by Joy Dettman
He’d thought his heart was broken clean down the middle when he’d lost his boys to that bloody war, but it took more than a broken heart to kill a man. Life was a series of losses, and if you were going to get through life, then you had to keep altering your options, taking different roads and just keep moving on. He’d never known his mother; his birth had killed her. He’d lost his dad when he was nineteen, lost his old grandma to a runaway horse when he was twenty-three. He’d lost someone else around that same time, though he kept all memory of her buried deep.
Ninety-one days of laughter and loving and her soft, clinging mouth. Sweet oasis, Katie’s mouth. Just a boy and a girl who’d found true love – except the boy had already had a man’s responsibilities. He’d done the right thing. He’d stuck with Rosie.
He shook his head, forcing that memory back down where it belonged as Mary Murphy began singing along with his song. That woman had a good voice – though he heard it yelling at her kids more often than he heard it singing. She had eleven offspring, ranging in age from thirteen to near on thirty. Irene, her eldest, was a nurse over at the hospital. Mike was her youngest, and that little bugger had discovered the secret to life without sleep; the only time he went home was at mealtimes.
The song ended, and for the time it took to wind the gramophone handle and put on another record, Rosie’s snore was supreme. She had the front bedroom, sharing a wall with his office, her window offering a view of Willama Road. He had the back bedroom, his window three feet from the post office lane – entertainment supplied.
Ain’t she sweet, ain’t she grand, watch her walking down the strand . . .
And Tom Thompson gave up on sleep and pitched his pillow at the wall. A cup of tea, that’s what he needed. He’d light that stove and have his cup of tea too, and a pipe, on his veranda – and let that thoughtless mob of record-playing buggers see him sitting out there feeding the mozzies while they cranked up their cursed machine on their insect-proofed veranda.
sleepless
Sunday, 12.35 am
A stone tossed northeast from Tom’s veranda would have landed on the Murphys’ roof. He was tempted. Tossed south, and provided he could have got it across the wide expanse of dust that was Willama Road, it would probably have landed in the hospital garden. Tom had no stones handy, but he did have an enamel mug full of strong sweet tea, and the Murphys’ visitors had got the message. It looked as if they were leaving.
There was a lot of light showing over at the hospital tonight. From sundown to sun-up, a hurricane lantern burned outside the door of Hunter’s consulting room, but tonight its glow was near extinguished by a blaze of light coming though one of those side windows – probably the operating room window. Tom considered walking over the road to see what was going on, but that mug of tea, long waited for, tasted too good, so he sat gulping hot tea and wondering.
Seven lamps burned in Robert Hunter’s operating room, each one casting its own shadows. His mirror-shaded ceiling lamp, adjusted to hang low over the sacrificial lamb on his operating table, still shed insufficient light for his ageing eyes, or maybe he was prevaricating. He didn’t want to do this. He was too old for this, and his eyes knew it. No choice but to use the scalpel. At the rate she was losing blood, both she and her infant would be dead before he could get the ambulance halfway across from Willama.
For two years now, they’d been promising Molliston electricity. He wanted that brighter, whiter light, and if he couldn’t have it, he’d need one of those lamps held close to his elbow. There was only his wife, Joan, and Irene Murphy, his city-trained nurse, to assist him. Their work was already cut out for them, so Joan called Sarah O’Brien down from the wards and got her clad. She was a trainee with a Florence Nightingale fixation; here was her chance to be the lady with the lamp.
Rob positioned her, then took up his scalpel. The infant’s heartbeat was weakening. He had to get in there and get it out. No time to plan this thing. Only minutes had elapsed since the girl was carried in, leaving a trail of blood behind.
Joan, handling the chloroform, gave him a nod, but as he placed the scalpel against white skin, the trainee stepped back and the light moved.
‘Hold it so the light is on my hands, lass. Follow my hands,’ he said. The girl’s interest was centred on Joan’s end of the table. ‘That’s one of the Johnson twins, isn’t it, Mrs Hunter?’
Rob waved an arm, barely missing her and her lamp. ‘Out! Get out of my sight.’
Joan moved to her husband’s side and, the lamp now in steady hands, the blade bit into tight flesh and glided down, splitting open the girl’s stomach like a knife through watermelon.
‘Clamps.’ They were in his hand. Irene Murphy had been born for this work.
He might save the babe – if he didn’t decapitate it in the process. He sucked in a breath and cut through the uterus, then his hands delved deep to withdraw an undergrown male infant from the gore.
‘Sarah,’ Joan called over her shoulder. ‘Take it! Quickly. Clean the mucus out of its mouth and get it breathing. You’ve seen me do it with the Mason baby.’
‘And wouldn’t it be kinder on that poor family if the tenderness of providence blessed it with a timely grave, Mrs Hunter,’ the trainee said.
‘I told you to get to buggery!’ Rob yelled. ‘Get her out of this room or I’ll throw her through that bloody window and I won’t bother opening it first. Oh, shite! She’s filling up with blood!’
The lamp placed down, Joan took the infant as the trainee disappeared in a swish of starched white.
‘How the hell can I see anything in there? I’m closing her up.’
‘Tilt the table, Mrs Hunter,’ Irene said.
Rob was feeling for that gusher as the table crank turned. The intestines shifted, and blood pooling in the pelvic region cleared. Then he saw where the blood was coming from and knew what he had to do, and fast. The infant grunted and Joan was back at his elbow as the little mother’s uterus landed in a dish.
Rob felt that old silence engulf him then, that disassociation from the scene. He was there but not there; he was doing what he could, any way he could. Perspiration pooled beneath his glasses, fogging the lenses. If he shook his head he’d drip sweat into the wound, so he worked near blind, until Joan lifted his glasses and dabbed the sweat from his eyes.
Feet spread, long back bent over that table, he strove to gain a view of what his hands were doing. He was too tall for this table but couldn’t set it higher or it would be too high for his nurses. He’d had high hopes of that O’Brien girl. She was five foot ten. He’d chosen her for her height. So much for high hopes. He’d get rid of her when he was done here. His back seizing, knowing he was on the home stretch now, he took a moment to straighten while Irene mopped blood. The infant grunted again.
‘No accounting for mankind’s tenacity for life,’ he said.
‘He looks good, Robbie. Small. Could be a month early. Did Willie say what happened to her?’
‘Not a word, Mrs Hunter,’ Irene replied. ‘I heard a car out front, then heard him knocking at your side door. I got him to carry her in, then I woke you up and when I got back, he was gone. She looks as if she’s been dragged through a barbwire fence backwards – and her foot could be broken.’
‘That’s going to be the least of her worries – and ours, lass,’ Rob said.
The enamel bucket at her feet filling with blood-soaked swabs, Irene pointed to what remained. Joan went for more swabs. She’d be sixty next birthday, six years Rob’s junior, but was still fleet of foot.
‘Your blood is worth its bottling, ladies. Have I ever told you that?’
‘That’s what she’s going to need – if we can get her off this table alive,’ Irene said. ‘One of those Johnsons would have safe blood.’
There were fourteen of those Johnsons, counting their parents, and all bar two of them were sleeping through this night in a small cottage on the Squire Estate, one of the finest estates in Victoria, situated three miles from Mo
lliston’s town centre with a river between.
Nicholas Squire, lord and master of the estate, required little sleep. He was a reader, and his youngest daughter, Helen, had inherited his habit of reading long into the night. She’d finished her book and was considering bed. She was considering a reply to Percy’s letter too. The pad, pen and ink were on her bedside table, accusing her every time she looked at that bed. She had to do it. Her father had told her to.
Clad in a fine white lawn nightgown, its long hem tucked beneath the legs of her bloomers, she walked to her western window, unsnibbed the flyscreen and swung it out into the night, then leaned out herself. Her hair, always plaited loosely for sleep, fell like a dark rope halfway down the bluestone wall. She had too much hair, straight, heavy hair of a common brown. It looked black by night, as the trees outside her window looked black, except where the moonlight painted them silver.
Until last October she and her sister, Rachael, had shared this room. They’d spent hours leaning out of this window, looking at the stars and at those trees, an impenetrable barrier between them and the town, imprisoning them on this property as surely as Rapunzel had been imprisoned in her tower.
‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,’ she said, shaking her head, allowing the long plait to swing free. No witch or handsome prince was waiting to climb it. She smiled, imagining Rachael clambering up her hair and in the window; she’d found various means of climbing in and out, but had never tried pulling herself up on Helen’s hair.
She glanced over her shoulder at that writing pad. Percy would be expecting a reply. Her father had several letters to post in the morning; he’d told her to leave her letter on the hall table. She should have done it earlier, or got it over and done with a week ago. She wrote a minimum of letters, most of them boringly polite and empty. Nicholas Squire’s daughters were supposed to sit in their tower, writing boringly polite, empty letters, think nothing important, be nothing important and do nothing at all.
She sighed, drew her braid inside, snibbed the flyscreen and walked to her bed where she sat, her back against the bedhead, knees up – a very unladylike pose, but comfortable. The pad propped on her knees, she took up her pen, opened the ink bottle and dipped the nib. Not too deep. If she blotted that page, her father would make her write it again.
Dear Percy,
Writing to him was like playing a game of euchre, when you’re sitting at the card table holding all of the trumps but you can’t allow the opposition to know, by your expression, what you hold in your hand, so you keep your eyes down, your mouth closed, and hold your hand close to your chest. She kept her thoughts close to her chest while describing, in great detail, the dress being made for her by a dressmaker in Willama. She wrote two lines about how she’d chosen the fabric, then she wrote four about how Grandma Lorna’s ring was at the jeweller’s being cleaned and altered to fit her finger.
And what else was there to write? She chewed the end of her pen, read over her words and thought about that ring. The boyfriend was supposed to supply the engagement ring. Perhaps she shouldn’t have written that. Her father might say it was in very poor taste, mentioning it, and he’d make her write it again.
It was an elegant ring, bequeathed to her by her grandmother, who she couldn’t remember, but it had five gorgeous diamonds in it, and Helen had never been allowed to wear it. She’d suggested using it as an engagement ring – or suggested it to her mother, who had suggested it to her father, who had approved. So . . . so he couldn’t very well disapprove of her writing about it, could he? And Percy and his parents hadn’t argued, anyway.
Again the nib dipped. She wrote three lines about the hot weather, two more hoping that everyone was well, then she left a good wide space before signing it, Yours sincerely, Helen Squire. Perhaps she should have written Love, Helen. He had written Love, Percy. Too late now. Anyway, she didn’t love him, so why write a lie?
Not a blot on it. Her t’s were all crossed, her i’s all dotted. She addressed an envelope, wiped her pen nib, screwed the top onto the ink bottle, and what she’d been putting off for a week was done. She didn’t seal it. Her father would seal and post it.
He was delighted about the coming engagement. Not only was Percy’s father a judge, and Nicholas’s best friend, he had a wife with close connections to the English aristocracy, which meant that if enough people died before Percy, Helen might end up as a lady, or duchess, or something, which wasn’t likely, unless there was a plague and it killed off about seven Englishmen who were more closely related to the aristocracy than Percival James Richard Henry Cochran, who would add a hyphen and the Squire name to that list when they married. Percy’s family had agreed to the hyphen, as Dave Kennedy, Rachael’s husband, had agreed to tack on the ‘Squire’.
What a mouthful to say in church. She’d probably trip over her tongue before she got the Percival out. It was a gruesome name, but it suited him. He was no Prince Charming, which didn’t really matter, because Helen was no Cinderella. Her feet were too big. Rachael’s foot would have fitted that glass slipper. She wore a size three. Helen wore a size six and a half.
‘Helen is of a more robust build and health than her sister,’ Nicholas had said to Judge Cochran at Rachael’s wedding party – as if he were describing a brood mare he wanted to sell off while it still had all its teeth. ‘She’s an able girl, with many admirable qualities – and, I might add, a more tractable nature.’
Tractable: docile: amenable to reason.
That’s what he thought. She was robust, though, well endowed, and inches taller than Rachael, and was able to paint reasonably well – and that’s about all she was able to do reasonably well. She rarely caught coughs and colds, and when she’d caught the measles, she hadn’t been sick. Rachael had been in bed for a week, with Nicholas driving in to town every night to bring Dr Hunter out here. She was not as brave as Rachael, nor as delicately pretty, and she didn’t have as many friends as Rachael because most people bored her to tears.
Percy didn’t bore her – or not when she was arguing with him about some book. The being married to him – the bed part of being married – definitely did not bear thinking about, but if she skipped over that part and thought about the advantages, she could see herself with a fashionable haircut, out of this place and living in Melbourne with the Cochrans, who lived only a mile away from Aunt Bertha, who was the most singularly interesting person in the entire world – or in Helen’s world.
Aunt Bertha had almost taken a stroke when she received the invitation to the engagement party, or at least she sounded as if she’d been ready to take a stroke. She had little to do with telephones, didn’t trust them, but she’d placed a call and demanded to speak to Helen.
‘Do you realise what you are doing, Helen?’ Aunt Bertha said. ‘You are far too young to be making this decision. Is Percival your choice, Helen, or your father’s?’
Her father’s, of course, though she wasn’t able to say that on the telephone, not with Nicholas sitting behind his desk, listening to every word.
Rachael almost threw a fit. She stared at Helen for about two minutes while her mouth fell open and her eyes grew so round, then she said, ‘Percy the peacock? You said that you’d marry him? Why, in God’s name, would you go and do a damn fool thing like that for, Heli?’
Why? Because she wanted Nicholas to be happy for a while, and she really wanted to wear that ring, and wanted to get out of this tower – and she needed some spending money, but mainly because she was becoming desperate to get her hair cut, and Percy liked modern girls, that’s why.
Anyway, they wouldn’t be getting married for at least twelve months, and anything could happen in twelve months.
rings and things
Sunday, 1.15 am
Mike Murphy leaned against the railway station’s waiting room wall, watching the moths circling the street light. He heard her before he saw her.
‘Chris?’ she said.
‘It’s only me. Mike Murphy.’ At thirte
en, he was midway through his growth spurt; he measured five foot six but his voice was still a boy’s, as was his pug nose and his rarely combed, basin-cut thatch of dead straight black hair. Even in high heels Rachael Squire didn’t look full grown. Mike had been sweet on her since she’d crept up on him while he was setting rabbit traps in her father’s bush paddock, and all she’d said was, ‘Watch out you don’t catch your fingers, Michael Murphy.’
He’d rarely sighted her since she’d married, except in church, where he spent most of the hour his mother forced him to sit still looking at Rachael and hoping she’d turn around and smile at him, which never happened.
‘What are you doing down here at this time of night?’ she asked.
He could have asked her the same question. ‘I was thinking about going home.’
‘Would you have any idea of the time?’
‘Busy Lizzie said it was past twelve ages ago. It’s got to be after one.’
She was carrying a heavy shoulder bag, its strap crossing over her chest, making twin mounds beneath her fancy white dress, and he had to stop staring at them.
‘Is there a tap here somewhere, Mike? I’m dying of thirst.’
His name on her lips gave him goosebumps. He swallowed, licked his lips. ‘There’s a new one down the side,’ he said, knowing this place well. The railway station’s street light was a favourite hang-out for Mike Murphy and his pack.
They didn’t have a lot of choice; there were only four street lights in town, one out front of the post office, which Miss Lizzie made off-limits, one out the front of the garage, in full view of the police station, and one near the café. The courting couples congregated there; they had money to spend on their girls before they took them walking down the town common lane. At thirteen, you couldn’t afford to be choosy. The station master, Mr Wilson, was deaf but his wife wasn’t, so the kids kept their noise down, and if they used the overgrown garden as nature’s lavatory in preference to the corrugated iron stink-boxes, the shrubs made no complaints – water was water in drought times.
