Pearl in a Cage (11 page)

‘She was only trying to make her smile,' Amber said. ‘You're always coming up here, fussing over her, putting her before your own granddaughter.'

‘That's not true and you know it. It's the first time I've been near her all day,' Gertrude defended. She placed the quietened baby back into her pram and retrieved the doll. ‘Come with Granny and we'll dress your dolly in her pretty clothes again.'

Cecelia, straddling her mother's hip, was exactly where she wanted to be. She snatched the doll and pitched it further.

‘She needs curbing, Amber. Her behaviour is getting out of hand.'

‘Save your meddling for your darkies,' Amber said. ‘It's not needed here. Neither are you.'

Gertrude stepped back, just a reflex step, then another, not so reflex. She'd left her basket in the hall. She collected it on the way out.

 

Her horse was waiting for her out front, her good and patient Nugget. She placed an arm over his neck and leaned for a moment, feeling the need of that contact. She felt picked up and shaken to her roots, her heart dancing at a hundred miles an hour.

Amber had always had her father's fair colouring, his curly hair, his fine-built frame, but never his eyes. She'd seen them today, had seen him looking back at her, and those eyes could still send tremors from the base of Gertrude's skull running down her spine. She looked at the hand stroking her horse's neck, expecting to see it trembling. It wasn't. Her shaking was internal.

She'd learnt to keep most of her feelings inside, to keep herself to herself. Self was the best place to keep some things if you didn't want them turning into common town gossip.

She glanced at the house, placed the basket on a fencepost, then, foot in the stirrup, she mounted, set the basket before her, flicked the rein and started for home.

And she had troubles there too, brought on by her meddling.

Did she meddle? Maybe she offered advice too readily, but it got to be a habit. And when a man's wife or child was sick, he
wanted someone to tell him what to do. Most in town trusted her to meddle. Some even paid her to do it.

Shouldn't have told her that Sissy needed curbing. Maybe shouldn't have agreed to falsify that birth registration. Shouldn't have taken little Elsie from Wadi's camp — or should have sent her home to him a month ago. Should have done a lot of things and shouldn't have done a lot more. But you can only do what you think is right at the time, and sending that girl back to Wadi to starve wasn't right.

Not that he was starving at the moment. Three of her young goats had gone missing in recent weeks. She knew he'd taken them, knew why he'd taken them. Three times he'd come for Elsie. She'd hidden. Gertrude kept her milkers tethered now, in the orchard paddock behind her house. That thieving old coot knew better than to venture too near. She'd pulled the rifle on him the last time he'd come creeping around, and got off a shot too, just to show him she knew how it was done.

It was a mistake becoming attached to those kids. She'd done it before. Two years back she'd brought in an eight-year-old boy with a chest infection and got him well. Wadi had come to her door demanding him and the boy had gone willingly. Six months later he was dead. She'd sworn that day she'd never do it again, but she'd gone and done it again. Couldn't stop herself . . . from meddling.

A planter of seed, Gertrude, a gardener. She loved the watering, the tending, the watching of a spindly plant grow sturdy. Three months ago she'd planted a silent matchstick child down the bottom end of her kitchen; she'd poured in goat's milk, plied her with fresh eggs and sugar, tended her and watched her grow from that silent matchstick child into a pretty, smiling girl.

Watched her little belly rounding out too, and for a time had convinced herself good eating was responsible. It had little to do with eating, and was no shock at all to Elsie. She liked babies, knew where babies came from, and saw nothing wrong with having one of her own. Gertrude had put her age at ten or twelve when she'd brought her in, and God only knew how she'd got into that state. Elsie wouldn't say.

Ernie Ogden knew she was in the family way. Last week he'd arranged with Vern to take her out to the mission. They'd come by late one morning but Elsie had seen them coming and she'd taken off. All day she'd been gone, Gertrude and the men convinced she'd gone back to Wadi. She'd come home at nightfall.

It had to be done. Vern was coming down tomorrow, planning to catch her eating lunch — and Gertrude not looking forward to tricking that little girl.

She glanced at Vern's house as she rode by. Joanne Hooper was seated in the shade of the verandah, her boy at her side. She nodded a bare acknowledgment to Gertrude's wave. Like old Cecelia Morrison, Joanne had never made the transition to country. City born, city educated, city clad, she'd moved to Woody Creek with her first husband during the war years. He'd been worth a fortune, but hadn't lived to spend it. Everyone had expected Joanne to sell up and make a beeline back to the city when he was killed, but she'd wed Vern instead. She was a nice enough woman — though not nice enough for Vern.

Their boy was a worry to Gertrude. No doubt they fed him well, but he looked like a half-starved, elongated gnome, all ears, eyes and mouth. He clung to his mother — or she clung to him. Vern barely got a look-in.

Gertrude rode on, not eager to get home today, knowing that Elsie would be waiting at the gate for her, waiting with a smile. She wouldn't be smiling tomorrow — and Gertrude would be feeling like Judas Iscariot.

It was nice to be welcomed home, nice to have the gate opened and closed behind her, nice too knowing that her stove was burning, her kettle boiling, her goats not tangled up in their tethering ropes and no chooks in the garden. But she had to go. She'd get proper schooling at the mission, and if she didn't, then her baby would. The decision had been made and Gertrude had to stick to it. She had a daughter in town and two granddaughters. They were her family, her future. She had to put her mind to making that relationship work.

‘Home again, me darlin'.' Gertrude greeting that smiling face as she handed down her basket.

Elsie had a way of hop-skipping when she was happy. Gertrude followed her down the track, knowing that she couldn't go playing tricks on that trusting little girl, that she had to be told that Vern was coming tomorrow.

They got the saddle off, got Nugget back into his paddock. They gave the chooks fresh water, collected ten more eggs, and it seemed like the right time.

‘Vern will be coming by to take you out to the mission, darlin'.'

Didn't say when and Elsie didn't ask. Her smile vanished, and, fifteen minutes later, she vanished.

Gertrude milked her goats, moved their tethers, filled up their water trough, had a look in the shed for Elsie, looked underneath the tank stand, overgrown by her climbing rose. There were too many places to hide on her acres.

‘Elsie.'

That girl's approach to problem-solving differed from Gertrude's. She'd put off what she didn't want to do today in the hope that it might be forgotten by tomorrow. And if it wasn't forgotten tomorrow, then maybe she could put it off again. She knew too that Vern didn't like driving after dark. Two minutes after Gertrude lit the lamp, she crept inside, head down, crept to the bottom end of the kitchen, to her mattress, where she sat cross-legged, looking at the floor.

‘You have to go, darlin'. My house isn't big enough for you and me and a baby.'

‘Baby only a little feller, missus.'

‘Babies grow into big fellers. The mission has got plenty of room for babies.'

Elsie measured the kitchen with her eyes, stood and moved her mattress closer to the corner, hard in against the wall. She glanced at Gertrude, wanting her to see how easily the space problem could be overcome.

‘I'll go out there with you and tell the lady all about your baby. There'll be lots of girls out there for you to talk to, lots of babies to play with,' Gertrude said, unwrapping half a dozen sausages she'd bought in town.

Elsie liked sausages. Gertrude watched her watch them, knowing she'd come to see them placed into the hot fat. She loved watching sausages squirm as they fried.

She wasn't wrong.

‘They like alive ones, missus,' Elsie said, creeping to her side.

‘The butcher makes them in his sausage machine,' Gertrude said, stabbing one with a fork, turning it.

‘They like fat worm. Wriggle-wriggle, missus. How's him make them sausages?'

‘With a bit of meat, a bit of this and a bit more of that.' She turned two then caught that girl's eye. ‘How did you make that baby, Elsie?'

Elsie looked left, right, anywhere but at her inquisitor. ‘You fryin' some 'taters too, missus?'

‘A man hurt you when he made that baby. Where did that man come from, Elsie?'

No reply.

‘You tell me who hurt you and I'll fry you some potatoes.'

So it was blackmail. She'd tried all else — and it didn't work anyway.

Elsie stood head down, studying her narrow feet. Her hands were as narrow. She was a tiny girl, five foot nothing and fine. Gertrude had cut her lice-riddled hair near to the scalp on the day she'd brought her in from the camp. It was a mass of black curls now — a pretty, sad-eyed kid with the sweetest nature. And what hope did she have? The mission folk would take that baby and try to turn Elsie back into a twelve year old. Time couldn't be turned back. What had happened to her had happened and she liked babies.

They'd teach her to read and write. She was young enough to learn, capable of learning — capable of learning a lot of things if she could see the sense in the learning. Milk she could drink. She'd learnt to milk a goat. Bread she could eat. She could get that bread started in the mornings. She could sew on a button. Buttons kept her frocks done up, but what use was reading and writing to a kid who'd spent most of her life barely surviving? It
had taken Gertrude a month to get a pencil into her hand, another to teach her that E made the sound for Elsie. A teacher might have done better — would maybe do better at the mission.

‘You're a good girl, Elsie, and a big help to me. I'm going to miss you so very, very much.'

‘I stay in shed, missus. Plenty room in shed.'

‘God save me from your eyes, darlin',' she said, then to save herself she turned to her sack of potatoes, selected a big one, gave it a brush off, a quick wash, a wipe, then sliced it into the pan. She wasn't a fussy cook and never had been. Her meals weren't fancy. The potato sizzling, fat spitting, her fork busy turning sausages and potatoes while Elsie took knives and forks from the dresser drawer, placed plates on the hob.

‘Grab me a couple of eggs, love.' No sooner said and they were in her hand.

Potatoes and sausages moved to the side of the pan, two eggs broken into the fat and she stood flipping fat over the yolks, turning them blue.

No wasted effort in Gertrude's house, nor extra washing up. Two meals served from a frying pan, hot fat poured into the dripping bowl, the pan wiped out with newspaper, the paper burned, the pan hung on its bent nail beside her stove, ready to cook the next meal, and Gertrude sat and picked up her knife and fork.

Elsie stood opposite, looking down at her piled plate. ‘Wadi,' she said.

‘You want to go back to Wadi?' Hot potato in her mouth.

‘Wadi hurted me. He put baby, missus.'

Had to spit that potato or swallow it. She swallowed and it burned all the way down. She rose, her chair legs squealing, as Elsie shrank back, back to the washstand.

They were a different race, folk said, they had different attitudes. You can't put a white head on a pair of black shoulders, folk said. And Gertrude knew it. She knew it. But it didn't make the way they lived right, and that little girl wasn't black anyway, and whether she was black or white, it didn't give that jabbering bastard of a man the right to rape a twelve-year-old girl.

She walked to the door to suck some night air down her burning throat. Had to say something. Had to find something to say.

‘Thank you for telling me.' Too stilted, too cold. ‘You're a good girl for telling me, darlin'.'

‘Lucy runned, missus. She say we not go to mission, missus. He get us from mission. We going our daddy. Wadi comed and getted me. He don't like runnin'. He done . . .'

She showed her leg, her broken leg, and Gertrude's stomach, shaking since she'd left town, decided to reject that hot potato, and Sissy's birthday cake too. She ran into the yard and vomited. She wasn't the vomiting type, but she held on to her fence tonight and vomited her heart out.

Washed her face, washed her hands at the tank, stood leaning there, staring through her fence at the dark hump of her walnut tree, her mind circling from Amber to Elsie, from Wadi to Archie, from India to Argentina.

Didn't hear those bare feet behind her, didn't know Elsie was there until she felt her breath on her arm.

‘No use both of our meals getting cold, love. Go inside and eat.'

‘Them in oven, missus.'

Gertrude lifted her eyes to the sky, pleading with them not to let her down. She was a healer, not a howler.

That timid bird-like hand barely touching, that was what did it. Touch is what the human spirit craves and no one ever touched her. She wailed like a punished child, turned and grasped that girl to her, holding her hard against her and howling, for her, for Amber, for the doll she'd spent so much love in sewing, and for tiny Jenny too, who might have been better off placed in a children's home, or raised down here, fed on goat's milk, this little girl loving her. She'd made a mistake. She'd made a terrible, terrible mistake. She'd signed her name as witness to the birth of that little girl, registered as the child of Norman and Amber Morrison. She'd done the wrong thing by that poor dead woman and by her baby.