside to clean her teeth, as she did each night. Rubbing, spitting salt, rinsing and spitting — and thinking how nice it might be to turn on a tap when she wanted to brush her teeth.
Not so nice sharing the bathroom with Vern’s daughters. She could never find more than two words to say to either of them.
But they’d stay in Melbourne.
She rinsed her mouth, gargled, spat and looked up at the moon. It was throwing its weight around tonight, splashing her house and yard with its softening light. Her world looked a picture by moonlight.
She reached up to withdraw the Japanese pins from her plait. Only two of those pins left. Archie had bought her a half dozen. Lost, broken — all but these two. She took more care with the two than she had of the six, placed them each night on the top shelf of her washstand. Her hair was as heavy as it had ever been, and as dark — thanks to the bottle of dye Jean White swapped for a few dozen eggs. Gertrude took pride in her hair, and in her figure. Maybe her waist wasn’t as slim as it had been at nineteen, her breasts not so firm, but she wasn’t in bad shape for a woman nudging sixty.
So proud to lose her waist when Amber was inside her, every day looking at herself, searching for evidence that her baby was growing. But damn pleased too to get her body back when Amber was born. She’d tried on every frock she’d owned, every skirt. Not that they’d been a lot of use around this place. Wire fences ripped sleeves, thorns grasped at hems. Amber was six weeks old the day she’d gone hunting in one of the trunks she’d brought home from India, seeking something serviceable. She’d found a pair of Archie’s trousers. They’d fitted her well around the
backside though she was longer in the leg than he. She’d had to let the hems down.
Her mother had been aghast. She’d told her she was not stepping outside the door dressed like a hoyden. She’d called Gertrude’s father. He’d taken one look at Archie’s trousers and laughed. He’d had a laugh on him worth listening to, a laugh that could make her mother laugh. In time she’d got used to seeing her daughter in trousers.
Three pairs of his trousers she’d brought home with her, four or five of his shirts, a jacket, two pairs of his shoes. She’d left that sod nothing when she’d packed up their room in India, not his clothing, not his books. She’d had an hour to pack and she’d done it in less.
It had taken her parents longer to realise she wasn’t going back to handsome Archie. They’d thought she’d walked out on the match of the century, had visualised their Gertie at the side of her handsome doctor husband.
‘He can give you the world, darlin’,’ her father had said when Archie came asking for her hand.
He’d given her the world all right — or all of its filth and degradation.
She shook her head, attempting to clear that sod from her mind. ‘Bed,’ she said.
Her bedroom hatch, closed all afternoon to keep the sun out, now kept the moonlight out. She heaved it wide, propped it, pleased by the breath of cool air coming in off the walnut tree.
She’d slept in huts that had no hatch, slept in shelters without walls, slept on trains and in bug-riddled beds in filthy hotels — and in a few that were fine. She’d sailed on tramp steamers and on ships of the line, had travelled up rivers in native dugouts, had seen more of the world during the years she’d spent with Archie Foote than most in Woody Creek would see in ten lifetimes. He’d had no fear, would try anything, go anywhere. He could make himself known in a dozen tongues.
She’d feared — had always feared — what she couldn’t control. Needed to know she was in control of her own small space in this wide, wide world. Amber had been the largest part of her world. Couldn’t control her, not once she’d grown. Had feared for her. Feared for her still. Not a day went by when she didn’t think about her, wonder what she was doing, how she was living, if she was living.
And she couldn’t talk about her to Vern. On a few occasions lately when she’d brought up Amber’s name, he’d made his feelings very clear on that subject. Not that she blamed him. She’d always put her girl before him.
Maybe it’s time to start putting him first, she thought. Elsie and Joey will do all right down here, and it’s not as if I’ll be far away. I can come home whenever I feel like it.
How often will I feel like it? Once a week? Twice a day?
I’ll have a refrigerator at Vern’s, electric light.
‘To show up all of my wrinkles,’ she told the moon.
Didn’t know if she wanted to live with him; maybe thought she ought to want to live with him. And those girls in town — they needed her. Norman needed her in town.
‘What do I need?’ she said.
Her head out through the hatch opening, she searched the sky, seeking the stars’ guidance. The moon was shining so bright, she couldn’t see how the stars might be aligned.
‘I’d be running back here every night,’ she whispered to the man in the moon. ‘I’d be back here every morning and most afternoons. And who needs electricity when they can have your old light for free?’
DISCOVERY
‘Independent bugger of a woman,’ Vern muttered. Ten or fifteen times a day he found himself repeating those words. And she was an independent bugger of a woman and he was staying away from her. She was also staying away from him — and he didn’t want her to stay away. He wanted her hammering on his door, pleading for a second, or maybe a fourth, chance. He considered hanging his hat up to Nelly Dobson, who did a bit of the heavier cleaning for him. He took pleasure in imagining Gertrude’s face when word got back to her.
‘Independent bugger of a woman. You always were and you ever will be. A man needs an independent bugger of a woman like he needs a hole in the head,’ he said, but before the words were out of his mouth he knew he spoke a lie. He needed her like he needed sugar in his morning cup of tea. A man won’t die if he doesn’t get that heaped spoonful of sugar stirred into his cup, but without it, every day starts off sour. He needed her in his bed. And he probably wouldn’t die of that either, though he maybe wouldn’t want to live as long. He needed her to tell him what he ought to do about Jimmy, needed her to hear what he was thinking about doing.
He should have got that boy back into school in February, but he had too much on his mind to worry about schooling a boy who didn’t want to be schooled — and who didn’t need it anyway. The drought was on his mind, and his hungry sheep. And the creek bordering his acres was down to a trickle, and Max Monk, his neighbour, worse off than he. Monk had more stock, more staff, was dependent on his land for his living — and he enjoyed the high life. Vern had his mill. He could afford to buy feed for his stock.
Then, as if he didn’t have enough on his mind, his farm manager went and broke his wrist and was less than useless.
‘Independent bugger of a woman. Useless little bookworm bugger of a boy.’
He dragged Jimmy away from his book, forced him into the car and out to the farm. Couldn’t get him outside. He wanted to sit in the manager’s parlour reading out-of-date newspapers. He dragged him from the newspapers, showed him how to spread a few bags of wheat for the sheep. He walked him down to the creek where he found two of the woolly-brained buggers stuck in the mud. He went in, up to his knees, and hauled one out while Jimmy stood in the shade hunting flies from his eyes and howling over an old ewe, stuck to her neck and barely worth saving.
‘Get back up to the house if you don’t like seeing what life’s about, boy.’
Thigh deep, up to his armpits in greasy, grey mud, and something stabbed him on his wedding ring finger. He considered it a sign from Jesus telling him he wasn’t meant to wed that independent bugger of a woman, or maybe that he was meant to hang up his hat to Nelly Dobson — which would save him a bit on her wages. He got the ewe out, saw her up on her feet, then walked down to where the creek had a bit of sand to walk out on, where he washed the mud off.
Three days he kept that boy out there, and by the time he got him home, he was mozzie-bitten, fly-bitten, had sore eyes from the dust and was more than willing to return to his schoolmasters. Vern paid John Dean’s oldest boy to give his manager a hand and he took off for the city to get rid of his son. He was staying at his half-brother’s house when his wedding finger started giving him pain. Maybe he should have stayed down there, but he took the train home and was halfway back when he noticed the swelling. By the following day, his hand was up like a rubber balloon. He put it down to a city spider bite. His housekeeper didn’t. She told him to get down to Gertrude.
‘That independent bugger of a woman,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t go near her if I was dying.’
By late afternoon, he felt like dying. He didn’t go to Gertrude. He drove down to Willama and drove home with a bottle of blood-cleaning potion and sulphur pills, and his hand throbbing and near useless.
The pills worked on his belly, not his hand. He was as sick as a dog, couldn’t keep a thing down. His housekeeper noticed the red streaks creeping up towards his elbow.
‘I’ve seen a man lose his leg, then his life with blood poisoning,’ she said. ‘You get yourself back to those doctors, Mr Hooper.’
He didn’t want to lose his arm — or his life. He got himself out to the car, got it started, but knew he’d never drive the distance. There are times when a man has to swallow his pride. His went down like burning bile, but he drove to Gertrude.
‘You fool, to neglect something like that,’ she yelled. ‘Get down to Willama. I can’t deal with this.’
He’d sat on her cane couch and doubted he’d ever leave it. She was holding his hand and it felt good. ‘They’ll cut it off,’ he said.
‘How did it star
t?’
‘Something bit me in the city. What’s it matter?’
‘It matters. Where did the swelling start, you fool of a man?’
‘My ring finger. It was Christ warning me off women.’
‘Then it’s a pity it didn’t bite you years ago.’
‘Who are you to talk?’
‘I only did it once.’
She was holding his arm now and her hands were cool. She studied each finger.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I love your hands.’
‘I love yours too. What did you get up to in the city?’
‘None of your business.’
‘If you want to keep that hand, it is. How did you do that?’
She’d found the stretched scar of something newly healed on the pad of his ring finger, half an inch from where it joined the palm.
‘A man can’t recall his every scar, and I’m too crook to care.’
‘Then start caring, Vern. Can you drive if I go with you?’
‘I could fly if you were with me, Trude.’
‘You’re running a fever and it’s no joking matter. This is bad. We’ve got to get you down there.’
‘They’re not cutting it off. Do something.’
His finger was purple, his hand was getting to be that way, and he’d kept nothing other than his pride down since yesterday morning. He wasn’t a passing out sort of bloke, but he was about to do it. He lay back on her couch, his head resting on one end, his knees hanging over the other.
‘It’s more likely that cut has had some infection in it and healed over, than to be the bite of something. I’ve told you a hundred times that farm cuts need looking after.’
‘Stop nagging me and do something.’
‘Remember you said that, my lad.’
She poured boiling water into a small bucket, stirred in a few tablespoons of salt, added a dash of lysol, placed a clean towel over a kitchen chair, the chair beside the couch, the bucket on the floor, dipped her lancing tools into the bucket, added cold water enough to drop its temperature down from boiling to steaming point, then she took Vern’s wrist and plunged the hand in and out of that water, and while he was yelling about the heat of it, she punctured the balloon of his wedding finger, right over the stretched scar. Hand back into the bucket, then her lancing tool went back into the same hole, opening it deeper, wider.
