Pearl in a Cage (38 page)

Sissy was calm on Monday, slept for most of the day, then on Monday evening he saw that woman offering her a glass of water and a pill. Norman may have been a fool who too often in life had taken the easy road, but he was not an utter fool. He'd demanded his housekeeper produce the pill bottle, which was not immediately forthcoming. He'd threatened to search her bedroom, while she'd argued of blood loss, of Cecelia's need for the blood-strengthening pill. Few would have doubted her argument. He'd doubted and begun with her underwear drawer, emptied it to the floor, flung her clothing after it, emptied a toiletries case to the bed, showering the coverlet with powder.

In time she'd produced the things, and they were, as he had feared, an opiate.

Amber had never feared him. He'd given her no cause to fear him. That night, she'd had cause. He'd left her to clean up the mess and taken her bottle with him.

She'd pleaded later, begged, made promises. He'd offered one pill. She'd asked for two, which he'd given and watched swallowed.

Tuesday was hell, until Amber bribed Cecelia into a semi-calm with a brown paper-wrapped parcel from Blunt's.

Wednesday began well. Then that newspaper arrived. The day ended badly.

Thursday! Norman came from the station at six, afraid to enter the house. And he found Cecelia bathed, calm and clad in a flouncing floral, highly unsuitable for a girl of her years and shape — however he did not voice his opinion.

 

Jenny's Alice Blue Gown, hurriedly removed in the parlour after the concert, left unhung on the couch, unsighted during the days she'd spent with Maisy, was gone when she arrived home on Thursday evening, no doubt collected by one of the costume ladies and hanging safe in the school cupboard. She thought no
more of it until Miss Rose asked her to please return the frock to school on Monday.

She searched Sissy's wardrobe, searched Norman's, wasn't game to search Amber's.

‘Daddy, do you know what happened to my Alice Blue Gown? Miss Rose wants it back.'

He didn't know. He too had been searching . . . for Wednesday's
Gazette
. He lifted a finger to his lips and glanced towards the parlour. Amber and Sissy were in there, turning the pages of a catalogue.

At Maisy's house, Jenny had her own bed in Jessie's room. Now she was back to sharing a bed and Sissy could kick like a mule. Then, on the Saturday morning when Jenny went down to the lavatory, when she had a quick look to see if Sissy had thrown Norman's newspaper into the pan, she saw something frilly. It was no longer blue, but it was crepe paper, a crepe paper frill. It didn't bear closer identification but she took a deep breath outside, held her nose and went back for a second look. It was her Alice Blue Gown.

She knew Sissy threw things in that pan when she got in one of her bad moods. She'd thrown books in it, thrown Jenny's kitten poem in — and told her she'd done it too. The newspaper was probably down there.

Didn't want to start Sissy up again now that she'd stopped, like Norman didn't want to start her up, but that dress was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. She'd felt special in it, had sung better in it, and Miss Rose wanted it back on Monday.

‘I'm telling Miss Rose you threw that costume down the lav, Sissy.'

‘I didn't touch your stupid dress.'

‘You did so. I saw it.'

‘Who looks in lavatory pans?'

‘Who knows that you throw things in lavatory pans?'

‘Don't you accuse me.'

‘You did it because I was in the concert and you weren't.'

‘As if I care, you evil little stray.'

‘You were jealous that everyone couldn't see your daffodil dress.'

‘I don't even like yellow, and as if I'd ever be jealous of you.'

As if she would. She had everything. She had three new dresses now, the yellow, the pretty frilly floral and a green and beige print. And she'd even got her own way about leaving school. She had no reason for jealousy.

Jenny was jealous of those three dresses. She loved pretty things and Norman only ever bought plain dark-coloured dresses. Having a mother had changed everything. It had changed Norman. It even changed Christmas.

They always had Christmas dinner with Gertrude and Joey and Elsie, but because Amber wouldn't go, Sissy wouldn't go, so Norman didn't go.

It was the worst Christmas ever. Amber roasted a leg of lamb and Jenny could smell it roasting for hours, then Amber stood at the table slicing into it with her fine-bladed carving knife, and she must have forgotten Jenny didn't eat lambs because she gave her two fat slices. Norman removed them to his plate. He swapped the lamb for some of his vegetables, which tasted of lamb. And the Christmas pudding wasn't the same as Granny's and had no threepences in it, and there was no Joey to giggle with, no funny presents. It was like Christmas didn't come that year. It was like Norman wasn't Norman that year and Sissy wasn't Sissy. She didn't look like Sissy in her frilly floral, with her hair a mass of waves, and lipstick even, and new shoes.

Norman said that sisters must love each other, but sisterly love wasn't easy in a shared bed. And those three pretty dresses hanging in the wardrobe didn't make it easier, or the costume in the lavatory.

The Bible said to love your mother and father. Loving her father had always been easy. She loved his big, soft, puppy-dog eyes, his chubby face, his voice, which could make the most boring story sound a bit interesting. Until Amber came home, Jenny had found no fault in Norman, and with only his example to follow, she'd patterned her behaviour on his. She walked away from unpleasantness, did unto others as she
would have them do unto her, forgave Sissy her trespasses — or most of them. Until Amber came home, Jenny had been well on her way to becoming a female Norman, a pacifist, ill equipped to handle the more unpleasant aspects of life.

There are significant moments in every life, moments when had we walked a different path, turned a different corner, caught a different train, we may have found an alternative future. If Miss Rose had chosen a different song, if that froth of blue frills hadn't seemingly materialised five minutes before Jenny had to walk on stage that night, if she had never heard of Cinderella and fairy godmothers, if she hadn't glanced into the lavatory pan . . .

Life happens. Perspectives alter. Age wearies and disappointments weigh heavily.

Jenny's tenth birthday should have been a disappointment. She'd thought Amber might give her a pretty dress. She didn't. Norman gave her a present that felt like a book and turned out to be a Bible; a very nice Bible with a white leather cover, but nonetheless a Bible and there were already three of them in the house, and the words in one were the same as in another. She'd thought Granny might come to the house, but she didn't. She'd given Norman her present: a pretty dressing gown, which Jenny thought might have been a dress until she got it unwrapped. Joey gave her a baby yabby in a jam jar, which she was only allowed to keep until after lunch, then she had to take it down to the creek and let it go. Then something happened which made it the best birthday she'd ever had.

Mr Denham called her over to his fence. She'd given him the pendant the old swagman had found in the park and told him she'd found it, because kids weren't allowed to take things from strangers or even talk to them.

‘Finders keepers,' Constable Denham said.

‘I didn't . . .'

Couldn't tell him now that the old swaggie with the Father Christmas beard had found it; anyway, he was long gone. That was what swagmen did. They walked into town, then walked out, and no one knew where they came from or who they were. Some stayed a day or two under the bridge, some camped in
the shed beside the sports oval, but Denham didn't allow any to become comfortable.

‘You did the right thing by handing it in, Jennifer,' he said and he dropped it into her hand.

She ran back across the road with her treasure, and it was hers. An old swagman wouldn't want it. She ran inside with it, into the kitchen, where they crowded around her, admiring her treasure.

Norman said it was very old and made of real gold, that the pearl within its ball of gold would be a real pearl, made by an oyster in the ocean. Then he claimed it, to put away until she was old enough to appreciate it.

Sissy was already old enough to appreciate it. She wanted to wear it to the pictures on Saturday night. She stamped her feet for it, so Norman told her she could stay home from the pictures. Margaret and Jimmy Hooper were calling for her; she couldn't even scream or they'd hear her. She vented her frustration in bed that night, by sprawling over three-quarters of it.

‘Move over, Sissy.'

‘Go to hell,' Sissy hissed and kicked.

‘I'm sick, sick, sick of sleeping with you. Get over your own side or I'm calling Daddy.'

Sissy kicked again, Jenny retaliated with her heel. Sissy belted her with her forearm, so Jenny grabbed a handful of her hair.

Norman's room was a wall away. He opened their door. ‘This is not fitting behaviour for young ladies. Apologise to each other.'

‘She started it.'

‘You started it. You kicked me because you weren't allowed to wear my necklace to the pictures.'

‘It's not your necklace —'

‘It will be claimed,' Norman said.

‘Mr Denham said it would have been already, and finders keepers,' Jenny said.

‘You probably pinched it from someone anyway,' Sissy said.

‘Then why did I hand it in?'

‘Apologise, Cecelia. Apologise to each other.'

They apologised, but didn't mean it. He went back to bed. Sissy wanted the last hit. It wasn't much of a hit, but tonight
Jenny wasn't going to let her win. Even a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist will take up arms to fight for what she believes is a just cause. That Alice Blue Gown was such a cause, and probably the
Gazette
with her photograph in it; six inches of bed was a just cause too, and that pendant she wasn't allowed to wear until she was old — and everything.

Norman came again. He rolled a blanket into a long sausage and placed it down the centre of the bed. ‘Your mother will leave tomorrow. I have had enough of this hoyden behaviour.'

Sissy didn't like that threat. She moved over to her own side of the bed.

 

Vern Hooper gave Norman respite from decision. He invited Sissy to accompany his family to the beach for a fortnight. Amber didn't want Sissy to go. Norman, always pleased to be rid of that daughter, gave her a five-pound note and told her to behave herself. She left with the Hoopers on the Thursday train, and Jenny had that entire bed to herself for fourteen days.

And she had her mother to herself.

On Friday evening, Norman took up his coin pouch and walked across the road to play poker. By seven thirty, Amber was sitting in the parlour, working on her embroidery, Jenny sitting half a room away, turning the pages of a city catalogue and attempting to think of a way to start a conversation with her mother. If Sissy was home, she would have been sitting beside Amber, showing her things in that catalogue.

Maisy said that Amber was shy with Jenny because she'd left a baby and come home to a big girl. Maisy said that Sissy and Amber had been close before Amber had become unwell. Maisy said that if people made the first move with Amber, she met them halfway. Tonight Jenny was determined to make that first move.

It took a while, but she finally found a page of shoes, some with heels that looked about four inches high; she took the open catalogue to the couch and sat. It was a long couch. She didn't touch Amber, who, so busy with her embroidery, didn't notice Jenny had moved. She sat flipping the pages, like Sissy flipped pages, and
when she got back to the shoes, she took a deep breath and said: ‘Have you seen people walking in shoes like those, Mummy?'

Amber glanced at the page, then made another stitch. Jenny sat watching that needle diving in and out, in and out, the silk thread following it until the silk grew too short and Amber had to place her embroidery down to rethread the needle. She was aiming that thread at the eye when Jenny reached out a finger to touch, not her mother, but a near-completed silk rose.

‘It's like magic,' she said. ‘That rose looks as if it would even smell like a rose.'

Amber's hand was shaking. She snipped a little from the thread, moistened it between her lips and lined it up again. This time the thread went through the eye.

‘I could thread the next one for you —'

And Amber struck, like a single-fanged snake.

A cat has springs in its legs. In the blink of an eye, a cat can place six feet between itself and danger, then land facing the enemy. Jenny was unaware of how she'd covered the distance between couch and passage, was not immediately aware of the needle stitching her frock to her thigh, or not until she pulled on the dangling maroon thread and pulled the needle out.

The shock of the attack masked the pain, but that needle now on the hall table, her leg stung. She rubbed it, eyes wide with disbelief, mouth open. Her mother wasn't even looking at her, or looking for her needle. She'd found another and was threading it with the same maroon silk.

Jenny lifted her skirt, looked at the bead of blood, wiped it with her finger.

‘You're . . . you're a mirage.'

Amber ignored her.

‘You're like . . . like mirage water in the desert that looks so real people die of thirst trying to get to it. And they . . . they just . . . end up drinking sand.'

‘Bedtime,' Amber said.

Maisy's twins said Amber had gone mad, hadn't got sick. Maisy's twins said . . . But Amber was getting to her feet so Jenny ran. Out the front door, out the gate and down to the post office.

Didn't know why she'd run that way, except there was a light at the window, and the post office door was recessed and dark, a good place to hide and keep watch from. She knew she should have gone to Maisy, but then Norman would have had to leave his game, and it was probably her own fault anyway. She should have stayed away from her, stayed in the kitchen, gone to bed. Granny knew about Amber's invisible
Do not touch
sign. She didn't try to get near her.