Pearl in a Cage (44 page)

‘You're eighteen. You'll need someone's permission to wed.'

‘That's restricted information you wheedled out of me, Mrs Foote, which I'll ask you to keep under your hat. I told George I was eighteen a few years back.'

 

Elsie Gertrude Foote wed Harold Thomas Hall in the Methodist church on Saturday, 7 September 1935. Harry was decked out in one of Vern's old wedding suits. Elsie wore a gold crepe frock.

The stranger had worn that frock during the latter stages of her pregnancy. Elsie was a tiny slip of a girl, but the altering of it to fit her was a simple matter. It had no waist and no real shape, its only interest, its colour and the thousands of amber, gold and brown beads forming intricate swirls all over the yoke. She looked radiant, as all brides do.

Vern recognised the frock. He drove Elsie, Joey, Gertrude and the two infants into town and stayed on to hear the vows.
Maisy, George and a few of their daughters were there. They looked after the babies. Clarry Dobson worked with Harry; he'd brought his wife along. Dora Palmer and Jenny were there, Jenny clinging to a cheque for five pounds, a wedding gift from Norman who didn't attend. Maisy and George gave the newlyweds a ten-pound note. Vern gave them his old bed and a pair of new sheets and blankets to put on it. The Dobsons gave them a pretty china bowl.

John McPherson's camera trapped the bride and groom posed beneath a tree in front of the church. It would never be his best work, only another page in his pictorial history of Woody Creek, but an integral page: long, skinny, freckle-faced Harry looking as if his white collar was about to choke him, and pretty little Elsie, eyes down, embarrassed by the camera's attention.

By midday that gold crepe frock was back in Gertrude's trunk, Vern's old bed was set up in the partitioned-off corner of the shed, Joey moved back into the lean-to bed, and once again a single bed was set up down the bottom end of the kitchen for the babies.

Vern had assisted with the lifting. He stayed on to nag.

‘You'll be overrun by them in a few years' time.'

‘I always wanted a big family.'

‘What about your family in town?'

‘I never see any of them.'

‘Then move in and see them. Your granddaughter spends half her life at my place.'

‘And you're hoping that by me being there you'll get rid of her?' Gertrude said. Sissy didn't speak to her grandmother. ‘If you'd stop attempting to control the world, life might work out more the way you want it to.' She'd been considering making the move. Mealtimes were bedlam in her kitchen.

 

Vern had harboured hopes of marrying Margaret off, but the bathroom now completed, Arthur Hogan's ardour seemed to have cooled. Vern did the wrong thing and decided to invite him to Margaret's birthday party. She didn't want him there. She'd
be turning twenty-seven and she'd told Arthur she was twenty-two. Vern invited him anyway, invited Gertrude, and Sissy, two women from the church choir and their husbands, Denham and his wife, two of the Macdonald girls — which was his biggest mistake. They were man-hungry, and younger than Margaret.

All was going quite well until ten o'clock, when Margaret scuttled off to the kitchen, her eyes blue fish grown too large for their fish bowls spilling water. The Macdonald girls had Arthur Hogan bailed up in a corner, and he didn't look unhappy to be there.

Gertrude moved in to separate them — and ended up discussing house extensions. Vern had to move in to separate them.

‘With timber costing what it does these days, it's usually cheaper to start from scratch,' Hogan said. Then he gave her a rough figure on a two-bedroomed house he and his father were building in Willama. ‘It's nothing fancy,' he said.

Gertrude had received close to five hundred pounds from Archie's estate, and to date had spent a little over a hundred.

‘Seventy?'

‘Give or take,' he said. ‘It's just a house. And I'd have to see the site.'

 

Sissy sat watching her grandmother, eyeing her blouse and wanting it. Wanting her black suit too, wanting her figure, her legs, shoes, wanting to be able to talk to people like her grandmother could talk to them.

She wasn't enjoying the party. No one was talking to her. The only good thing about it was watching Irene Palmer in her maid's uniform, bringing food in and carrying empty plates out, which was hilarious. She brought in a plate of cream-filled pastries with chocolate icing on top and strawberry jam in the middle. Sissy took one and wanted another, but the rest disappeared in seconds. Irene brought out a plate of jam tarts and they all went before she could get one.

Wanted to go home, but couldn't walk in her high heels. Vern had told Norman he'd drive her home before twelve, which was hours away. Watched her grandmother's glass filled with
wine. It wasn't fair, everyone laughing and drinking wine while she drank cordial.

Margaret hadn't come back. Sissy didn't know if she liked Margaret or not, but she was handy, so she went off to find her. Saw her in the kitchen with Irene and the housekeeper, Sissy wasn't going in there, so she walked down to have a look at their bathroom, which she'd seen in its various stages though not since it was finished and the mess cleaned up. It took her breath away. It was tiled and had two dainty taps feeding into a shining white handbasin and two more over a matching bath. She tried the two taps over the basin and hot water came out of one like at the hotel they'd stayed at in Sydney. And there was a door where there had previously been no door. She opened it, expecting a cupboard but finding an indoor lavatory.

‘Oh, you lucky dogs,' she breathed, wanting it, wanting that china bowl, the contoured wooden seat, the tiled walls and floor — and wanting Irene Palmer to keep it clean too. She ran her hand over the seat, down the tiles.

It wasn't fair how the Hoopers could have exactly what they wanted when Sissy had to crawl for a pair of shoes. A stationmaster's daughter had to learn to trim her sails to the available cloth, her father said every time she needed something. And she didn't want to trim her sails. She wanted to stay in Sydney hotels, wanted to go to balls, shop in Melbourne for ballgowns like Margaret shopped in Melbourne for ballgowns.

Couldn't have anything. Couldn't even have her own room, her own bed, or not since her mother had come home . . . though until she'd come home, she'd had nothing at all.

She'd been to two balls with Margaret Hooper, who had four ballgowns. Sissy had one. Nothing was fair. Margaret Hooper bathed in that bath, washed her face at that basin, peed into porcelain.

‘You lucky dog.'

Sissy lifted her floral skirt and did what Margaret did, then reached to pull the chain. Loved watching that rush of water. It made a noise, though. She hoped they wouldn't hear it in the sitting room. The pipes hummed while refilling the cistern. She
stood listening to the hum, dreaming of Irene Palmer scrubbing the seat she'd sat on, her hands deep down in that bowl, scrubbing off all of the . . .

‘Missed a spot there, Palmer,' she whispered.

She never could stand Irene Palmer, who was less than a year older than Sissy but had been three grades ahead at school.

‘And look at her now. She's the maid and I'm the guest.'

She checked her face, her lipstick, looked at her frock and her stocking seams, which would never stay straight. Wished she had slim legs like her grandmother, wished she had that black suit and striped blouse. Amber said she could get slim if she watched what she ate; the only trouble with that was she liked eating.

She applied more lipstick, washed her hands and dried them on a small hand towel folded on a shelf beside the basin. Amber's rule was to put things back where you found them. Lorna and Margaret left things for the maids to pick up.

‘Pick it up, Palmer,' she said, dropping the towel to the floor.

With a final glance in the mirror, she walked down the passage and back to the party — though she didn't get that far. Lorna, Vern and Gertrude had escaped to the small sitting room. The wireless was in there. She walked in and stood a while listening, until she saw Jimmy hiding in the room next door. She went in to hide a while with him.

Two walls were lined with books, the other walls had new wallpaper. It looked so rich, and the carpet looked rich and the fancy light fitting. Jimmy, sitting on a big leather chair, reading, ruined the picture.

But he was a part of that picture too, and everyone said he'd get everything when Vern died, even this house, which had belonged to his mother's first husband anyway.

Girls had to marry someone. Look what Margaret Hooper wanted to marry — a common navvy. Two of Maisy's daughters were already married. Even Gertrude's darkie had got married.

She eyed him, held his eyes when he looked back.

‘What's up?' he said.

‘Nothing,' she said, perching on the arm of his chair. ‘What are you reading, Jimmy?'

Everyone had to marry someone, so why not marry someone who was going to be rich one day.

A crazy year 1936, a year of royal upheaval. On 20 January, old King George died, and it seemed to Jenny that no sooner had the new stamps and coins been issued displaying young King Edward's profile than they were gone, the year was gone and King Edward was gone. For love of a divorced woman who couldn't ever be a queen, he'd handed the throne of England down to his younger brother, George.

And how would a king feel about getting a hand-me-down throne? Jenny felt sorry for him. She lived in Sissy's hand-me-down dresses, baggy, faded, loathed.

‘
Hark the herald angels sing, Mrs Simpson stole our king
,' the Macdonald twins sang in church the week before Christmas. ‘
Peace on earth and heavens bright, I'd like to be a fly on their wall at night
. . .'

Heads turned, the aged scowling, the young grinning. Jenny didn't need to turn her head to see. She sat in the back row of the choir box, to the right of the pulpit, like the minister, looking down on the congregation; on Margaret Hooper's silver blonde hair and tiny hat perched on top of it, and Sissy's hat and her tan suit, ordered from a city catalogue, with her tan and white striped shirt. The prices were in that catalogue. Jenny knew exactly how much they'd cost.

The second-worst part about growing up was seeing things you knew were wrong and not being able to change them. Sissy made a fool of Norman. Every time she wanted something she crawled around him, called him Daddy, kissed him goodnight,
made him cups of tea, then as soon as he wrote his cheque, she ignored him. It was sickening, but more sickening because Norman looked so happy when Sissy was up to her tricks.

The depression had split Woody Creek down the middle, people said, cut it clean into the haves and have-nots. There had always been a rift between Jenny and Sissy, but Amber's return, the needle and the Alice Blue Gown, had turned that rift into a yawning gulch. Jenny stood alone on the far side, in baggy hand-me-downs, Sissy on the other, in nice clothes and with Amber clinging to her back, while Norman attempted to balance one foot on either side of that gulch. And he was splitting himself in half trying.

Jenny glanced at her sister's hair. Amber had done it this morning in an ear-to-ear roll copied from a photograph of a film star. They'd practised for days to get it right. It looked modern. She looked nice from the back. Jenny's hair was tied back in a frizzy weighty bunch. It looked as if she didn't care, and she didn't. Maybe she wanted Norman to see that she didn't care, but he didn't see much of anything now. Maybe he never had. Maybe she'd just thought he had.

She'd shown him the sweat stains under the armpits of Sissy's faded pink frock the first day he'd pulled it out of his carton, and all he'd said was that it had plenty of wear left in it. He'd bought it for Sissy in 1932 after the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened, after she'd gone up to Sydney with the Hoopers. Sissy was thirteen in 1932, just beginning her Margaret Hooper period. She'd stamped her feet for that pink. It had been the beginning of her sweating period too. Every dress she'd worn around that time was stained and faded under the armpits.

And it wasn't just the stained armpits, which weren't armpits on Jenny. The shoulder seams hung halfway to her elbows, the sleeves flapped around her arms like wings, the waist was a foot too wide and the hem on speaking terms with her socks. She'd never forgive her father for keeping that dress, and she'd never forgive Sissy for the shape she'd been at thirteen, nor for shrinking since Amber had come home, which meant she would never grow out of any of her decent frocks.

Dora had grown early and stopped early. Jenny had caught up to her. She was as tall as Amber, and starting to round out in places, which was the worst part of growing up because it meant that she had to be covered up. That pink dress did the job.

‘
Hark the herald angels sing, Mrs Simpson stole our king
. . .' The twins were at it again. They didn't come to church often and were only here today because their nephew was being baptised and there was a party afterwards. Jenny couldn't tell them apart. No one, other than Maisy and their sisters, could, not unless they called one of them Cecil. If it was Bernie, he ignored them; if it was Cecil, he hit them so hard it wasn't a worthwhile exercise finding out which was which. Their sisters used to torment hell out of Cecil, but he'd grown too big now so they called him Macka. George still couldn't tell them apart. He called both of them wild little bastards.

Jenny's mind always wandered in church. It wasn't supposed to. She liked the singing, liked studying the people while they sat heads bowed, liked wondering if their minds wandered and where they wandered to. Sissy was going out to the farm with the Hoopers this afternoon. She didn't like the farm but she liked Hooper picnics.

Once upon a time, Sundays had been Granny days. Norman never went down there now, and since Nelly had been murdered, Jenny didn't want to go there. Even going for a swim gave her knives down her back.