Pearl in a Cage (16 page)

‘You look very smart, my dear,' he greeted her. ‘And you, Cecelia,' he lied.

‘The wind's blowing my hair everywhere, Mummy,' Cecelia said.

‘It was a better day in Melbourne,' Amber said, evading his kiss. ‘Our case came up in the goods van.'

‘I will . . . see to it,' he said, glancing towards Jenny, busy reading the pictures in his newspaper. Perhaps she didn't recognise the strangers. Perhaps they didn't recognise her with hair. Amber didn't greet her.

Sissy recognised her. She stood hands on her hips, staring. ‘She's got curly hair too, Mummy. Who curled her hair?'

Too familiar, that nasal whine. Memory rushed him and acid rose in his throat. He flinched from it, glanced quickly towards his house and swallowed bile, aware that his rooms, so comfortable for man and child, would be judged unfit for human habitation by Amber.

‘You gave no warning of your arrival, my dear. I had planned . . .' Planned to pay Miss Dobson for a few hours of cleaning.

‘Were you expecting a drum roll?'

‘A word. One word, perhaps.'

She had no words for him. She was walking away from him. He turned to the train. He had commitments.

‘The house,' he said, ‘is . . . untidy.'

‘He who expects nothing is never disappointed,' she tossed over her shoulder.

He shuddered, got that train on its way west, swallowed more bile, shuddered again as he watched the train disappear over Charlie's crossing, aware he should have snatched his exquisite child and gone with it.

Too late now.

The station lad came with Amber's case. ‘Do you want me to take it over to the house, Mr Morrison?'

Norman shook his head. He took the case, then reached out a hand to Jenny, who scrambled to her feet.

‘Shall we run the gauntlet together, my fair, pretty maid?' he said. ‘Or shall we . . . run?'

‘Wide on da bike, Duddy.'

‘Would that we could, my Jenny-wren,' he said. ‘Would that we could.'

Amber met them on the verandah, an unwashed pot in her hand. ‘There's filth everywhere —'

‘Three months —'

‘You've lived like pigs.'

‘We have managed —'

‘You disgust me!'

‘That, my dear, is no longer newsworthy.'

He placed the case on the verandah and returned to his station, Jenny toddling happily by his side. She was enough. She and his station would be enough.

They didn't go home for lunch. Norman sent his lad across to the bakery to purchase a large beef pastie, which the three shared at noon. At two, he saw Amber and Cecelia walking across the railway lines. He didn't see them return. Hoped they'd vacated his filthy house — moved into one of the hotel rooms — gone home to Gertrude. No. No. He did not wish that on his mother-in-law.

At five that evening, he braved his back door. And smelled something cooking. Led by his nose, he entered a kitchen no longer his own. She'd been scrubbing. She served four meals from her scoured pots. He did the wrong thing by swapping Jennifer's meat for his potato and gravy, but balanced his sin quickly with a comment on Cecelia's hair.

‘Mummy bought curling tongs you make hot on the gas stove.'

‘My word,' he said.

‘We haven't got any gas here.'

‘No,' he said.

He attempted to wash the dishes, but Amber wanted him gone from her kitchen. He went into the parlour, as yet his own. He got Jenny into her nightgown and sat with her on his lap until she slept.

Cecelia refused to walk down to the lavatory in the dark. Amber offered a chamber-pot. Cecelia wanted a proper lavatory like in Melbourne. It had begun! Norman escaped to his railway station for a cigarette and a cup of tea. He returned at nine thirty and went with alacrity to his bed, his door closed.

But she opened it and slid in beside him.

‘Weary after your big day, no doubt,' he said.

‘There's nothing to do but sit on the train,' she said.

In the dark, she sounded like his Amber. Her hand on his chest felt like her hand. He held it a moment, expecting her to remove it, to turn her back. She didn't. He took it to his lips, kissed it.

Love exists in the heart. When old love dies, memory of it lingers long in the mind, and in lower regions. Norman's memory stirred. The touch of her limbs in that bed, the scent of her skin, her hair, the feel of that chaste cotton gown — and the mental image of what was beneath that gown. He sighed, a hopeless shuddering sigh, and he rose up from his pillow to claim her mouth. She did not spurn him, did not draw away.

Along with the bicycle, he had on the specialist's advice secured for himself a supply of prophylactics, by mail order in a plain brown-paper wrapper. There would be no more dead infants. He'd unwrapped the items and hidden them in the corner
of his underwear drawer, which was now not as tidy as it had been then. The rattle of his search was somewhat cooling to the blood. He was not surprised when she moved to her own side of the bed. He slid from his side, removed the drawer, emptied it to the floor. And his hand found what it sought, but while he was preparing himself, she left his bed, left his room, his door slammed behind her.

He followed her to Cecelia's bedroom. ‘The specialist advised —'

‘Go to hell,' she said.

He went to the hell of his now empty bed and for the first time in months it felt empty. He was a man with needs and she had raised those needs.

He did not sleep well, but rose as usual, brushed and dressed Jenny, chose not to fry an egg, ate toast, fed Jenny toast, then took her to work with him. Again, they shared a beef pastie for lunch. Again, they returned to the house after five, but it was no longer their own. Their parlour had been turned around, each item of furniture moved, all dust removed, and the peacock feathers missing. Norman searched for them; he'd tickled Jenny's nose with those feathers.

They ate as well-mannered visitors in Amber's kitchen that evening. Norman put Jennifer early into her cot, which had not yet received its share of Amber's cleaning, then soon after he went to his own bed, where, with more hope than expectation, he placed one of his prophylactics in a folded handkerchief beneath his pillow. She did not come to his bed that night, and the following day his room was stripped. No doubt the contents of his handkerchief went with his sheets into the copper.

That evening, in the brief minutes while he bathed and shaved, Jennifer was attacked . . . by the rose bush.

‘You should have cut it back in July,' Amber said.

‘Perhaps you might consider cutting that girl's fingernails back, Mrs Morrison.'

‘We're in the house for two days and you're already blaming her for everything that happens to your Jenny-wren. I told you, she did it on the rose bush.'

‘She did it on the rose bush.' Sissy repeated her mother's lie.

‘You are turning my child into a monster, Mrs Morrison — in body and deed.'

‘She's your child. What did you expect her to turn into, Norman?'

He went to his bed at eight. He was sleeping when she came to his room. The night was dark, the room black as pitch, but he required no eyes to see that she was stark naked. The woman was mad. She had as much as named him monster, and now this. She had never been an eager partner to his nocturnal habits, had never made the initial approach, had more often than not spurned his advances. Tonight, she made an attack on his person.

What man, denied his natural release for near on twelve months, will not respond to a willing woman — in body. Certainly his manhood responded to her touch, but his mind was repelled. He removed her from his person. He held her wrists, held her at a distance.

‘I believe we need time to become reacquainted, Mrs Morrison,' he said. ‘And we have been advised to use . . . protection.'

‘Getting all you need from your Jenny-wren,' she said.

He sprang from the bed like a virgin violated, snatched up his pillow and backed away from her, the pillow shielding his untrustworthy lower regions.

‘You have gone mad, Mrs Morrison. Remove yourself from my room.'

Her reply may have been better received in a brothel, a well-insulated brothel. He ran from her to the nursery, to the narrow bed next to Jennifer's cot. No sheets on that bed, but two blankets. He slid between them and lay watching that closed door, fearful it might open.

 

Norman's prophylactics — two packets of twelve with two missing — would perish in time, but his house was clean, his mother's furniture gleamed, the scent of beeswax polish permeated his parlour, phenol flavoured his meals and, miraculously, his shaving mirror, where previously he had squinted to see, now offered a clear reflection.

He cut his losses, took Jenny to work with him, and left his wife to her cleaning.

 

Amber's days were long. There is only so much dirt one can erase from a house. The dirt she pursued was internal. She sought it in dark wardrobes, beneath beds, on tiny nightgowns. Smelled them before dropping them into the boiling copper, stood for an hour one day her poking stick holding a tiny gown beneath boiling suds, convinced that the filth she pursued was on that nameless stray he'd brought into her house. She found traces of it everywhere. It clung like a scum to the chairs, the table, the walls.

She found it on Cecelia.

‘I told you to stay away from her,' she snarled as she scrubbed her girl in the bath, scrubbed her red while Cecelia screamed. Hating that bloated white body, that fat, flat face, wanting to push her down in the water, hold her down, but loving her too, loving the smell of her.

A ewe identifies her lamb by its scent. In the darkest cellar on the blackest night, Amber could have identified the scent of Cecelia; by September she could no longer breathe unless Cecelia was near. Kept her from school. Kept her from play.

 

Cecelia had spent three months at her mother's side, had sat beside her at her uncle's table, slept beside her, shopped with her, visited elderly aunts and uncles with her. At Amber's side, she'd been the centre of attention, a Duckworth through and through, they said. She'd been appreciated in Melbourne. In Woody Creek there were no aunties and uncles, no Cousin Reggie, only her mother — and Jenny, who stank of evil.

‘You stink of evil. You stay away from me or you'll make me stink too, Mummy said.'

‘What's ebil, Sissy?'

Sissy wasn't too certain. ‘
Deliver us from evil
,' she said. ‘From church.'

She hoped Cousin Reggie would soon deliver her and her mother from evil. She wanted to go back to where there was gas
so she could have curls, where there was a proper lavatory with water in it instead of stink.

Her grandmother was evil too and Maisy wasn't much better. Both women came to the house sometimes but they didn't come inside.

Nancy Bryant knocked on Norman's door on a Friday when Sissy was almost missing being at school. She opened the door. Amber didn't invite her visitor inside. She took the offered jar of cream, took the doll Nancy's granddaughter no longer wanted.

‘Hasn't she turned into the prettiest little pet you ever did see, and wasn't that hair a surprise?' Nancy said.

Cecelia preened for an instant, smiled.

‘It's like spun gold,' Nancy said.

Gold was yellow. Cecelia's hair was the darkest of browns. She stopped smiling and Amber closed the door.

Poor, plain, pudgy Cecelia, years behind her age group at school and falling further behind each day Amber kept her at home. Poor lumpy Cecelia, head and shoulders taller than most in her grade and two or three stone heavier. She'd eaten well in Melbourne. That's what Duckworths did. Even Aunty Jane, a slim in-law, had assisted with the weight increase. She'd made toffee on her stove so Cecelia would be good while Amber went to the theatre with Cousin Reggie.

 

By October there was an unbridgeable gulch between the two halves of Norman's family, which neither side attempted to cross.

To a large degree, Norman lived as he had prior to Amber's return. On Sundays, he rose early, packed a picnic lunch and off he rode on his bicycle, Jenny strapped on behind.

Sissy sat with her mother in the parlour, listening to strange stories about evil people. She wanted to ride on that bike. She wanted to have a picnic lunch.

‘Jenny drawed a bum, Daddy.'

‘I drawed a apwicot.'

‘She's showing you the wrong way round, Daddy. She had it the other way when she drawed it . . . and she said . . . and she said it was Granny's bum, doing number —'

‘Enough!' Norman howled. ‘It is a very fine apricot, Jennifer.'

‘It's a bum,' Sissy yelled. ‘She said it's Granny's bum doing —'

‘Go to your room.'

‘Bum. Bum. Bum.'

Norman manhandled her into the nursery where she spent an hour screaming and causing what havoc she could. She remembered his locked doors. She didn't like his locked doors.

He took Jenny riding on a Sunday in late October and when they returned, Cecelia was waiting alone at the gate. And he threw a lifeline across the gulch.

‘Perhaps you might like to go for a short ride, my dear.'

She liked, but not a short one. They rode for half an hour, but when they returned, Jenny was waiting at the gate, weeping. She was not a crying child. He saw immediately the cause of her tears. Her tiny leg was red from thigh to knee. He carried her indoors.

‘You will keep your hands off this child,' he warned Amber.

‘What about you, Duddy?' Amber said. ‘Do you keep your hands off her, Duddy?'

There were no more bicycle rides. He had two daughters and a wife who had lost her reason.

‘Shall we walk down to the bridge to visit the birds?' he offered.

Sissy's thighs rubbed when she walked. She wanted to ride. Norman had something to offer and she wanted it, wanted all of it.