Thorn on the Rose Page 19

  ‘The kid said Jenny. Jim left in April, didn’t he?’ Fingers at work, busy fingers, counting off the months. ‘It’s only eight months.’ ‘Who knows how long it was going on before he left?’

  Poor Sissy Morrison, abandoned at the altar, now abandoned by her mother; she couldn’t stick her nose outside the door without someone staring at her, whispering about her, about Amber. Half the town had seen Amber taken away in the hospital ambulance.

  Sissy remembered the last time her mother had been taken away. She’d stayed away for six years, the worst six years of Sissy’s life. She hadn’t known what had gone on that time. This time she’d seen it happening. Everyone had.

  Sissy had seen her birthdate on the tombstone. Many in town had — after Amber had taken Norman’s axe up to the cemetery and attacked his mother’s tombstone, beheaded one angel, shattered the wing of another. Sissy hadn’t known what it meant, except that her mother had gone mad. Norman paid a man to fix the angel’s head back on. He’d done nothing about Amber’s head.

  Constable Denham had, when she lit a fire against the back wall of Gertrude’s house. It hadn’t burnt anyone, had barely scorched the wall, but he’d got the ambulance up to take her to Willama — and it was too embarrassing.

  Poor Sissy. She’d consoled herself with toffee until she ran out of butter, then sugar. Toffee brought her out in pimples. Toffee, in combination with the time of the month, turned her face into an open weeping wound.

  Poor, plain, lonely Sissy. Margaret Hooper, her only friend, hadn’t been near her since Jim joined the army. No one came near her, except Norman, who didn’t care. She’d tried to make him care. She’d pitched a cup of tea in his face. He’d wiped his face with a tea towel, mopped up the spill with the same tea towel, and left it on the table with everything else.

  She couldn’t stand living in his mess, couldn’t stand him puddling around in his mess. Couldn’t stand the long, lonely days when he was at the station, the longer lonely nights when he was home. She considered walking down to Blunt’s crossing and lying on the railway line when the morning train came through. Charlie’s crossing was closer but Blunt’s was busier. She wanted everyone in town to see her being cut to shreds, to care that she’d been cut to shreds. If she’d had a dress that would do up, she might have killed herself during the week of her menstruation.

  In the late afternoon of that third day of December, Maisy dropped Gertrude off, drove her car home, then walked over to the station to let Norman know where she’d been and why she’d been there. He was more interested in the whereabouts of a consignment of cigarettes and tobacco, lost between Melbourne and Woody Creek. Maisy left him to his phone calls and went across to his house to check on Sissy.

  ‘Are you there, Sissy?’ she called at the back door.

  ‘Where else would I be?’

  Maisy let herself in. Sissy, nightgown clad, was in her room, pursuing a fly that wouldn’t let her sleep in peace. Maisy didn’t enter the room and wondered why a fly would. The overwhelming smell of sweating humanity should have knocked it dead.

  ‘You need to have a bath and get dressed, Sissy,’ she said.

  The fly had settled on the wall. Sissy swiped at it, but the fly flew.

  Maisy had noticed Sissy’s pimples, her weight, her nastier than usual demeanour, but with some it’s difficult to see the difference between honest despondency and common run-of-the-mill bitchiness.

  ‘What are you doing in your nightgown at this time of the day?’

  ‘Go home if you don’t like it.’ Sissy had the fly trapped behind the lace curtain. She mashed it between glass and curtain and left it there.

  ‘Open your window. Your room needs airing.’

  ‘Stop telling me what to do.’ Sissy went back to bed to bury herself beneath a mound of blankets.

  ‘I saw your mother today.’

  ‘As if I care.’

  ‘They’ve got her on pills again but they don’t seem to be doing her any good.’

  ‘I don’t care, I said.’

  ‘Then it’s time you started caring, at least about yourself. Your room stinks of sweat and so do you. Have a bath and get yourself cleaned up.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to wear, have I?’ Sissy wailed.

  A bad week, for Sissy and for Norman; the weather was bad, the trains were late, the six o’clock news was all bad.

  ‘You need to get Sissy away somewhere, Norman.’ The suggestion sounded fine in theory. Norman lowered the volume of his wireless and turned one ear to his neighbour. ‘Have you got someone she could go to for a while?’ Maisy asked.

  Norman had many relatives, though he could not in all conscience inflict that girl on any one of them.

  The news broadcaster was speaking of two newborn infants found dead in their cribs. Maisy reached to turn the volume higher.

  ‘They lost two babies down at the hospital,’ she said, but the announcer had progressed to a horrendous accident on the Molliston Road, two dead and a third fighting for her life. Maisy lowered the volume. She was at the station tonight to fight for Sissy’s life.

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of her moods, Norman, but nothing like this. She’s never got over her wedding being called off, and she knew her mother wanted to name her Ruby Rose. It’s affected her mind, Norman.’

  ‘The weather has been conducive to ill humours,’ he said. ‘I believe they are forecasting a cool change tomorrow evening.’

  Maisy gave up and went home.

  The promised cool change reached Melbourne, but failed to make it across the Dividing Range. Then, on the eighth day of December, Japan declared war on Britain and America, and to prove they meant business attacked Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, which was home to a large US naval base. America and Britain declared war on Japan and Australia followed suit.

  At nine that same evening, Norman’s station telephone rang while he sat late over his wireless listening to John Curtin’s speech to the nation.

  It was the hospital. His wife, the whore, was being transferred to a city asylum come morning. Norman hoped they’d keep her.

  ‘Understandably,’ he said to the doctor on the line. ‘Certainly. Good evening.’

  That was the day the distant war became not so distant, and on 11 December, in order to increase the number of men under arms in Australia, the call-up was extended to include all single men aged eighteen to forty-five and all married men aged eighteen to thirty-five.

  Norman lost track of the days in the lead-up to Christmas. There were more trains during harvest time, goods trains spilling wheat. They went through at odd hours and he sat late, waiting for them, his wireless tuned in to the world news.

  Adolf Hitler assumed control of his armed forces. The first American troops arrived in Australia. Danny, his station boy, took to wearing khaki.

  If not for the Christmas cards he collected daily from the post office, Norman would not have been aware that the festive season was nigh. With no time, no desire to open them, he tossed them unopened onto the hall stand, the wireless, the mantelpiece.

  Had a train passed through on Christmas Day, he may have forgotten the church’s celebration of Jesus’s birth. There was no train on Christmas Day. He dressed himself in his new grey suit, sat in his usual pew. One or two asked after his wife, his daughter . . . his daughter in her bed when he’d left the house, still there when he returned.

  Perhaps some effort on his part was required. He found an envelope, wrote a brief note echoing the sentiments expressed by the parson, and wrote a cheque for five pounds which he slipped into the envelope.

  Sissy’s bedroom door was closed. He knocked, slid the envelope under the door, then went to the kitchen and set about lighting the kitchen stove. Bread in the tin supplied no doubt, by Maisy, tomato supplied by his mother-in-law. No butter.

  He set a fat-caked frying pan on the stove, filled the kettle, and when the grease melted in the pan he added tomato sandwiches, then again knocked on Sissy’s door.

  ‘Will you
join me for a light lunch, Cecelia?’

  A wood stove is long in heating. She emerged, with his envelope, before he lifted Christmas lunch from the pan.

  ‘What did you fry them in?’

  ‘The pan.’ He glanced at her. Her hair, suffering the loss of her mother’s care, hung long and greasy, witch-like. She’d clad herself in a brown print, familiar, but not in his house. ‘Maisy’s frock?’ he said.

  ‘The only taste she’s got is in her mouth,’ Sissy replied, her own mouth full.

  The sandwiches oozed sausage grease, but they ate them, and he attempted to make conversation.

  ‘The Japanese have taken control of Hong Kong,’ he said.

  ‘Who cares?’

  She made and fried two more sandwiches later. They soaked up the last of the frying pan’s grease.

  In the late afternoon, Norman was standing at his bookcase, flipping through his small collection of novels searching for Miss Havisham, when he came upon a Bible which should not have been amid his novels; a Bible which, as far as he could recall, should not have been in his house. Surely . . . certainly he had packed it . . . into a carton on that September day when the . . .

  He recalled clearly the Salvation Army couple eating lunch in his kitchen while he’d gathered together . . .

  A crimson stain crept up from Norman’s collar to settle in his ears, in his insignificant nose.

  Then he found Miss Havisham, in Great Expectations. He spent the afternoon of Christmas Day visiting again with her and Pip — and was better able in his fifties to relate to that woman than he had been in his thirties. Charles Dickens had surely known such an abandoned bride.

  It was during the space of days between Christmas and New Year that he noticed the changed atmosphere in his house. He now lit the stove each morning before leaving for the station; a soot-covered stove, pan waiting ready on the hob. He returned one evening and found the pan washed, the hearth swept.

  Maisy’s hand, he presumed.

  The pervasive odour of Amber’s cleaning had long given way to the stench of sweating humanity — which had also faded.

  The kitchen floor was swept; the table cleared.

  Maisy again . . . though surely Maisy would not have opened his Christmas cards. Two late arrivals, tossed onto the hall table, had been opened. He glanced at them, glanced at the dust-free rectangles where they’d lain. Dust had left its stamp on the wireless, where he’d deposited another bunch of cards. They too had been opened.

  He picked up a small card, three wise men following the star. Best wishes to you and your family, Bessy. He glanced at another, a large card, the head of Jesus, his halo sparkling with glitter — though not well stuck on. He took that one with him to the kitchen to prop on the northern windowsill while he unwrapped sausages.

  Sissy came in. ‘We need bread,’ she said.

  ‘I will see to it,’ he replied, displaying his card — sent by Uncle Charles, the parson, who had always had a penchant for Jesus cards, though the glitter was . . . was perhaps more alcoholic Cousin Reginald.

  ‘Aunt Olive has been widowed? Was I informed?’

  Sissy required bread, required butter — though perhaps her face looked better for the lack of butter.

  ‘Perhaps I was,’ he said. ‘In early December, I believe, around the time the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor.’

  ‘The baker shuts at half past five.’

  ‘He does indeed.’ Norman glanced at the seven-day clock on the mantelpiece. It was not ticking. He took out his fob watch, his father’s watch. ‘Perhaps you . . .’

  ‘I’m not going outside. I’m staying in here until I die,’ she said.

  He bought two loaves of bread, bought potatoes. The meal that evening resurrected memories of nights long ago, the golden child with her grandmother, a younger Cecelia sitting across the table, he working hard at conversation.

  He tried tonight. ‘Your Aunt Olive . . . do you recall her husband’s name? For the life of me I can’t. Olive and Horace perhaps. Uncle Horrie. Olive and Wilbur? No, Wilbur was Aunt Millicent’s, I believe. A belated note of condolence to Olive might be in order, even at this late date.’

  They ate lumpy mashed potatoes, overdone sausages, fried tomatoes.

  Sissy rose to wash the dishes. To disguise his surprise he collected pen, ink, paper then sat at a cleared table to pen two pages. He apologised for his inability to attend his dear uncle’s funeral, mentioning that his wife was again undergoing treatment in the city, mentioning that his daughter’s fiancée had gone off to fight. He wrote of his appointment with a butchering dentist and of his lingering pain, wrote of the war — wrote too of his second daughter’s eighteenth birthday, though he did not mention that, like Jesus’s halo, she had lost her glitter.

  Aunt Olive, one of the younger Duckworths, replied by return mail. She had not settled well into her widowed state, she wrote; her children, spread far and wide, were not frequent visitors. She wrote of her fear of Japanese invasion, of a bomb shelter she was having constructed in her backyard, then suggested a visit from Norman and his daughters would be most welcome at this time, and perhaps beneficial for all.

  God will provide, Norman thought, eyeing the somewhat grease-stained Jesus, who was nonetheless still watching over him from the windowsill.

  ‘Your aunt has suggested a brief holiday at Portsea . . .’

  ‘When?’

  The arrangements were made swiftly. On the eighth day of February Sissy boarded the train, a new frock on her back, two in her case and two ten-pound notes in her handbag.

  Jesus — or the Duckworth clan — will provide . . .

  Uncle Charles, who hadn’t seen Sissy in twenty years, had no difficulty recognising her at Spencer Street Station. He saw her out to Portsea where she was welcomed with kisses and a cream sponge. Aunt Olive was known for her kitchen skills. Sissy ate well. She dare not turn on a light at night unless every blind in the house was drawn. If the Japs came to Australia, they’d come via sea, Aunt Olive warned.

  A Duckworth among other Duckworths manages well enough. In all bar name, Sissy was a Duckworth. She enjoyed the drama of the approaching Japs, enjoyed the visiting relatives, the visits to relatives, and the more extensive wardrobe found for her by Aunt Olive. The Duckworth family had always passed their outgrown garments around — as they passed around difficult relatives.

  The Japs didn’t arrive in Portsea, but on 15 February, in a surprise attack, they took Singapore, the Gibraltar of the Far East, considered by most to be an invincible fortress, a bastion of the British Empire, and well prepared to fight off any invasion — had it come by sea.

  They came down the Malay Peninsula and caught Singapore napping. More than fifteen thousand Australian troops were taken prisoner there, a Duckworth grandson among them.

  ‘This is the gravest hour in our history,’ John Curtin said. A string of islands led from Singapore down to Australia.

  Then, on 19 February 1942, they came. They bombed Darwin.

  The hideous efficiency of the Japanese war machine appeared to be unstoppable. They bombed Broome, a little town up the top of Western Australia. They sunk the HMAS Yarra off the island of Java, and a few days later thirty-five thousand Australian, American and Filipino troops surrendered.

  ‘If something isn’t done soon, we’ll all be speaking Japanese,’ Charlie said.

  In March of ’42, General Macarthur, an American, arrived to do something. He took command of the South West Pacific region in April, and set up his headquarters in Melbourne. In May, the battle of the Coral Sea halted the Japanese navy’s advance.

  In May, Norman again retreated to his station. Amber came home.

  DOUBLE-JOINTED THUMBS

  War or no war, ration coupons or no ration coupons, babies were born, couples were wed, the elderly went to their makers and the mill saws screamed on.

  The noise of Macdonald’s saws infiltrated the Hooper house, and on difficult days gave Margaret a headache — as did her sis
ter. She missed her brother, missed the dances, the balls, missed Sissy Morrison. Margaret’s finest hours were those she spent shopping. She took her time at the grocer’s, the butcher’s, she browsed at Fulton’s, but Blunt’s drapery, a cluttered little shop, was the highlight of her day. She could become lost in dark corners, could handle the wools, the embroidery silks, sift through the buttons.

  On an afternoon in late April, she was on her way to Blunt’s to buy another skein of wool for her father’s cardigan when she sighted a pram, an old cane pram with tall wheels. As a child she had pushed her brother up and down the street in such a pram. It had been stored in the shed for years. She’d seen it there. Had she seen it there recently? Perhaps not.

  She approached the pram, studied the springs, the wheels. Her father had donated it to the needy. Of course. He had donated much during the bad years of the depression. She could never resist a peep at the newborn. She stooped to steal that peep, and as she did, a hornet, one of those orange and black striped brutes, flew by her ear and under the pram’s hood.

  She had been stung by one such brute in her childhood. Reflex action saw her lift the hood to release the insect — and the fool of a thing followed it to the foot of the pram. Reflex action saw her snatch the babe from harm’s way, step away and into the shop, and that dear wee mite chuckled and grasped at her nose.

  ‘We must find out who you belong to,’ she told him.

  And his mother turned from the counter and seized him from Margaret’s arms.

  ‘A hornet,’ Margaret explained. ‘One of those nasty black and orange things. It’s in the pram, dear.’

  Miss Blunt came out with a rolled-up newspaper. She hunted down the hornet and the babe was placed back into the pram.

  ‘Is that Jim’s, dear?’ Margaret said.

  Jenny turned to her. ‘He’s mine.’

  Margaret blushed, a deep cherry red. ‘The pram. I . . . I recognise the pram, dear.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jenny said, and turned that pram for home.

  ‘Beauty carries its own curse,’ Margaret said, her eyes following the swing of black-clad hips.