Pearl in a Cage (10 page)

‘Lucky Jennifer,' Amber said, swiping his newspaper from the table.

He picked it up, sorted the pages. She went to bed, with Cecelia.

He went to her later, kissed her, hoping to make the peace. ‘Your place is in my bed. This has continued too long.'

‘I told you I wasn't going through that again, and I meant it.'

He sighed and his lower regions sighed. No doubt her mood would pass. He hoped it would be soon. It was not natural for a man of his years to be denied the comfort of his wife. His sleep was disturbed.

She disturbed it again before dawn. He heard her in the kitchen and, when he crept out, caught her pouring a glass of brandy. He reached for it. She was a determined girl. The table between them, she drank it down like water.

‘You will turn the babe into a tippler,' he said.

‘I can't sleep.'

‘Nor I. Come to my bed. Perhaps we can comfort each other.'

‘Go to hell,' she said. And she poured more brandy.

‘You must not, Mrs Morrison. It is not fitting for a woman to drink hard spirits!'

‘It's your fault that he died anyway,' she said. ‘If you hadn't brought every relative you own up here then expected me to run around after them, I would have carried him to term. They killed him, and you let them do it, then you let that cold-blooded old parson bury him in with her. Did you even ask me what I wanted?'

‘You were in no fit state!'

‘Then you should have waited until I was in a fit state. Did you ask me if I wanted to raise Jennifer?'

‘You screamed for her, my dear, dear Amber.'

‘I was out of my mind. You could have stopped me.'

‘You are difficult to stop.'

She'd emptied the glass and was reaching again for the bottle.

‘No more. What you put into your mouth makes its way to the child.'

‘The child,' she said. ‘As if I give a damn about the child. She's not mine. I feel nothing for her, Norman.'

He claimed the bottle. ‘What is one expected to feel for an incontinent infant?'

‘You tell me. You tell me what I'm supposed to feel. I spend my life trying to feel what I'm supposed to feel, and I feel nothing.'

‘Surely love for a child grows, as it does between man and wife?'

She laughed then, tried to get by him, but he caught her arm, pulled her to him, desperate to hold her, to prove his love for her
in the only way he knew how. She stamped on his bare foot and got away, opened the back door and went out to the verandah.

‘Come to bed,' he said.

‘Do you know what I really feel, Norman? I feel sick in the stomach every time you touch me. I can't stand you or your bed, and if you don't know that by now, then you're more fool than you look — and that's saying a mouthful.'

‘Mrs Morrison!'

But she was gone, in her nightgown, gone out the back door, down the verandah and out the side gate.

He did not pursue her. This business of the tombstone had upset her. Perhaps placing the dead infant in with his grandmother had been poorly done, though a practical solution at the time. Three funerals in five days, the heat excessive, the earth bone dry, and that boy had not gone to term, had not breathed, had not been baptised. It was Charles who had suggested he be placed with his grandmother. Moe Kelly had seconded the motion and the grave diggers had applauded with blistered hands — earth newly broken being more easily removed.

And at the time, Norman had not been himself. Still traumatised by his mother's passing, and now his so-wanted son's, he had left the arrangements to Charles. Later, as things had evolved, he had come to believe it was God's will that his son be forgotten and Jennifer Carolyn raised in his place. However, for Amber's peace of mind, a name, if not a date would be added to his mother's stone. Archibald Gerald perhaps, for her father. She had been fond of her father.

He raised the subject the following night when she poured her glass of brandy early. He poured himself a small drink — only to empty the bottle.

‘I have been thinking we should name him for your father, my dear.'

‘Don't try to crawl around me, Norman. I meant what I said last night.'

Two more days, the brandy not replaced, he found her pouring cooking sherry. He claimed the bottle, emptied it onto a shrub growing beside his back verandah.

For three days his meals were flung at him, his bed remained cold, and tiny Jennifer, rarely heard, now screamed for the breast.

‘We will make other arrangements for her,' he said. ‘I will take her to Melbourne at the weekend, deliver her to the authorities and confess my guilt. Until then, she must be fed, Amber.'

‘And what will people think of me then?' she snapped.

‘It is of no consequence what people think of you, or of me. We must have peace in this house.'

‘I have to live in this filthy town!'

‘Then tell me, tell me, please, what it is you want me to do, my dear, dear Amber, and I will do it, only feed that child.'

She knew what she wanted him to do: to get out of her life, or to give her the money to get out of his. Couldn't say it. She bared her breast and fed the baby.

 

Exhaustion tumbled Amber into sleep each night and nightmares flung her back into wakefulness. Each was different, but each the same. Her son's cry led her into dark forests, through graveyards where she wandered between gaping holes searching for him. She found him too, and in terrible places — in the creek, hung from a hook in the butcher's shop, floating face down in the green sludge of her mother-in-law's grave. She found him in cartons of groceries, under the bridge. Always dead.

Maisy saw her despair. She took both children to her house each afternoon while Amber slept, her nightmares fewer by daylight. Gertrude spent too many of her days in town caring for her grandchildren while watching weariness strip the little flesh from Amber's fine bones. But on many a day when Maisy couldn't come, when Gertrude stayed at home, Norman came from work to find his wife locked in her room and the two children screaming.

‘Amber. The children need you. Amber!'

His voice dragged her from dream. She'd found her son in her mother's old trunks, underneath the verandah, found him crumbling, but had placed him to her breast. And woke heart racing, her arms empty.

Opened the door, saw him, the living baby screaming in his awkward arms, Cecelia bellowing at his knees. Put the infant to suck, and its sucking made the emptiness within her grow. Its sucking opened gaping hollows in her heart.

Nothing inside her now.

Empty now.

 

Hollows have a way of filling with whatever the wind blows in. Amber's hollows filled with a rage she had to contain. She was an inferno of unreleased rage. It glowed in the dark, lit her way when she walked in the night. Lit up the darkest corners of her mind, showing her what she should not see, showing her the beast she'd wed for his railway house and for his mother's fine bone china tea set. Showing her the beast's child, ugly, clumsy.

And showing her the infant's finer bones, her well-defined features, her big blue eyes. Loved her beauty. Loved that tiny nose, that little chin. Hated her own daughter's flat, fat face, her thick Duckworth feet, her coarse dark hair.

Hate and love became confused. Had to hate the child of that stranger and love her own. Must love her own. She'd carried her. Did love her. Did. Did. Hadn't she rejoiced at the moment of her birth?

Ruby she'd thought to name her, Ruby Rose, a pretty name for a pretty child. Ruby and Amber, she'd thought, mother and daughter. And I will be the perfect mother to my perfect child. I will make a perfect home. I will cleanse myself in my child.

His mother had scoffed at her choice of name. For two weeks her beautiful baby had remained nameless, and at the end of those two weeks there was no beautiful Ruby Rose, only Cecelia Louise, flat-faced, hook-nosed, infant replica of the old Cecelia.

Hated the sight of her.

Had to love her.

How could anyone love that pig-eyed, sullen, wilful, screaming, resentful . . .

Resentful of Jennifer.

And why shouldn't she resent Jennifer? Amber resented her beauty.

And she smelled wrong.

Cecelia smelled right.

In the dark, Cecelia smelled beautiful. Smelled like home.

Home?

Wanted to go home.

Where was home?

Not her mother's hut. She hadn't been down there since she'd left the place. Norman's house was home, his mother's fine furniture, her velvet rug big enough to near cover the parlour floor, her peacock feathers in their expensive vase, her heavy drapes.

This house was home.

Not Norman. Couldn't stand him. Couldn't stand the smell of him. Always hovering over her. Always watching, trying to touch her. Couldn't stand the thought of his thick hands on her.

Cecelia had his hands. She had his feet. But in the dark, in bed, when she couldn't see her, when she held her close, she could feel love for her.

Did love her. Not him. Loathed him.

‘You are my wife, Mrs Morrison. You swore your vows before God —'

‘Take your God and shove him, Norman. And take that baby with you.'

In an era when God sat assuredly in heaven, when man, made in God's image, sat a few degrees to his left, when wives loved, honoured and obeyed their husbands — whether they did or not — Amber was severely out of step.

She had been raised by an independent woman to believe that man's reward was gained on earth by hard labour, that Sundays could be better occupied in digging post holes than in praying. In a good woman of sound mind, wrongful attitudes can be forgivable.

Amber's mind was not sound.

It happened in mid-March. She'd nursed Jennifer at ten at night, then crawled back into Cecelia's bed where she'd slept soundly until dawn. She'd dozed thereafter, waiting for
Jennifer's call, but for the first time the baby had taken it into her head to sleep through the night. Amber's breasts were full. Perhaps the low neck of her gown released a leaking breast, or dreaming again of her crumbling son, had she bared her breast so he might suck. The how of it was of no concern, just the awakening to bright light and to the pure and perfect peace of her own girl's mouth at her breast, and to the sweet relief of a full breast emptying, and the blissful relief as love for her girl filled the gaping hollows within her soul.

‘Mummy's precious girl,' she whispered as she kissed the sweet-smelling hair, buried her nose in the scent of it. ‘You're Mummy's own very precious girl, aren't you? Take it all, my beautiful,' she said. ‘Empty me.'

Cecelia celebrated her fifth birthday on 26 March. Gertrude rode in on the Friday for a birthday lunch and was relieved to see her daughter looking more relaxed.

Norman appeared less stressed and quite expansive — for Norman. He asked after Gertrude's health. She told him she was well. He suggested there could be a thunderstorm before the day was through. She said her tank and garden could use the rain, that she'd spent half of this summer bringing water up from the creek. He suggested she pay the water carrier to fill her tank. She told him the water carrier cost money and with the creek just over the road she preferred to take what she needed free of cost. That was the limit of their conversation.

Amber had bought Cecelia a frilly pink dress for her birthday. That girl wasn't the right shape to wear frills, but if you can't say something nice, then you're better off keeping your mouth shut. Gertrude kept her mouth shut. She kissed her granddaughter, wished her happy birthday, then offered a brown paper-wrapped parcel. It contained a rag doll she'd spent a week of nights in making, and one of those nights in stitching in a full head of black woollen hair. She'd made a frock, underwear, had knitted stockings, constructed shoes from a piece of black satin. She watched it unwrapped, eager for Sissy's reaction.

There was little reward for her labour. Within minutes of the unwrapping, the doll's face wore a chocolate icing-sugar scar, and one shoe, plus the foot, had been chewed to pulp. Gertrude
said not a word. If it meant biting her tongue to a rag, she would play a part in the lives of her granddaughters.

Maisy and her four-year-old twin sons arrived at two. The doll's bloomers came off while its sex was determined.

‘Kids will be kids.' Maisy laughed.

Kids would be kids. Gertrude picked up the bloomers, placed them with the frock on the table, and sat a while longer catching up on local gossip. Maisy knew everyone and most of their business. At three, mercifully, she guided her pair of monsters towards the front door. Amber walked out with her, and Sissy, still dragging the now naked doll around by its hair, went out to the back verandah where Jennifer was sleeping in her pram, a mosquito net keeping the insects at bay.

Gertrude was washing the dishes when she heard the baby scream. She went to the back door and saw Sissy untangling her head from the netting. There was no question as to why Jenny screamed; there were pinch marks on the cheek, the skin broken by fingernails.

‘You mustn't hurt Jenny.'

‘Did not,' Cecelia denied.

‘I can see the mark of your fingernails. You mustn't do things like that, Sissy.'

‘Did — not — do — noffink,' Sissy said.

‘You're fibbing to Granny —'

The doll missed her head by inches. It landed in the lavender bush as Sissy flung herself to the floor to scream.

Amber came. She knew who was at fault. ‘What did you do to her?'

‘She pinched the baby.'

‘And you hit her?'

‘I did no such thing. She knows that I saw her being a naughty girl. That's all that's wrong with her.'

‘And you threw her doll away.'

‘As if I would, Amber. She threw it at me — and she doesn't need comforting either,' Gertrude added as Amber picked up that hulking great girl. ‘Look what she did to this little one's face.'