Thorn on the Rose Read online

  Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which, Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday’s Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry’s Daughter, One Sunday and Pearl in a Cage. Thorn on the Rose is Joy’s second novel in her Woody Creek series.

  Also by Joy Dettman

  Mallawindy

  Jacaranda Blue

  Goose Girl

  Yesterday’s Dust

  The Seventh Day

  Henry’s Daughter

  One Sunday

  Diamonds in the Mud

  Woody Creek series

  Pearl in a Cage

  Joy

  Dettman

  THORN ON THE ROSE

  First published 2010 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Joy Dettman 2010

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Dettman, Joy

  Thorn on the rose / Joy Dettman.

  9781405039949 (pbk.)

  A823.3

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Typeset in 11.5/14.5 pt Times by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2010 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Thorn on the Rose

  Joy Dettman

  Adobe eReader format

  978-1-74262-092-3

  EPub format

  978-1-74262-093-0

  Mobipocket format

  978-1-74262-094-7

  Online format

  978-1-74262-095-4

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  Thank you to Shani, Kay and Don —

  my fine trio of fearless early readers

  who now appear to be tied into a series.

  Previously in PEARL IN A CAGE

  Characters, in order of importance:

  Gertrude Foote, the retired town midwife; her daughter and son-in-law, Amber and Norman Morrison; Gertrude’s granddaughters, Sissy and Jenny.

  Vern Hooper, Gertrude’s long-term lover, sawmill owner and farmer; his daughters, Lorna and Margaret, and son Jim.

  Maisy and George Macdonald; their twin sons, Bernie and Macka; and their many daughters.

  Elsie, an Aboriginal girl, raised since the age of twelve by Gertrude. She is wed to Harry Hall. They have several children.

  Woody Creek shopkeepers: Charlie White, grocer; Mr and Miss Blunt, drapers; Mrs Crone, café owner; Horrie Bull, publican; Mr Foster, the postmaster.

  The railway line is Woody Creek’s only link with distant Melbourne. Norman Morrison, the stationmaster, a plain and unlovable man ignored by the community, now finds himself the centre of attention. His obese, overbearing mother, old Cecelia, is dead. Her relatives, who have travelled far to attend the funeral, overrun the country town, and Norman’s small house. Amber, Norman’s wife, daughter of Gertrude Foote, the local midwife, is heavily pregnant for the third time in four years.

  On New Year’s Eve of 1923, Gertrude is awakened at midnight. A dying woman and her newborn infant have been found beside the railway line. There is no doctor in Woody Creek. Gertrude, more farmer than healer, can’t save the unidentified mother.

  When Amber is delivered of her second stillborn son, a series of incidents sees the living child exchanged for the dead. Amber, desolate at the loss, is not fit to mother. The consequences of this decision will prove disastrous for her, and for the infant they name Jennifer.

  We watch Jenny grow as Australia and the world sink into the Great Depression.

  ‘You are a golden songbird, hatched into a nest of grey sparrows,’ says her adoptive father. ‘You are a classical portrait, framed in gold and hung in a gallery of fools.’

  Norman adores Jenny, but she is despised by her mother, Amber, and by her older sister, an impossible child who grows into an impossible woman.

  Gertrude — Granny — who loves unconditionally, is the one Jenny runs to when she is raped and impregnated by the hell-raising Macdonald twins.

  Amber and the twins’ father, George, decide there is but one way out for the eighteen-year-old twins, threatened with twenty years’ hard labour, for fifteen-year-old Jenny’s good name — and for the unwanted fruit of that rape. A wedding is planned.

  At seven o’clock, on the Friday evening prior to the wedding, the Melbourne train leaves Woody Creek with Jenny on board, hidden in the goods van.

  Is there a life for her away from Woody Creek?

  THE WEDDING DAY

  At eleven fifteen on Saturday, 24 May 1939, Vern Hooper’s big green Ford made a right-hand turn off the forest road and down a bush track that led to Gertrude Foote’s fifteen acres. He didn’t agree with that hurriedly arranged wedding, but someone had to transport the bride to church. It would be a marriage in name only, or so they said — which, as far as Vern was concerned, was making a mockery of church vows, as was allowing that girl to wear the white wedding veil. He’d expressed his views to Gertrude, who for once in her life agreed with him. Not that she had any more say in the matter than he. It was what both sets of parents wanted, what Jenny said she wanted, and, when all was said and done, none of Vern’s business.

  He nosed the car into the fowl yard, parked it between the walnut tree and the wood heap, and was unwinding his overly long frame from behind the steering wheel when Gertrude came from the house, clad in the same working trousers and green cardigan she’d been wearing yesterday.

  So she’d decided to make a stand. He was pleased. ‘You’re not going in with her,’ he said.

  ‘She’s gone, Vern.’

  ‘I agreed to drive her in, didn’t I?’

  ‘Gone, as in caught last night’s train.’

  ‘Her fool of a father finally came to his senses?’ Vern said.

  ‘He hasn’t got any to come to, and the longer I know him, the more I know it. Joey was saying she used to talk to him about stowing away in the goods van. That’s probably what she’s done.’

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Since last night. She gave Joey a letter before she went for her walk.’

  ‘You
could have saved me putting my suit on.’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone. They had no right to consider doing it anyway.’

  ‘They’ll be up there waiting for her.’

  ‘Then let them wait a bit longer. Brides are expected to be late. The kettle’s boiling.’

  ‘Keep it boiling, Trude. I’ll be back.’

  At eleven twenty-five, when Vern made a U-turn in front of the C of E church, Bernie Macdonald, the groom, waiting at the vestry door, took a decent swig from his flask and looked beyond the green Ford towards Blunt’s crossing, still expecting his barefoot twin to come like the cavalry and save him.

  Not that the gaining of legal rights to Jenny Morrison wasn’t tempting, but not if it was going to drive a wedge between him and his brother. They’d damn near killed each other last night. This morning, Bernie’s left eye was closed, though still more red than black. He’d got the worst of it. At midnight, his father, brother-in-law and Constable Denham had driven Macka out to another brother-in-law’s farm and offloaded him there, bootless. All night, Bernie had been expecting him back. He hadn’t slept. He wouldn’t be doing much sleeping tonight either — which was what he’d said to Macka last night, which was what had got Macka riled up in the first place. Neither twin was a happy loser, though this morning, Bernie wasn’t too certain that he’d won.

  George, his father, trussed up like a turkey for the oven in his out-of-date wedding suit, made a grab for the flask as Bernie lifted it again.

  ‘You’ll be on your arse before she says “I do”, you stupid little bugger.’

  Bernie wasn’t little. He and his identical twin were slightly larger, much younger replicas of George — same bullet head, a little more hair, built like apes, faces like Freddo Frog. George was a hard-working teetotaller. Bernie and Macka hadn’t done a day’s work in their lives and both youths had been drunk for a week.

  It was sweating out of Bernie as fast as he poured it in this morning, and seeing his mother and eight sisters running to Vern Hooper’s car, surrounding it, caused a new flood to drip down Bernie’s face, from beneath his armpits, down the crack in his bum. He stepped back from the door, looking now to his father to save him. It didn’t look as if Macka was going to get here.

  Maisy Macdonald, mother of the groom, clad this morning in puce chiffon and a matching hat, didn’t appear too surprised to learn that the bride had flown, though one of her daughters asked why.

  Vern lit a smoke instead of replying. Any girl with half a brain ought to run a mile when she saw one of those raping little bastards coming in the distance. He locked his lips around the smoke, inhaled a good dose and glanced at the clusters of onlookers waiting to see the bride. There was not a lot to do on a Saturday morning in Woody Creek. A wedding always drew a crowd. Two dozen or more women stood in groups, two dozen or more kids ran wild, three dogs barking at them. He blew smoke at his windscreen, sucked more, then nodded towards the church.

  ‘Norman and Amber inside yet?’

  ‘They’re coming now,’ Jessie, an unmarried Macdonald daughter said.

  Vern turned to where she was looking and saw Norman and Amber crossing the road out front of Charlie White’s grocery store.

  ‘What did she say, Mr Hooper?’ Maisy said.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Vern said, blowing smoke and nudging the accelerator, not wanting to deal with the missing bride’s parents; not yet.

  Maisy’s head was inside his car, as was one of her daughter’s. ‘Have you spoken to her grandmother?’

  They wanted answers. Vern had none to give. He slapped the stick into gear and eased off on the clutch, the big car as eager as he to get away from Norman Morrison, who, having sighted the car, was heading towards it.

  ‘I’m going back out there now to find out for myself,’ Vern said. ‘I’ll let you know more when I know more.’ They removed their heads. Vern got away before Norman closed the gap.

  There were not a lot of details to be had. Gertrude offered him a sheet of writing paper with his mug of tea.

  Dear Granny,

  I’m going down to Melbourne to Mary Jolly. I’ve got most of the money Dad gave me. It will be plenty until I get a job, so please don’t worry about me.

  ‘You should have told them last night,’ Vern said.

  ‘Try finding a black horse on a dark night — in a pea soup fog.’

  ‘You could have sent Harry in.’

  ‘I could have.’

  ‘Mary Jolly?’ Vern said. ‘That’s that penfriend she was writing to, isn’t it?’

  ‘She sounds like a decent woman. Jenny will be all right with her.’

  Mary has said heaps of times that she and her mother have got a spare bed and I know her mother gets a pension so they might rent me their spare room.

  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you to your face, but you would have told me not to go, and to take them to court. My head is so tired of all the talking and arguing about everything. I just want it to be over, and it never will be if I stay here.

  Please ask Mr Hooper to give the Macdonald to the hospital and tell Elsie I’m sorry she had to look after it for so long.

  I’ll write as soon as I get to Mary’s. Don’t worry about me, and don’t tell anyone I’ve gone until tomorrow because they all deserve it.

  All my love,

  Jenny

  ‘Where does Mary live?’ Vern said.

  ‘Surrey Hills. I got her address from one of her old letters.’

  ‘That girl has never set foot outside this town. How is she going to find her way out to Surrey Hills?’

  ‘As far as I’m seeing it, what she’s done is the lesser of two evils — and she’s got a tongue in her head — but to tell you the truth, I’m trying not to think about how she’s going to find her way out there.’

  Vern swallowed a mouthful of tea and looked at the clock. ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go,’ he said. ‘We could take the infant down to the hospital today — stay the night . . .’

  ‘Maisy will have some say in that.’

  ‘She didn’t seem too surprised when she heard the wedding was off.’

  ‘She went along with it to get her hands on her granddaughter. She’ll want to raise the child herself. I’ll speak to her as soon as things settle down a bit.’

  She’d speak to her sooner than that. They heard a car motor and left their tea to go to the door.

  The car still moving, Maisy and George sprang from opposite doors, George flushed red from his billiard-ball dome to the starched white collar choking him. A man with no neck doesn’t wear a collar comfortably. Maisy’s plump cheeks were almost a match for her ensemble. A slip of a girl when she’d wed George, she’d broadened with each babe she’d borne.

  Gertrude greeted them with Jenny’s letter. George snatched it, squinted at it, then passed it to Maisy. Her eyes were twenty-odd years younger than his.

  ‘The crazy little bastard took off on his bike —’

  ‘In his wedding suit,’ Maisy said.

  ‘Drunk as a skunk,’ George said.

  ‘They’ll kill themselves on that thing one day,’ Maisy said.

  No loss, Gertrude thought as she added a dash more boiling water to her teapot, gave it a shake, then turned to her kitchen dresser for two more mugs.

  ‘What have you done with the other one?’ Vern said.

  ‘He’s fifteen miles out. That’s where Bernie will have gone.’

  ‘And he forgot to take Macka’s boots,’ Maisy said, handing the letter back.

  ‘What’s it say?’ George asked.

  ‘That she’s gone to Melbourne, George.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Gertrude said.

  George was too agitated to sit. He’d worked this wedding out with Amber. His boys had been charged with the statutory rape of a minor and God alone knew what would have happened to them if not for Amber. Not that he could stand the woman — few could — but she’d saved his boys from the hangman’s noose and for that he was grateful.

  Mai
sy sat, and on Vern’s chair. He always sat at the western end of the table; Gertrude always sat on his left, on the north side. So Vern stood and George stood.

  Both men were landowners, mill owners, both had money to burn, both were town councillors, important positions in Woody Creek. That was all they had in common.

  Ludicrous, the sight of those two standing side by side. The short and the tall of it, George five foot five and a half, and thick, Vern six foot six, thickening a little around the waist but long enough to carry it. George had more hair on his eyebrows than his head. Vern’s head was covered by an abundance of steel grey wire.

  ‘You’re making my kitchen look untidy,’ Gertrude said. ‘Move those newspapers off that little chair, Vern.’

  Vern lifted the pile of papers. There was nowhere to put them down. Nowhere to swing a cat in Gertrude’s kitchen — if she’d had one to swing. She didn’t like cats. He dumped the papers onto her cane couch, pulled the small chair up to the south side of the table and sat, leaving George the hot seat, his back to the wood stove, where Gertrude was attempting to squeeze two more mugs of tea from her pot.

  ‘She must have said something,’ George said.

  ‘She said we all deserved it, George. And we did,’ Maisy told him.

  ‘She’s going down to that penfriend she’s been writing to,’ Vern said.

  ‘Was she meeting the train?’

  Vern shrugged. He folded the letter, slid it into its envelope. Gertrude took it and placed it on her mantelpiece behind her old mantle clock.

  ‘You should have seen Amber, Mrs Foote. She was as white as a ghost and rigid,’ Maisy said. ‘And Norman looked as if he wanted the minister to bury him.’

  ‘Was Sissy with them?’

  Maisy shook her head and sugared her tea. ‘She’s said all along that she wasn’t going. She told me again yesterday. There was a crowd waiting at the church. The McPhersons were there. John brought his camera, too.’

  John McPherson, the local photographer, had gone home. The crowd had dispersed. The street out front of Norman’s house looked much as usual for a Saturday morning.