by Joy Dettman
And those mirrors showed too much, showed the filth pulsing through her veins.
‘It’s in your blood,’ he’d said. He was a doctor. He knew everything. ‘Amber is dug from the dirt,’ he’d said. ‘Petrified sap. Insects crawling the earth millions of years ago became trapped in it. What is trapped within your core, pretty Amber?’
Stared at the winged mirrors, and three pale ghosts stared back, angry ghosts, wild-eyed, wild-haired.
Afraid of them. Too old, they knew too much. She reached to move the wings, to kill the ghosts of Amber Rose, but born of that move was a long corridor of ghosts, marching back, and back, and back, whispering about her, hissing at her. A chorus of hisses.
Two-bob whore.
Sold herself for the price of a loaf of bread.
How many thought their two bob well spent?
‘Bastards,’ she wailed. ‘Bastards.’ Slammed the wings of the mirror, but they swung back to show a different angle.
Sold herself once for a pair of pretty shoes.
And a frock with buttons down the front.
And a promise.
Men and their broken promises.
Norman kept his promises.
Paid more than two bob for her too.
Didn’t get his money’s worth.
None of them did.
Daddy did.
‘Die, you bitches. Die and leave me alone!’
Look at her, still searching for a pill.
Wants to block out what we know.
Doesn’t know the half of what we know.
Mad as a hatter, that one.
It’s in her blood.
Slammed the wings against the central mirror, one and the other, again, again, slammed them until the central mirror cracked, then shattered, and the line of ghosts scattered. Only one then. One silent ghost left standing, staring at the scattered shards of her reflection.
Sky darkening, thunder rolling.
Now?
Then?
When?
Had to go home. She’d get wet. Had to get her pretty dress off. He’d bought it for her. She’d never had a white dress, never had pretty shoes, just boots. Boots were stronger, her mother said.
She’d met him under the bridge. That was where she’d always met him, because she wasn’t allowed to meet him. She’d put that dress on under the bridge, taken her boots off.
‘My pretty bud,’ he’d said that last day. ‘Almost ripe for the plucking,’ and he’d kissed her, on the cheek but close to her mouth.
She’d told him she had to go home before the storm came, and he knew she couldn’t wear that dress home or her mother would know.
It had tiny buttons right down the front of the bodice. He’d wanted to help undo them. He slid it down from her shoulders, then his hands measured her breasts. Maisy’s breasts were much bigger, but she was fourteen. Amber’s breasts were just baby breasts. He said so, and said he ought to look at them.
He was a doctor. He wouldn’t do anything that was wrong.
‘So sweet,’ he said. ‘A man’s ultimate delight must be in the moulding of female perfection from a child of his own flesh, my pretty one.’
She didn’t understand his fancy words, didn’t know what to do except stand there while her beautiful dress slid down to the dirt. She didn’t want it to get dirty.
Wanted to get dressed in her school dress, but he was holding her, his hands over her hips. She could get away if she wanted to. Half of her had wanted to, half of her wanted to stay.
Kissed her then on the mouth.
‘You’re not . . . Why?’
‘You were panting for it, sweet thing.’
‘I have to go home now.’
But the rain didn’t want her to go home. It came heavy, came down on an angle, reaching in to where they stood. They had to move away from it, crawl up the bank beneath the bridge supports where the rain couldn’t reach. He took off his jacket and placed it on the clay, and she sat on it. The jacket wasn’t very big so he had to sit close, place his arm around her, right around her and beneath her arm so it touched her breast.
Like being inside their own house. Like the sheets of rain were their walls. Sitting close and listening to him telling about his house and his maids who polished his silver—his fingers moving against her, kept on moving, making that achy sweetness down low.
‘Have you seen the city, my pretty Amber?’
She hadn’t, but she couldn’t talk. Didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to move.
‘You’re begging for it,’ he said. ‘In a year or two, you’ll be at the mercy of every lout in town.’
He lifted her chin and kissed her mouth. Laid her down, and his tongue was a cat’s cleaning its kitten, cleaning her all over, sliding her petticoat up, off, cat tongue licking her baby breasts.
‘It should be a father’s unquestionable right to spread the legs of his ripe little buds,’ he said. ‘Want to go home to Mummy or stay with me, my pretty?’
‘She thinks I’m at school.’
‘I won’t tell on you, if you don’t on me.’
Left her pretty dress and shoes hidden behind one of the bridge pylons. Walked home in the late afternoon in her school dress and boots when the rain stopped. Told her mother she’d waited at Julia’s house for the rain to stop.
Waited for him to come back and take her to his house in the city so she could always wear pretty dresses and fancy shoes and go to theatres and have maids and drive in his fine carriages with two white horses. He’d promised her.
Watched for him at the schoolyard fence.
Searched the streets for him.
Waited beneath the bridge for him, clad in her pretty dress, her shoes.
He didn’t come.
The frock and shoes remained for a month beneath the bridge. Then Mr Blunt told her mother about a frock not yet paid for.
‘Did he do anything to you? Did he hurt you, Amber? You were told to stay away from him, darlin’.’
Knew all about what the billygoat did to the nanny goats. Knew how her mother hated that billygoat getting at the young female goats. Knew it was wrong, that she’d done wrong.
‘You ran away with another man and I hate you.’
Waited for her father to come back. Waited amid the chook dung and the goat dung and the dust of her mother’s land, waited until its stink seeped into her skin, until it went in too deep to scrub out.
Knew things now that Maisy didn’t know. Knew things Julia may never know. Stood at her mother’s fence one day watching the billygoat going at one of the half-grown kids, and hated her mother anew when she whacked him with her garden rake, chained him up in the back paddock. Blamed her. She’d made him go away.
Waited for years for him. He’d never returned.
And there was fat, big-breasted Maisy living in George Macdonald’s new house, having a baby every year; and there was Julia, an old maid in her twenties.
And there was Norman.
Gave up waiting for her father and sold herself to Norman for his railway house and his mother’s furniture and her gold-rimmed tea set and Queen Victoria vase.
Then sold herself to Reginald to get away from Norman.
Sold herself for a lot less since.
FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES
Two babies were born the weekend of Jim Hooper’s accident. Heat always brought the babies hurrying into life. Clarry Dobson’s wife had a second daughter on Sunday morning, and at six that night, Sophie Duffy came down to get Gertrude. Milly was in labour, and a black storm brewing in the western sky. Gertrude didn’t like the look of it, didn’t want to take her horse out in it—and she was too weary to go. She went. She always went when she was called. And the shack she found that girl lying in was an insult to humanity.
‘Get those dogs out of here. Get this place cleaned up,’ she demanded. Outside then for a breath of purer air while dogs yelped and scattered. ‘Get some lamps from somewhere. Beg them, borrow them, but get them.’
; Seven o’clock when she arrived and by nine that baby was clinging in there, maybe knowing it was safer there. Gertrude took a break and went out to check on her horse. He didn’t like the fireworks or the thunder.
In the thirty years she’d been delivering Duffy offspring, the accommodation had deteriorated. Old man Duffy had at least done a few running repairs and kept the dogs down to a minimum. There were more dogs than kids out here now, six or eight women and grown girls, and, as far as she could tell, two males: simple-minded Henry, a thirty-year-old child, and a bearded old bloke she’d sighted when she’d driven in.
‘Easy boy,’ she soothed, missing old Nugget tonight. He’d stood between those shafts through many a thunderstorm and never turned a hair. Time might teach his replacement patience, though she doubted it. She’d wanted a young horse, one who might see her out. He might, but the way he was behaving, he’d see her cart out tonight.
‘Easy boy. I’ll get you out of it. We’re going to have a long night. Easy now.’
Dark out here, feeling out each buckle, each clasp, but she released him and hoped he didn’t find a gap in Duffy’s fence.
‘Any rain in it?’ the old bloke said. He was standing behind her.
‘We need a decent downpour.’
‘It’s taking its time coming,’ he said.
Maybe he meant the baby, maybe the storm, threatening now since late Saturday.
‘They’ll probably get it three hundred miles south,’ she said. ‘Like the last one.’
‘A nice-looking horse.’
‘He’s got a soft mouth for riding. Doesn’t like the cart much. You might tell those rampaging kids to give him space. He’s inclined to kick first and ask questions later.’
‘A prerogative of youth,’ he said.
‘True,’ she replied, and someone walked over her grave.
The boy arrived an hour before midnight. He was a good size and healthy. Duffy infants did well in the womb, though not so well on dry land. She wondered who’d fathered him, wondered if he’d be alive twelve months from now, wondered who he might turn out to be if given half a chance. Some things you had to walk away from. Sometimes you had no choice but to walk away.
She found her horse in a back corner of Duffy’s acre. He seemed pleased to see her. She was backing him in between the shafts when a flash of lightning near blinded her, and her horse took off, the harness dragging behind him. She followed its rattle, vowing she wouldn’t be coming back to this place. She was past this foolishness.
The next clap of thunder rattled every sheet of corrugated iron on Duffy land, and there were plenty to rattle. The lightning a constant now, one flash coming on top of the last. And the old bloke standing out in it watching the show, and looking for all the world like Moses, sent down by God on a lightning bolt with a new set of commandments for the Duffy family—or maybe to issue a refresher course on the old.
She got her horse and was bringing him back when two heavy drops fell on her face and bare arm. A few more hit her while she was backing him in, and maybe he was calmer with the weight of that cart holding him down, or with her nearby, talking softly, telling him they were going home. She led him to the road before climbing up to her seat, not wanting anyone to see how dog tired she was, to see her struggling to make that climb, but she made it and flicked the reins.
‘Home, boy,’ she said. ‘Take me home.’
He needed no urging. He needed urging to slow, but they got home and before the clouds burst open.
Her beautiful boys were waiting for her in the yard. They took charge of cart and horse while Elsie took charge of Gertrude. She carried water for her to wash, then sat her down to a fine supper and a strong mug of tea.
‘It’s too much for you, Mum. It’s time you stopped doing this.’
‘It’s too much for me on a stormy night with a ratbag horse, darlin’, and the worst part of it is knowing that poor mite doesn’t stand a chance.’
Tea was a drug. It could lift you up when you felt down.
‘Any news of Jim Hooper?’ she asked.
‘Nothing we’ve heard.’
That boy should have died in infancy and half a dozen times since. He’d been cut too soon from his mother’s womb. She’d had no milk to feed him; he’d weighed less at two months than he had at birth, had damn near died when he’d taken the measles badly as a three year old; at five, when he’d gone down with influenza, he was running temperatures Gertrude had rarely seen.
‘He’s tougher than he looks,’ she said. ‘Give him half a chance and he’ll make it.’
Daily, the town expected to hear Jim Hooper was dead. A few weren’t too certain his father wouldn’t go with him. Vern was an energetic man, always on the go. He’d spent his days since the accident sitting by the telephone, or sitting on the verandah, the window between him and that telephone, waiting for the call.
Margaret called. Jim was unconscious. They wouldn’t let her see him.
Then Moe Kelly, cabinet-maker-cum-undertaker, fifty-nine years old, fit as a mallee bull, dropped dead in his shed halfway through building a new sink cupboard for Maisy’s remodelled kitchen.
‘His wife went out to call him in for morning tea, and there he was, on the floor, a plane in his hand,’ Maisy said.
‘A good way to go if you’ve got to go,’ George said.
‘If you’re old enough to go! He was younger than you, George. It’s like with Jean White. If I’d heard that Vern or Jim was dead, I might have been expecting it, but you don’t expect someone like Moe Kelly to drop dead.’
Expected or not, he was gone, and who was going to bury him?
Through the good times and the bad, Moe had been planting Woody Creek’s loved ones in pine box or fancy coffin. Through the good times and the bad, he’d taken folk on their last drive to the cemetery in his fancy black funeral van, and he’d never charged more than he knew a man could pay. It wasn’t right that a stranger should be brought in from Willama to bury Moe. It wasn’t right that Moe’s last ride would be in a motor car. He’d never taken to cars.
The Willama undertaker got more than he’d bargained for on the day of his first Woody Creek funeral. He thought they were having some sort of fair. The shops were shut, the mill saws were silent, schoolkids were lining the road outside the church when he pulled in.
A mob came to meet him, led by an old chap with verandah eyebrows and purple eyes.
‘You can get the coffin out and go on your way,’ he said.
The undertaker didn’t argue. He hung around through a brief service, saw Moe loaded into an ancient funeral van, then led on his final ride through town by an old bloke clad out in full kilt, and on a muggy day when a shirt was too much to have on your back.
‘Moe had no more Scot in him than I’ve got,’ people said.
‘Who cares what he had in him? He would have loved this.’
He would have framed John McPherson’s photographs. John took three shots of Moe’s rig: one as it passed over Charlie White’s crossing, one with the hotel as a backdrop, and one of the procession, old Jim McGee flashing his knobbly knees while squeezing hell out of aged bagpipes.
‘I’ve heard a few get better music out of squeezing a bloody cat.’
‘Be decent, Horrie.’
‘Be decent nothing. I’ve heard Moe say the same thing himself.’
‘Hooroo, mate.’
‘Hooroo.’
‘I always thought you’d bury me, Moe. Have a good journey.’
Down and around Blunt’s corner, over Blunt’s crossing and back to Cemetery Road, Moe riding proud in his old funeral van, his two sons driving his elderly black horses, resplendent for the last time in their finery. A memorable day. In fifty years’ time, the kids lined up in the street would talk about the day Moe Kelly was planted.
The Willama undertaker would speak for thirty years of his first Woody Creek funeral. It started a rush of business. Before Moe was in the ground, he’d got his second customer. Old Jim McGee, eight
y if he was a day, sat down to catch his breath for the final bagpipe salute and he never drew it. They thought he’d nodded off, but when his son nudged him into action, the bagpipes fell to the earth and old Jim toppled with them.
‘A good way to go if you’ve got to go.’
‘He had a good run did old Jim.’
‘We’ll miss his bagpipes at the concerts.’
‘And by the living Christ, I’ll be thankful to miss them too.’
There was a second storm the day old Jim was buried. A tree out on the Willama Road was struck by lightning. It took a power pole down with it and the power wires. Woody Creek residents, grown accustomed to light at the flick of a switch, were lighting candles again, attempting to read by the pale yellow glow of kerosene lamps. The power wasn’t back come morning either. Charlie White and the local garage bloke did a roaring trade filling beer bottles with kerosene, just enough to tide folk over. Wirelesses were silent. Wind-up gramophones were dusted off, new needles found and near forgotten records played once more. Folk had become accustomed to eating their meals to the accompaniment of the wireless. Mr Cox sold out of newspapers before midday. Folk missed hearing the nightly news.
‘Bloody refrigerators. Why did a man go and pitch out that old ice chest?’
‘How long are they going to be fixing those wires? Has anyone heard anything?’
‘They say they’re down all over the place, that it could take days.’
‘How the hell did we manage before electricity?’
They’d managed, and most had managed not to burn down their houses. Man becomes lax. He forgets. His wife grows old.
Anyone who’d had recent dealings with old Mrs Miller from the boot shop knew she was losing her memory. The boot shop went up in smoke with Miller and his wife asleep in the rear residence. If not for the Macdonald twins, the Willama undertaker would have got himself two more customers. Those boys dragged the old couple out through a rear window.
Constable Denham was inclined to believe that if the twins had stayed in Melbourne, the boot shop wouldn’t have gone up in smoke, but no one was dead, the shops to the right and left were saved, so for a day or so the twins were heroes—tormenting, drunken, brawling, whoring little bastards, but heroes nonetheless.
