by Joy Dettman
He became too brave in August, the month of the adults’ concert. Last August Sissy had recited in her daffodil yellow frock with two paper daffodils pinned over her ear — she’d recited ‘Daffodils’. Amber prompting her from the wings.
And she wanted to recite that poem again this year!
‘No,’ Norman said.
‘Why not?’ Sissy said.
‘Learn another poem if you wish to take part.’ A safe suggestion. She still got stuck on the third verse of ‘Daffodils’.
‘I like doing “Daffodils”.’
‘You’ve had my last word on it, Cecelia.’
‘Old Mister Murphy sings the same song every year and no one ever tells him he can’t be in the concert.’
‘Mr Murphy is an old man who once could sing. The audience is tolerant of his age. Now enough about it.’
‘You don’t tell Jenny she’s not allowed to sing in the school concert, do you?’
‘Your sister has a beautiful voice,’ he said.
Shouldn’t have said that. He knew it, as Jenny knew it, as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He stood, walked away from his meal, Jenny behind him. They went to the station and made a cup of tea there, ate station biscuits.
But Sissy won. She always won.
Her daffodil dress was starched and pressed. Miss Blunt made a new bunch of paper daffodils. Amber stood for hours putting Sissy’s hair up in rags. They practised that poem for hours, Sissy came to bed to do her starfish.
‘Get over your own side of the bed.’
‘I’ll do what I like in my own bed.’
‘Get over, or I’m yelling out for Dad.’
‘Go to hell, you evil-smelling stray bitch!’
‘Daddy!’
Jenny walked across to the town hall with Norman. She sat with him. Mr Cox put off the inevitable as long as he could, but eventually Sissy came on stage in her yellow frock with her daffodils. Her hair looked nice. The overall picture was nice enough. Then the nice ended and Jenny and Norman, seated well back, looked at their shoes while Sissy wandered lonely as a cloud, and pranced like a cat on a hot tin roof when she sighted a host of golden daffodils.
And got no further.
The twins entered from the supper room side, waving bunches of gum leaves.
‘Beside the creek, beneath the trees,
Sissy is quivering at the knees.
Please, Jim, kiss my drooling mouth,
before you venture way down south . . .’
The audience erupted into giggles and tut-tutting, while Mr Cox, master of ceremonies, pulled the curtains, but the twins stepped through the gap and continued their recitation.
‘Struth, said Jimmy, give me more.
Open up your golden door . . .’
Constable Denham, sitting with his sourpuss wife and not so starched kids, took off for the stage. A twin went left, one went right, and ten minutes later old Dan Murphy came on stage to sing ‘Danny Boy’.
Norman sold the twins one-way tickets to Melbourne on Monday night, pleased to see the back of them. Most in town were pleased to see that pair gone. Most agreed they’d end up hanging before they were much older, but two weeks later they returned and they’d brought some city disease home with them. Maisy put them to bed, fearful of polio. She nursed them for a week, and a week after that wondered why she’d bothered. They got into a fight on the hotel corner and one of the windows was broken.
All mouth, teeth and jaw, the Macdonald twins, no-necked, heavy-shouldered, barrel-chested, no hips, short bandy legs. Built like bulls, some said, but with less between their close-set ears than a bull and a double quota between their legs — so some said. A lot was said about Maisy’s boys. One of the Duffy girls told Denham her baby belonged to them. Hard to tell. All babies were born with bandy legs. Maybe its eyes would turn purple, but until they did, there was no way of knowing if it was a Macdonald or not.
ALL HIS WORLDLY GOODS
The last time Gertrude had harnessed her old horse into the cart was the night she’d delivered Sophie Duffy’s baby. Nugget, grown old, had grown lame. His age brought her own age home to her. As did Charlie White’s son-in-law. She’d delivered Alfred Timms, had watched him march off to war with the other boys. He was a balding middle-aged man now. With her horse lame, Alfred drove down each week to pick up the eggs and deliver her staples. Harry collected any mail she might have, not that many wrote to her. She had no real need to go into town.
In some dark pocket of her heart, she still felt love for her daughter; on a few dark nights, she worried about her, but never during daylight hours. She’d done her best, and her best was all that could be done.
Vern spent his Saturdays with Gertrude — now that her house was again her own. He ate the evening meal with her, sat with her in the moonlight — and went home at dawn.
He gave advice too readily — perhaps a Hooper failing.
‘I told you you’d be overrun by them,’ he said, eyeing the new house in the goat paddock, a small house, on tall stilts. Elsie had produced a son ten months after the wedding. She was pregnant again.
‘I told you I always wanted a big family.’
‘Your family is in town, where you ought to be — and your flamin’ granddaughter is making sheep’s eyes at my fool of a boy.’
‘She’s built to bear Hoopers,’ Gertrude said.
‘He hasn’t worked out what women are for yet.’
‘I’ve never worked that out myself,’ she said. ‘What men are for.’
‘I’m not having it.’
‘I could see a lot worse for both of them.’
‘She’s got nothing between her ears.’
‘Is that the first place men look?’
‘I’ve sent him out to the farm for a month or two.’
‘Did he want to go?’
‘I don’t know what he wants and never did.’
‘Talk to him and find out then.’
‘I saw her trying to kiss him a few nights back.’
‘Are you sure he wasn’t trying to kiss her?’
‘She was going at him.’
‘Unless he was fighting her off, putting a few miles between them won’t stop her kissing him — as I seem to recall. Leave them alone, Vern.’
‘I’m not having it.’
‘Maybe this is the way it was meant to work out, you and me a generation on, our blood mixed in our grandkids.’
‘Duckworth and Nicholas blood. She’s not you, and he’s not me. Lorna is more me. She should have had my grandkids.’
He’d developed a smidgen of respect for Lorna these past months. She was the one who had suggested sending Jim out to the farm. And she couldn’t stand Sissy Morrison; they had that in common.
‘You need to spend a week or two out at the farm with him and knock a bit of that weight off,’ Gertrude said patting his expanding waistline. ‘You used to cut a fine figure on horseback.’
‘I haven’t been on a horse in fifteen years.’
‘And look what it’s done to you. Your belly is keeping pace with the size of your cars.’
‘You’re an insulting bugger of a woman tonight, Trude.’
‘I’m just speaking the truth. Look at Charlie White. He’s still riding that bike like a madman, and not a skerrick of arthritis in him and no sign of a belly.’
‘Been giving him the eye, have you?’
Charlie had been at the house when Vern arrived. Since his accident he’d taken to riding down occasionally on fine Saturdays. Gertrude might have preferred his company on rainy Saturdays, but she offered him tea and let him talk about Jean. Charlie had aged ten years in the days after he’d lost his wife, though most would admit he hadn’t aged much since.
Age was on Gertrude’s mind tonight, her horse’s, her own. She needed a bottle of hair dye and had meant to ask Charlie to order some in. He used to say that she and Jean had discovered the fountain of youth in those little bottles. They’d never called it dye. It was their forever-young
juice — and Gertrude was overdue for a dose of it. And her eyesight was letting her down lately. Years ago she’d bought herself a pair of glasses for close work. They were next door to useless now. She’d need to get into town the next time the eye chap came up. Vern would drive her in if she asked. He liked her asking. She liked her independence, and for independence sake, she needed a new horse.
‘He was a four year old when I bought him. I worked it out the other night that I’ve had him for twenty years.’
‘You’ve had me longer.’
‘True.’
‘That’s what he used to call you — Tru. I can’t hear that word without thinking about that bastard.’
‘He called me worse. You might keep your eye out for a horse for me, Vern. I hate being stuck down here, reliant on people.’
‘You’ve had Murph take a look at him?’
‘He says there’s swelling in his fetlock, that he’s too old for it to improve much.’
‘I’ve got swelling in my fetlock.’
‘Charlie is fine in the fetlock.’
He kissed her when he left, told her he’d speak to Paul Jenner who might be interested in selling his carthorse. He’d bought Vern’s old car.
She watched him drive off, his headlights washing over her land, and she thought of his first car, which he’d refused to drive after dark. A lot had changed in the last ten or so years — cars, her horse. The world had changed. During the twenties she’d delivered most babies born in Woody Creek. Women gave birth in Willama now, or the bulk of them did. The blokes on susso had done a lot of work on that road, built it up where it was low, graded and gravelled it, and, bad times or not, there were more cars around to get those women to Willama. She’d never asked for the job of midwife, didn’t miss being called out in the middle of the night. And dyed hair or not, she knew she was getting too old for the job. Her seventieth birthday was only two years away.
Seventy. It sounded ridiculous. Her father had died at seventy-two. Her mother had died a week before she’d turned seventy. At the time, Gertrude had considered them old. It could put fear into her if she thought about it. Not the dying part. The dead were dead and not worrying about much, but the dependence on others before the dying, that’s what concerned her. She needed to get on a horse’s back again, needed her bottle of forever-young juice to keep old age on the run.
‘The best years of my life, these last years,’ she told the night as she looked across the paddock to Elsie’s house. ‘The best — barring Amber.’
She still had three hundred pounds in the post office bank. She had a bunch of kids growing up in her top paddock. She had her accidental daughter, who loved her, and her accidental son too, and she had Joey, her boy, the love of her life.
She’d drawn that boy into the world, raised him as a boy should be raised, and she’d see him to maturity too and be around to meet his sons. Old Grandpa Hooper had sat a horse into his nineties, then dropped dead one day after a good meal. That was the way to live life, take off after dinner, the mind intact.
‘I don’t need Jenner’s old carthorse,’ she told the night. ‘I’ll get myself a young one with a bit of fire in his blood.’
BABY BREASTS
For Jenny’s generation there was no shame in hand-me-downs and bare feet, patched trousers and sweaters with more darning in the sleeves than sleeve. There was no shame in borrowing your neighbour’s best frock to wear to your daughter’s wedding, or in cutting cardboard to slip inside your shoes. So long as you kept your feet on the ground, no one saw that the soles had worn through. This was a depression. People made do.
A few weddings were delayed by the depression. No job, no house, no money for a wedding party. A few were delayed too long. Several Woody Creek brides walked down the aisle with bellies protruding, while their mothers hung their heads in shame.
Not Irene Palmer. She’d been working at Hoopers’ for years and her father was in work. Her wedding was an anachronism from the good old days. She wore her mother’s wedding gown which transformed Hooper’s apron-clad maid into a princess. Her groom’s transformation wasn’t as complete. Suited or not, Weasel Lewis still looked like a weasel.
Then in October, Emma Fulton married Wally Davis and, not to be outdone by the Palmers, Mrs Fulton had made her the most beautiful bridal gown from a worn-out linen sheet and mosquito netting. She pintucked and embroidered the bodice and sleeves, then embroidered the netting with a silk thread and tiny beads until that bridal veil looked like fairytale lace.
‘That woman has learnt to make nothing go a long way,’ Gertrude said.
‘What some will do for love of a child,’ Nancy Bryant said. The two women turned from the bride to Jenny, clad in washed-out navy and heavy lace-up shoes.
For Jenny’s generation, a white wedding was from the storybooks of Cinderella and Snow White. The last generation had expected white weddings, as might the children now being born, but not this one. The last generation of girls had not been expected to work. They worked now. A business could employ two female workers for near the wage of one male.
Emma Fulton had worked for Charlie White since her fourteenth birthday. Now Sally, her sister, had the job. She was less than a year older than Jenny. Dora could have taken Irene’s place as Hoopers’ maid. She’d wanted to take it, but her father told her that no more of his daughters would go out slushing for two grown women capable of doing for themselves. Nelly Dobson got the job.
In the years to come, when people spoke of those terrible years of the Great Depression, Vern’s daughters would raise their eyebrows in question. Had there been a depression? They were above it, protected from it. No paint peeled from their roof, no pickets fell from their fence, no chook, no cow, defiled their lawn. They sat on their backsides and rang their bell.
In the years to come, when people spoke of the Great Depression, Jenny would speak of Emma Fulton’s wedding dress, and Vern’s roses that just didn’t understand that they should have controlled their blooming. She’d speak of how the town had seemed to lose its raw, red timber stink for a time, and of the swagmen wandering the roads, and of Nelly Abbot too who had probably been murdered by one of those swagmen.
There were men on the move all over Australia, men who’d walked away from wife and family, all they possessed on their backs. City men walked to the country, hoping things might be better up there; country men walked to the city for the same reason. Just changing places, just waiting for the waiting to be over. Depression: a dip; a sinking; a despondency, the dictionary said. Whatever the depression meant to the older generation, those of Jenny’s generation knew no other life. They left school at fourteen and got a job if they could. The newspapers might report that unemployment was down to twelve per cent in the city, that the economy was picking up, but the Woody Creek kids saw little evidence of it. A few came to school barefoot, many came shod in cheap canvas shoes you could buy at Blunt’s for two bob a pair. They were fashionable and Jenny wanted a pair. Norman said they advertised a family’s poverty so she wore leather shoes and wore them out fast. She walked too much, walked each school day between three thirty when school came out, and six each night when Norman went home. Never, never, ever went home until Norman was there. Some afternoons she went to Dora’s house, but Dora had jobs to do, and if Jenny went there too often, they’d grow tired of seeing her. She went to Maisy’s some days, but not if the twins were home. She went to Blunt’s shop to look at the materials, to the post office to talk a while, but no more than once a week. Mrs Palmer had put her off visiting Mr Foster.
‘He’s an unmarried man, pet. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to spent too much time there,’ she said.
Since Nelly had died, there’d been a lot of talk about dangerous men who did terrible things to girls. Jenny didn’t know what terrible things, didn’t know how kids were supposed to tell a dangerous man from one who was safe, or why a married man was safe and an unmarried man wasn’t. She knew Mr Foster wasn’t dangerous, knew th
at he was the least dangerous man in Woody Creek. Grown-ups thought they knew things, but they didn’t know much. Mothers weren’t dangerous — that was what they thought. Jenny stayed away from her mother, and on Friday nights when Norman played poker and Sissy went out somewhere with the Hoopers, Jenny still went over that paling fence to listen to Mr Foster’s wireless.
Her daily wandering always ended in the memorial park, on the swings. She loved swinging, eyes closed, listening to the shocked world-ending silence which seemed to enclose Woody Creek once those mill saws stopped screaming. She could think herself into other places on that swing. And when she opened her eyes and swung high enough, she could see the world, or her world. See right into Maisy’s backyard, see the station, and Norman as he walked across the station yard to the side gate.
She was looking for Norman when she saw the old swagman, the one who had found that pearl-in-a-cage pendant. She could tell him by his white beard — and he was still wearing his big black coat. He looked like Noah from the Bible. She watched him cross the road, wondering which way he’d walk. And he kept on coming. He was going to walk through the park. Didn’t want him to recognise her. He wouldn’t, she was only ten when he was last here, but she tucked her chin down, closed her eyes and swung higher, visualising his footsteps and counting them, counting a hundred slow steps before she had a quick peep, then a glance over her shoulder.
He was standing near the bandstand looking at Maisy’s house, maybe smelling her dinner cooking. Jenny could smell onions frying. Wondered what the old swaggie would eat tonight, or if he’d eat.
