by Joy Dettman
Except she couldn’t. Her mind was awake now. And she knew why Amber had come in after clean sheets too. Sissy had wet her bed.
She crept across to the strip of wall between wardrobe and whatnot, placed her ear to the wall. No talking, but activity on the other side, brisk footsteps, sheets flipped. Then Sissy’s whine. She’d whine for a week about what those twins had done, and if it took a wet bed to convince Norman that she was suffering, then that’s what she’d do.
Jenny returned to her own dear, narrow bed to spread herself in celebration of having it to herself, while listening for sounds of Norman, his voice, his footsteps, his chair scraping in the kitchen. Couldn’t hear him. He must have gone to church. Then she was up again and lifting her curtain, attempting to judge the time. It could still be church time.
Why hadn’t he woken her? Why hadn’t he taken her to church to ask God’s forgiveness for her sin of pride or something?
Fast footsteps walking by her door and across the verandah. Fast footsteps crunching on gravel. Amber would soak those sheets until tomorrow. Monday was washing day.
‘Daddy!’ Jenny knocked on her door. ‘Daddy. I need to go to the lav.’
He didn’t come. Amber came back and Jenny stopped knocking.
The relief bag had something in it. Knowing Sissy, her green dress was probably stuffed in there, as the yellow had been. Too many bad memories attached to that green dress to ever wear it again. And it crushed like a rag. Jenny lifted the bag down, drew its gathered mouth wide and peered in. No green, but something beige, something embroidered. She retrieved Amber’s old blouse. It was coming apart at the sleeve seam but it had an embroidered collar and matching embroidery halfway down the front. That seam could be fixed, or made bigger. A needle and thread could fix a lot of things. She stuffed it into her bottom drawer, then dug for more buried treasure. Only Norman’s old work trousers and one of Sissy’s nightdresses. Jenny had plenty of raggy, baggy hand-me-down nightdresses. She stuffed it back in. Someone would wear it. Someone would wear Norman’s old trousers.
Back on the bed, on her knees, her head beneath the curtain, she looked out on what could have been a midday sun. There were no shadows. She hadn’t gone to bed until one o’clock. Norman had let her sleep in, had gone to church alone, was probably talking to someone there. Wished he’d come home. She’d drunk too much cordial last night. She looked at the preserving pan. Her bladder felt as if she might need that, but she lifted down the blue-green vase. It had served her well enough before and would serve her again if he didn’t open that door soon.
Half an hour more she waited for him, until the last of the sun left her window to beat down on the roof. Church was over by eleven thirty. Where was he? Had he forgotten she was locked in? Had he left the key in the door so Amber could let her out?
He wouldn’t do that.
Sleep is the best way to pass time in an airless room. She dozed a while and woke with a dry mouth. The way to stop moisture evaporating was to breath through the nose. She lay on her back, mouth firmly closed, staring at the ceiling and wondering how long it took a person to die of thirst, wondering if the body decided to hang on to any moisture it had trapped in the bladder. She thought of Vern and Jimmy Hooper and the day they’d picked her up when she’d gone for a walk along the railway lines, thought of the taste of cool water from Vern’s water bag, and the mirage she’d believed was magic, the butterflies she’d chased. Butterflies were more beautiful then, larger then—or they’d seemed larger.
‘Dad.’ She rapped at the window. ‘Daddy, are you out there?’ Her window was only feet from the back verandah. He sat out there some Sundays. She knocked harder on the glass. Sometimes he chipped at weeds down the back on Sundays. ‘Daddy.’
Yelling dried her mouth. Had to raise spit so she could swallow. Glanced around her prison, not scared but concerned. He’d been strange last night. He’d been worse than strange.
‘Daddy.’
Sissy was only a wall away. She knocked on it. ‘Sissy. Tell someone to open this door. I need to go to the lav.’ Not that that would concern Sissy. ‘I’m dying of thirst.’
Not a sound from Sissy’s room. She pounded on the wall. ‘Sissy, open this door.’
Swallowed, and for half an instant almost panicked, because for half an instant she couldn’t swallow, which was mad. People didn’t die of thirst in a day, and certainly not if they’d drunk about six glasses of cordial the night before, and they were not out in the sun, and they had full bladders. Anyway, she wouldn’t die of thirst. She’d break the window.
Thought about bladders for a while, about having something like a football full of fluid inside, somewhere below the navel. Thought about the other bits that were down there. Dora knew heaps more about things than she. She knew that babies grew underneath their mother’s navels, and how, when the baby was ready to be born, the navel opened up and out they popped, which was the only logical reason for anyone to have a navel. Except boys had them too. Maybe all babies started out the same and they only grew their extra bits in the last weeks so God gave them all navels, just in case.
She knew Amber and Norman had four babies die, which was what sent Amber mad in the first place. Jessie had told her that, and she’d told her how Granny had paid a city doctor to operate on her so she couldn’t have any more babies. Not that she was likely to, because Dora said that women had babies because they slept in double beds with their husbands and being that close to a man got a baby started somehow, except the Duffy girls didn’t have husbands and they still had babies.
She turned to the window, tried to lift it, aware it was wasted effort. Norman had tried a dozen times to open it. He’d written letters to the railway department about his window that wouldn’t open. They’d come to paint the house once but they hadn’t fixed the window.
‘Daddy,’ she yelled, her fist pounding against the frame. ‘I need to go to the lav.’
The house sounded empty. She had to get out of here. And the shadows were lengthening now, the sun moving across the roof. It had to be after one, maybe even going on for two o’clock. And she was sweating. She’d sweat out all of her moisture.
There were small hooks on the top and bottom sashes, and a lock glued open by paint. She stood on her bed and tried heaving down on the top sash. She hammered at the frame at the sides, the bottom, the middle where the two sashes joined, and when her fist would take no more, she used the heel of her shoe.
‘If someone doesn’t open this door, I’m going to break the window,’ she yelled.
Not a sound. They’d all gone out and left her to die. And if they’d all gone out, then no one would hear her hammering, so she belted harder at the frame, belting upwards, downwards.
They hadn’t gone out. She raised Sissy.
‘Shut up,’ she whined.
‘Open my door, Sissy.’
It was a relief knowing she was in the house. She jumped from the bed and went to the door, waited for Sissy’s footsteps.
‘Sissy. Open this door.’
Amber was in there too. Jenny heard the mutter of voices.
‘I’ll break the window in a minute.’
Nothing.
So she’d break it. On the bed again, head beneath the curtain, one last heave down. And it rattled. That window never rattled.
She got rid of the curtains, tossed them and their rod over her shoulder, then stood on the sill and hammered like hell along the top of the window frame, hammered again where the sashes joined. Then her fingers curling over hooks, her knees as a fulcrum, she bore down. And it moved. She could feel the air, hot air, but moving fresh air. It was coming through a slim slit at the top. She repeated her action and this time was able to get her fingers into the gap.
Key scratching in the lock. She swung around, picked up the curtain rod, thinking to get it back up, but Amber was standing in the doorway, a broom in her hand, her eyes like dead swamps.
‘Hit me with that and I’ll hit you back,’ Jenny warned,
spreading her feet.
The broom was long. The curtain rod was longer. Jenny was younger, more nimble and the bed offered her its springs. She feinted left, went right, copped a whack on the upper arm but she was out of that room, out the back door, out the side gate and over to the station tap, where the water was as hot as hell for a minute, but cooled as she soaked her head, doused her frock, then drank. The ground was hot underfoot. Wished she’d put her shoes on. She hadn’t, and she sure as hell wasn’t going back for them.
She used Maisy’s lav. Maisy hadn’t gone to church this morning. She hadn’t sighted Norman since last night.
Two of the Dobson boys were at the café. They stared at her hair, told her they hadn’t seen her father but they’d heard her singing on the wireless last night—which seemed like a week ago to Jenny, and unimportant today. She popped her head inside the café, took a look around.
‘In or out,’ Mrs Crone snapped.
‘Has Dad been in this morning, Mrs Crone?’
Mrs Crone hadn’t seen him, but she saw Jenny’s bare feet. ‘How the mighty have fallen,’ she said. Didn’t comment on her haircut.
No one could stand Mrs Crone. Her husband couldn’t even stand her so he spent his life next door, drunk. Had there been another café in town, no one would have gone near Crone’s.
Norman didn’t like bare feet and Jenny’s were not accustomed to being bare, so she ran around to the Palmers’, attempting to keep to the shade, or walk where there was grass. It was surprising how dirt, which was miles deep, could heat up enough to burn bare feet.
‘Was Dad in church today, Mrs Palmer?’
‘I didn’t see him, love. We noticed you weren’t there.’
‘I slept in,’ Jenny said.
Dora lent her a pair of canvas shoes. She’d always wanted a pair, but canvas shoes were for those who couldn’t afford leather, Norman said. They felt good on her feet, like bare feet with soles. She stayed a while at the Palmers’ house, had a cup of tea and a slice of bread and jam while she told them all about the concert.
Norman was down at the creek, midway between the bridge and the town, on someone’s land, McPherson’s or Dobson’s. Hatless, his head was burning; be the burn external or internal, he neither knew nor cared. He was alive. The burning told him so. He had not expected to find himself alive this morning—or was it now afternoon?
He didn’t know what had brought him to this place or how long he’d been there, or why he’d come here, why he carried his brandy flask, now filled with water. He couldn’t recall filling it with water, didn’t know where he’d filled it.
He could recall wandering around Denham’s backyard, which at one stage had seemed the most logical place to die. At some time during the night he had delivered himself to Moe Kelly. He could recall sitting on his verandah, or recall the dog sharing that verandah. Perhaps the dog had suggested he cut out the middle man and go direct to the cemetery. He seemed to recall baptising the son he’d placed nameless into his mother’s grave. Simon, he had named him. Simon the Sensible.
A disjointed night. He’d slept on the river bank, had woken with twigs in his hair, leaf litter on his back. And he was not the only one who’d chosen the river bank that night. A swagman had used the opposite bank. He was cooking a meal—breakfast, lunch, dinner, or all three. Norman envied him his freedom, envied his blackened billy and dented pan, his lack of fear that allowed him to walk away from the untenable and take to the roads.
Norman knew himself for a coward, a beast who had coveted beauty, so certain she could transform him, breed from him a race of beautiful children. Instead, the beast had transformed her. She had no heart. She had no soul.
And he had her bottle of pills in his pocket.
Perhaps he had unwittingly chosen the perfect place to empty that bottle; the creek before him might carry his worthless carcass away. The banks were high. The water deep enough at this point. He might roll down and float away from life. He sat tossing the bottle in his hand, staring across the water at the swagman now breaking an egg into his frying pan.
Had he bought that egg, begged it, stolen it? Would an egg taste better eaten in freedom with only the birds and Norman looking on from a distance? He watched the stranger pinch salt from a pouch, place that pouch carefully back into his pocket, watched him hack a thick slice of bread from a loaf, then eat from the pan. A forkful of egg, a bite of bread, then time to chew and to savour each mouthful. No rush to be done, no kitchen to vacate, to leave tidy.
Afraid of her tight-mouthed anger. Afraid of her dull, drugged eyes.
And he’d forced them on his daughters.
Vision in his left eye blurred, he closed it to watch the swagman take a light from his campfire, light a cigarette, to watch him dip, then pour a billy of water over the embers, watch the ash fly, watch him kick evidence of his campfire into the creek, roll up his swag, and, with a salute to his watcher, walk on his way downstream.
‘Wait for me,’ Norman sighed. ‘Wait for me.’
How far might I walk, he thought. Two miles? Five? I am a creature of comfort, a weak, pompous dupe, dependent on my spectacles.
He placed the bottle down and removed his spectacles, and found one lens cracked through the centre. How? When? He had no answer. He sat polishing them on his shirt-tail, seeing his future more clearly without them. He could not, would not, live with her. He would take Jennifer and leave this town.
Go where? Crawl home to the relatives? Spend the late afternoon of his life relative-hopping, as he had relative-hopped through its long morning? Seeing their pleased faces when they carried his trunk to the station, their relief when they raised an arm to wave him on his way.
He sighed, replaced his spectacles, and watched the swagman disappear around the bend in the creek.
Alone then, he removed the lid from the pill bottle and, for the second time, poured a mound to his palm. No one to see him. Someone would find him.
Old ibis watching him, its head to one side. He had brought his Jenny-wren down here to watch the birds. How many times? They had been happy together, he and his Jenny. Cecelia too. He had shown her the dab chicks ducking their silly heads for a meal. He’d had a good life with his daughters. Against his better judgment, against the advice of his uncle, he had taken the adulteress, the addict, the whore, back into his house.
Why?
‘Am I worthy of better?’ he asked the ibis.
It shook its head and stalked off on long legs to find more worthy company. A family of dab chicks glanced at him then vacated his side of the creek.
Her pills were melting in the sweat of his palm. He stood and walked down to the water, tossed them far, watched them scatter, imagined fish below swimming for this new-food source—saw their muddy eyes, their fins flapping, wanting more, so he poured the last of the pills to his hand. Small miracles of modern science, they had killed the pain in his back, or perhaps the protesting nerve had died. He threw the bottle far, removing his option to retreat. And the dab chicks returned to ride the ripples of the bottle, to dive. He frowned. Poisoning the fish did not concern him, but small dab chicks?
He was standing at the water’s edge, his hand full of pills, when he heard the children’s voices. He turned, saw the Dobson boys running towards him, bathing-suit clad. And he flung the pills, watched them fall like hail, picked up a small branch to throw after them should the dab chicks approach. They knew better than he. They had no desire to lose the day.
‘Jenny was looking for you, Mr Morrison,’ a blond-headed boy said.
‘The time,’ he said. ‘Would you know the time, lad?’
‘It’s after two.’
He looked like his father, blond-headed, blue-eyed. All five of them looked like their father. Some men bred beautiful children who lived, he thought, turning to the girl, a pretty child, clad in a too large swimming costume. She reminded him of a younger Jenny—a much younger Jenny. She stood chin up watching him, and, uncomfortable beneath her gaze, he brushed
the dust from the seat of his trousers, adjusted his spectacles.
‘We heard Jenny singing on Grandpa’s wireless,’ she said.
At his best, Norman was not good at conversing with children. He was not at his best. He nodded, adjusted his spectacles.
‘She’s nearly like a famous singer now, isn’t she?’
He could find no words. He felt the sting of tears and adjusted his spectacles again.
‘The glass is broken in one eye,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘It might cut your eye.’
‘Yes.’
She gave up on him and ran down to join her brothers in the shallows.
He could stay here no longer. He walked upstream, through George McPherson’s land and beneath the bridge, following the creek bank until the forest came down to the bank to block his way with fallen branches and rotting logs. He cut back through the trees to the forest road. He could go to Gertrude. But she would offer tea, offer sympathy, which may break him.
He turned back to town, walking through the heat until the shade of the hotel drew him, the lane behind the hotel drew him in. The rear door was unlocked. He entered into cool.
‘We heard young Jenny last night,’ Mrs Bull said. ‘She ought to have won it.’
Norman nodded, waited for more, but she returned to her sweeping and he walked down the long passage to the dining room. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner, he sat, elbows on the table, head in his hands. Horrie brought him a pint of ale and didn’t stay to talk. He’d been around pubs long enough to know there was no place for a man to go at times but into a pot of beer.
He’d poured more pots before Jenny found her father, and later returned with Jim Hooper. They poured Norman into one of Horrie’s beds in the back sleep-out.
PILLS, PAIN AND NEWSPAPER
