by Joy Dettman
Outside then, out as far as the front verandah. The bench seat had been bought since she’d left. His packet of cigarettes and matches were on the parlour windowsill. She didn’t like smoking, had never enjoyed the habit, but the burning of a cigarette used time. She needed to use time, so she lit one and watched it turn to ash; lit another.
The side gate gave her fair warning. It squealed on heavy hinges and she was out the front gate. It didn’t squeal. She walked right, down past the post office, its door closed, past the bank, taller than its neighbours, down past Charlie White’s shop. Her eyes shielded from the cut of a low-hanging sun, she failed to see, or chose not to acknowledge, Jean, who glanced out before closing the old green doors. The corner forced a decision. West, out towards the slaughteryards, the sun in her eyes, or north and over the railway crossing. More people to the north, more eyes to stare, but she couldn’t stand the glare. She turned.
A walker passed by. She offered a nod in reply to his ‘Good evening’. No words in her for the outsiders. Plenty within.
Knew every inch of this town, every house, every vacant block, every pair of eyes staring from behind lifted curtains. Turned west again, the setting sun now fallen behind towering trees growing alongside the creek. She followed the creek along a track that ran through the bottom of Dobson’s land then through McPherson’s. She’d walked this way with her father. Always thought of him in this place. Loved him, loved him, loved him — and hated that old bitch. Wanted that old bitch dead.
Wanted her father’s money. Nearly five hundred pounds, Maisy said. Five hundred pounds! That money should have been hers, not that old trollop’s who had dragged her from her father’s house and back to a hut to rot.
Glanced towards the forest, darkening now. What if she walked down there and asked the old bitch for half of what she’d got? What had she ever given her?
‘Nothing.’
Wanted to watch her grow old, crippled, crawling, begging.
Matches rattling in her pocket. She laughed.
‘Burn the old bitch in her bed,’ she said.
Saw him behind her then, a lanky beanpole of a boy she’d seen at Maisy’s house. He worked for George.
‘A nice evening, Mrs Morrison,’ he said.
She nodded and walked on, followed the creek down to the bridge.
And the bastards with their eyes were there too. Two of them, sitting in her place underneath the bridge, an old one with a long white beard and a younger one, boiling a billy.
She had to go.
Climbed up the bank and out to the road. Go where? She had nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No one. No one. No one.
Threw his matches at a tree and watched them scatter, then turned towards the town.
Lights showing at the McPhersons’ windows, dog barking. She walked past, walked past George Macdonald’s mill. Turned to the left before Vern Hooper’s block. Couldn’t face him. He knew where she’d been. They all knew. His daughters knew.
Walked by Henry King’s derelict hut. Someone was living in it. Walked the diagonal across the road, across a vacant paddock, taking the route she’d walked on her way to school, cutting the distance where she could with diagonals. Retraced her childhood steps to the school gate, unchanged in thirty years, as the school was unchanged. She’d run down that same verandah, played in that same schoolyard. Happy here, her and Maisy, Sylvia and Julia. Wanted to open that gate and go back to twelve again, before the breasts, before the womb, before . . .
‘Everything.’
Julia was lucky. She’d lived opposite the school gate. Maisy was almost as lucky — her aunty had lived near the Kings. Sylvia wasn’t so lucky. She’d lived four miles out, had ridden in on horseback. She’d got lucky later, got married and went to live in Sydney.
She turned to Julia’s house, as unchanged as the school — except for the woman watering the garden. It wasn’t Julia. Recognised the haircut. ‘Bitch,’ she said.
How long had she been teaching up here? Amber was already wed, already thick with Cecelia, when the infants’ mistress had come new to town. She’d looked like a girl. She still looked like a girl. Never had a man to age her, that’s why. Hated her for her independence, her lack of need of a man to pay her bills.
The hose left to run, the teacher came to the gate. ‘It’s Mrs Morrison, isn’t it? What a lovely evening for a walk,’ she said.
A chimp stretches his lips in a grimace when angry or afraid. Amber offered a similar stretching of her lips as she turned to walk on. Then she changed her mind. She crossed the road.
‘Cecelia is distraught,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m afraid we ran out of time, Mrs Morrison.’
‘She reads it well.’
Miss Rose picked up the hose, directed it on a fern. ‘A reading is not a recitation, Mrs Morrison. I did explain to Cecelia that she must memorise it. She was given time.’
Then Julia Blunt popped her head out. ‘I was sure I recognised your voice, Amber. One moment, dear.’
Always smaller than her classmates, now bespectacled, her shoulders narrowed by labour over the sewing machine, Miss Blunt returned displaying a froth of blue, the three rolls of crepe paper transformed into an old-world gown, its ankle-length skirt stiff with layer upon layer of paper frills.
Amber could recognise beauty when she saw it. She knew who’d be wearing it.
‘We’re all so proud of your little songbird’s voice. You are in for a delightful surprise, my dear.’
‘Her father paid you to make that?’
Amber’s question was innocent but her tone accused. Like puppets attached to the same string, the women shook their heads while two mouths shaped the same lie.
‘The costume fund.’
Their visitor stretched her lips in the chimp’s grimace and walked on.
‘She is not the girl I once knew,’ Miss Blunt said.
‘One hears such terrible rumours,’ Miss Rose said.
SAND IN THE DESERT
Miss Rose came by Norman’s house on the Thursday evening with the costume, but overhearing more than she wished to hear, she chose not to announce her presence and hurried away.
There were no dressing rooms at the town hall, only the meeting room on one side, the supper room on the other and an open area beside the stage. Windows were uncurtained and thus offered no privacy, which was the prime reason costumes were not provided for the senior students. However, she had supplied a costume for Jennifer. Thus she must get it to the Morrison house prior to the concert.
On Friday at five, John McPherson arrived to transport the last of the props and costumes to the hall, and while he and the costume women carried their loads indoors, Miss Rose ran across the road with the blue, arriving at the Morrisons’ gate in time to see the husband removing his wife from the house, while from indoors came a scream she knew too well. Again the infants’ mistress turned tail. She’d dress Jennifer in the lavatory.
Time slipped into a different gear between six and seven thirty. Always chaotic, that last hour, the rounding up of infants, the late arrivals, the tying of fast bows, the finding of shoes, and she loved every minute of it.
As did John McPherson, who for the past three years had been setting his camera up in the stage wings to trap the best of the concert magic.
He trapped Jenny in her Alice Blue Gown and matching bonnet, trapped those eyes still wide with surprise, trapped her shy smile, and in his darkroom well after midnight, when he watched the photograph develop, he knew he had come of age. Only a boy in 1923, his camera new the evening he was called on to aim his lens at a dead woman in a pine coffin. He had wept when he’d developed those prints, wept because the best photograph he’d ever taken was of a beautiful dead woman. At twenty-seven, his camera now an old and familiar friend; he’d captured living beauty.
He made a second print, which he personally delivered to the Willama Gazette office on Monday morning, with a brief covering story. And they printed it, on the fro
nt page of the Wednesday edition, beneath large capitals: ‘WOODY CREEK’S SMALL SONGBIRD’. And below it:
Jennifer Morrison, ten-year-old daughter of Woody Creek stationmaster Mr Norman Morrison, stole the show on Saturday evening with her delightful rendition of ‘Sweet Little Alice Blue Gown’.
No mention of Amber, who had not yet left Norman’s house; his one attempt to remove her having raised the demon in his daughter. Bedlam. Bedlam and worse. He’d walked Jennifer over the road in the dead of night and roused Maisy. ‘For a few days,’ he said. ‘Cecelia is . . . is crazed.’
During her menses, that girl had always been at her most difficult. He had secured a booklet instructing him how best to deal with a developing woman. It suggested she should be protected from chills and spicy foods, which could put extra strain upon delicate organs already congested. It suggested the menstruating female should receive tender care, be kept away from parties, dancing and other stimulation. However, her menses this month, having coincided with her disappointment at not taking part in the concert, when added to his ongoing attempt to evict her mother, had caused an over-stimulation. She’d attacked him about the head and shoulders with the heavy end of the hair broom, thrown her meal at him, refused to attend to her hygiene — and wet her shared bed. Her behaviour such that he’d spent the night of the concert at his station and, had a goods train filled with cattle gone by, he might have hitched a ride with them to a city slaughteryard.
Sissy was calm on Monday, slept for most of the day, then on Monday evening he saw that woman offering her a glass of water and a pill. Norman may have been a fool who too often in life had taken the easy road, but he was not an utter fool. He’d demanded his housekeeper produce the pill bottle, which was not immediately forthcoming. He’d threatened to search her bedroom, while she’d argued of blood loss, of Cecelia’s need for the blood-strengthening pill. Few would have doubted her argument. He’d doubted and begun with her underwear drawer, emptied it to the floor, flung her clothing after it, emptied a toiletries case to the bed, showering the coverlet with powder.
In time she’d produced the things, and they were, as he had feared, an opiate.
Amber had never feared him. He’d given her no cause to fear him. That night, she’d had cause. He’d left her to clean up the mess and taken her bottle with him.
She’d pleaded later, begged, made promises. He’d offered one pill. She’d asked for two, which he’d given and watched swallowed.
Tuesday was hell, until Amber bribed Cecelia into a semi-calm with a brown paper-wrapped parcel from Blunt’s.
Wednesday began well. Then that newspaper arrived. The day ended badly.
Thursday! Norman came from the station at six, afraid to enter the house. And he found Cecelia bathed, calm and clad in a flouncing floral, highly unsuitable for a girl of her years and shape — however he did not voice his opinion.
Jenny’s Alice Blue Gown, hurriedly removed in the parlour after the concert, left unhung on the couch, unsighted during the days she’d spent with Maisy, was gone when she arrived home on Thursday evening, no doubt collected by one of the costume ladies and hanging safe in the school cupboard. She thought no more of it until Miss Rose asked her to please return the frock to school on Monday.
She searched Sissy’s wardrobe, searched Norman’s, wasn’t game to search Amber’s.
‘Daddy, do you know what happened to my Alice Blue Gown? Miss Rose wants it back.’
He didn’t know. He too had been searching . . . for Wednesday’s Gazette. He lifted a finger to his lips and glanced towards the parlour. Amber and Sissy were in there, turning the pages of a catalogue.
At Maisy’s house, Jenny had her own bed in Jessie’s room. Now she was back to sharing a bed and Sissy could kick like a mule. Then, on the Saturday morning when Jenny went down to the lavatory, when she had a quick look to see if Sissy had thrown Norman’s newspaper into the pan, she saw something frilly. It was no longer blue, but it was crepe paper, a crepe paper frill. It didn’t bear closer identification but she took a deep breath outside, held her nose and went back for a second look. It was her Alice Blue Gown.
She knew Sissy threw things in that pan when she got in one of her bad moods. She’d thrown books in it, thrown Jenny’s kitten poem in — and told her she’d done it too. The newspaper was probably down there.
Didn’t want to start Sissy up again now that she’d stopped, like Norman didn’t want to start her up, but that dress was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She’d felt special in it, had sung better in it, and Miss Rose wanted it back on Monday.
‘I’m telling Miss Rose you threw that costume down the lav, Sissy.’
‘I didn’t touch your stupid dress.’
‘You did so. I saw it.’
‘Who looks in lavatory pans?’
‘Who knows that you throw things in lavatory pans?’
‘Don’t you accuse me.’
‘You did it because I was in the concert and you weren’t.’
‘As if I care, you evil little stray.’
‘You were jealous that everyone couldn’t see your daffodil dress.’
‘I don’t even like yellow, and as if I’d ever be jealous of you.’
As if she would. She had everything. She had three new dresses now, the yellow, the pretty frilly floral and a green and beige print. And she’d even got her own way about leaving school. She had no reason for jealousy.
Jenny was jealous of those three dresses. She loved pretty things and Norman only ever bought plain dark-coloured dresses. Having a mother had changed everything. It had changed Norman. It even changed Christmas.
They always had Christmas dinner with Gertrude and Joey and Elsie, but because Amber wouldn’t go, Sissy wouldn’t go, so Norman didn’t go.
It was the worst Christmas ever. Amber roasted a leg of lamb and Jenny could smell it roasting for hours, then Amber stood at the table slicing into it with her fine-bladed carving knife, and she must have forgotten Jenny didn’t eat lambs because she gave her two fat slices. Norman removed them to his plate. He swapped the lamb for some of his vegetables, which tasted of lamb. And the Christmas pudding wasn’t the same as Granny’s and had no threepences in it, and there was no Joey to giggle with, no funny presents. It was like Christmas didn’t come that year. It was like Norman wasn’t Norman that year and Sissy wasn’t Sissy. She didn’t look like Sissy in her frilly floral, with her hair a mass of waves, and lipstick even, and new shoes.
Norman said that sisters must love each other, but sisterly love wasn’t easy in a shared bed. And those three pretty dresses hanging in the wardrobe didn’t make it easier, or the costume in the lavatory.
The Bible said to love your mother and father. Loving her father had always been easy. She loved his big, soft, puppy-dog eyes, his chubby face, his voice, which could make the most boring story sound a bit interesting. Until Amber came home, Jenny had found no fault in Norman, and with only his example to follow, she’d patterned her behaviour on his. She walked away from unpleasantness, did unto others as she would have them do unto her, forgave Sissy her trespasses — or most of them. Until Amber came home, Jenny had been well on her way to becoming a female Norman, a pacifist, ill equipped to handle the more unpleasant aspects of life.
There are significant moments in every life, moments when had we walked a different path, turned a different corner, caught a different train, we may have found an alternative future. If Miss Rose had chosen a different song, if that froth of blue frills hadn’t seemingly materialised five minutes before Jenny had to walk on stage that night, if she had never heard of Cinderella and fairy godmothers, if she hadn’t glanced into the lavatory pan . . .
Life happens. Perspectives alter. Age wearies and disappointments weigh heavily.
Jenny’s tenth birthday should have been a disappointment. She’d thought Amber might give her a pretty dress. She didn’t. Norman gave her a present that felt like a book and turned out to be a Bible; a very nice Bib
le with a white leather cover, but nonetheless a Bible and there were already three of them in the house, and the words in one were the same as in another. She’d thought Granny might come to the house, but she didn’t. She’d given Norman her present: a pretty dressing gown, which Jenny thought might have been a dress until she got it unwrapped. Joey gave her a baby yabby in a jam jar, which she was only allowed to keep until after lunch, then she had to take it down to the creek and let it go. Then something happened which made it the best birthday she’d ever had.
Mr Denham called her over to his fence. She’d given him the pendant the old swagman had found in the park and told him she’d found it, because kids weren’t allowed to take things from strangers or even talk to them.
‘Finders keepers,’ Constable Denham said.
‘I didn’t . . .’
Couldn’t tell him now that the old swaggie with the Father Christmas beard had found it; anyway, he was long gone. That was what swagmen did. They walked into town, then walked out, and no one knew where they came from or who they were. Some stayed a day or two under the bridge, some camped in the shed beside the sports oval, but Denham didn’t allow any to become comfortable.
‘You did the right thing by handing it in, Jennifer,’ he said and he dropped it into her hand.
She ran back across the road with her treasure, and it was hers. An old swagman wouldn’t want it. She ran inside with it, into the kitchen, where they crowded around her, admiring her treasure.
Norman said it was very old and made of real gold, that the pearl within its ball of gold would be a real pearl, made by an oyster in the ocean. Then he claimed it, to put away until she was old enough to appreciate it.
Sissy was already old enough to appreciate it. She wanted to wear it to the pictures on Saturday night. She stamped her feet for it, so Norman told her she could stay home from the pictures. Margaret and Jimmy Hooper were calling for her; she couldn’t even scream or they’d hear her. She vented her frustration in bed that night, by sprawling over three-quarters of it.
