Pearl in a Cage (50 page)

‘I want that blue print dress, Daddy.'

‘A frock is a frock,' he said. ‘Take it back to the house.'

‘You may as well take it back to Mr Blunt and get your money, because I'm never, ever going to wear it.'

‘Your mother chose it for you!'

‘And you know why she chose it.' She turned away, stepped away, then turned back to face him. ‘You know, Daddy. You have to know.'

He looked at Dora who was listening to every word. He was not one to air soiled family linen in public — nor did he like the airing of it by others.

‘I am not impressed with your attitude, Jennifer. Say goodbye to your friend, then go back to the house.'

She walked away from him, walked east down the platform. He followed her. ‘Go back to the house.'

An obedient girl, easy to handle, always an agreeable child. Not today. She ran from him.

‘Jennifer! Jennifer!'

Wasn't going to let him see her crying over a dress. Ran fast, across the railway yard, Dora behind her, ran all the way to the Palmers' house. They served tea in big mugs like Granny's mugs, and they served up sympathy by the bucketful. They served plum jam sandwiches too. She stayed late at the Palmers' house, too scared to go home. She'd never disobeyed her father. Three times Mrs Palmer told her she should go home, but she didn't make her go.

People were normal at the Palmers'; they talked and laughed like human people, and they were everywhere, nine of them, plus Weasel Lewis and Irene tonight. The house was full of chatter and the smell of sausages frying up for dinner. Jenny and Dora had peeled a huge saucepan full of potatoes while Joss took to the skin of a tough pumpkin with a tommyhawk. Loved that house, loved the cooking and everyone under Mrs Palmer's feet in the kitchen, wished she was one of Mrs Palmer's kids, or wished she was a little kid again and she had no mother and Norman was at home cooking sausages and she was sitting on the kitchen table watching him cook.

Maybe her mouth was watering for sausages when the clock told her it was six thirty. Maybe Mrs Palmer saw her mouth — or her eyes still watering. She buttered a slice of bread, popped a sausage onto it, added a dollop of tomato sauce and handed it to her.

‘You have to go home, pet. Your dad will be out looking for you. Try to look on the bright side. Not a soul is going to see what dress you're wearing when you're singing over the wireless.'

Jenny licked tomato sauce from her hand. ‘I'll see me, Mrs Palmer.'

She left them to their feast and took a bite of bread and sausage, but her mouth was too scared to swallow it, and when she got it down, her stomach agreed with her mouth. She was walking past the park when she heard him.

‘Good evening, Jennifer,' he said.

He was back. She didn't run from him tonight. Wished she could ask him about those earrings, or just say, How was Geelong? Couldn't. ‘Good evening,' she said.

A warm night, not hot, but he was still wearing his black overcoat. He had a newspaper, had a pair of glasses perched on his nose so he could read it. He took them off, placed them into his coat pocket.

‘You're late about,' he said.

She caught a drip of tomato sauce and licked it from her finger. He was a weird old man, but hardly a stranger. And he was related to the Duffys in some way, because she'd seen mail addressed to him sent care of Mrs Duffy.

‘Your father has been calling.'

She turned to Norman's house, knowing she'd be in huge trouble when she got home — which was why she couldn't eat that sausage, even though the smell of it was urging her to eat.

‘Have you had any dinner?' she said. She'd only taken one small bite.

‘I smell hot sausage,' he said.

‘You can have it if you like.'

‘I like.'

He didn't rise to get it. She walked close enough to pass it with an outstretched arm. Wanted, wanted so badly to ask him about those earrings. She didn't. She stepped back and watched him take a bite, chew with relish, tomato sauce dripping red to his beard.

‘God will provide,' he said, mouth full. ‘If too little, and a little too late.'

‘He doesn't provide much,' she said as she turned to walk the diagonal across the road, tucking her blouse into her skirt as she went, pulling up her socks, pushed escaping hair from her eyes.

They were eating. That brown dress hung over the back of her chair.

‘Hang up your frock before you eat, Jennifer.'

She eyed the muddy brown thing, knowing this was the moment her stomach had been scared of for hours. This was when she'd win or forever lose.

‘She must have bought it for Sissy. It's not mine, Daddy.'

He paled, reached for his key from the top of the dresser, but she wasn't backing down tonight. She didn't need to be told to go to his room. She led the way there and sat on his bed while he turned the key.

The junk room had once been Jenny's room. She could remember her green iron cot being in this room. It smelled different now, smelled of Norman's cigarettes and his shoes and trains and newspapers. She reached for a bundle of newspapers, flipped the pages, glancing at old news while plates rattled in the kitchen. She wasn't hungry. Tonight, eating would have been more punishment than being locked in here.

She read about girls who were too selfish to marry.

Women once wed to gain their freedom. Now a ring on the finger means the loss of freedom. Every year we see more and more girls joining the workforce, girls loath to relinquish that newfound independence . . .

Jenny closed her eyes and wished she could join the workforce, buy her own frock, her own shoes. Sissy didn't want to work. Her one ambition in life was to be a Hooper. Only one way she could do that—and God help Jim.

The room was airless with that door closed. She kneeled on the bed and tried to open the window, knowing it was wasted effort. She'd tried when this room had been her own. It had never opened. Sissy's window opened. Amber's window opened. The parlour window opened.

Loved this room. It was too crowded for Amber's clean to get in and rip its heart out. She polished its little floor space, but Norman's ashtray, on its fancy stand, killed the smell of her polish. His shoes strung out in a row along the wall had their
own smell, so did his shirt tossed over the end of the bed. A homely room, like home used to be, like Granny's home, where you could put things down and they stayed put down.

The light was fading. She reached to turn on the light globe, then decided against it, and instead lay on his bed, her own dear single bed, to watch old shadows creep across the ceiling–and to wonder at the cleverness of Amber. She'd chosen the exact frock Norman would have chosen. She was too clever to be really mad.

Better not to think about her. She concentrated on the ceiling, wondering if she kept on staring until it was pitch dark whether her eyes would keep on adjusting to that dark, or if there would be an instant between near dark and the total dark that she might catch.

Norman ruined her experiment. He opened the door and let the kitchen light in, then asked her if she was ready to hang up her frock.

‘Tell her to burn it like she burned Sissy's daffodil dress, Daddy.' He was closing the door. ‘Tell her to throw it down the lav like one of them threw my Alice Blue Gown dress down the lav.'

In a war, even when soldiers are taken prisoner, they don't bow and scrape to their captors. They find a way to fight on—or to escape.

The key turned.

Sissy and Amber would be enjoying this. They'd be sitting in the parlour listening to every word. Sissy had spent a lot of hours locked in this room before Amber came home, and a few since. Amber had been locked in here. Now it was Jenny's turn, but no real punishment. She had her own room back, her own bed, and she could hear everything. She heard Sissy walk by on her way to the lav.

‘Don't forget to take that dress with you, Sissy,' she yelled. That was what a prisoner would do, torment from behind bars.

She heard the legs of Norman's chair squeal, heard his newspaper pages turning faster.

It was interesting to lie on your back in the dark listening to the sound of life, forcing the ears to compensate for the eyes.
She could see better if she closed her eyes, see him so plainly, see his face turning to the locked door, see him glance towards the clock, towards that brown frock, which, as the hours passed, grew bigger, wider, more brown, a monster frock swallowing up the back of her chair.

It would swallow her if she let it. And she wouldn't. Never. If she lived to be ninety-nine, she would never wear that rotten thing. And she wouldn't hang it up either. It could hang over the back of that chair until it rotted, until the chair rotted. She almost giggled at the image of her chair turning to powder and that dress falling to the floor.

The world had long ended, the houses had turned to dust, but one chair remained, protected by that gruesome gown . . .

It tickled her funny bone. She got the giggles. Sissy's voice stopped them, and gave her the hiccups.

‘
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance
. . .'

Only a wall between this room and Sissy's, a thin wall. Norman must have heard every word when she and Sissy had been exchanging insults.

‘
The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves
. . .
in glee
.'

Jenny rapped with her knuckles on the dividing wall, beating time with her knuckles.

‘
A poet could not but be gay

In such jocund . . .

In such a jocund company
. . .'

The rapping became louder, faster, until Norman's chair squealed again and he added his own thump to two doors. ‘Desist,' he commanded. ‘Both of you.'

Jenny desisted, as did Sissy for a minute or two, then she began again, so Jenny practised her song, loudly and off-key.

Norman thumped. ‘Enough, I said. I will have quiet in this house!'

‘I have to learn it. Mum isn't going with me,' Sissy whined.

‘Then learn the thing in silence!'

A whisper can irritate when it continues too long.

‘
For oft
. . .
for oft
. . .'

‘
When on my couch I lie
,' Jenny sang to the tune of the twenty-third psalm. ‘
In vacant or in pensive mood
.'

‘Shut up!'

‘Shut up yourself,' Jenny yelled, then continued with her psalm while Sissy stopped reciting to hammer on the wall.

Norman threatened dire consequences, but that locked room was about as dire as it could get, and it was his fault she was in there anyway. He should have let her choose her own dress.

She heard him leave the kitchen. Heard him outside her door, then the back door opened and his footsteps hurried east along the verandah and out the squealing side gate. He was vacating the premises. She wished he'd let her out to go to the lav before he'd gone, but with him gone, she upped the ante, began that poem at the beginning and sang it right to the end, which brought Amber into the war.

It was delicious being locked in. It was freedom. Amber could belt against that locked door until she wore her fist down to the elbow, but she couldn't stop Jenny's singing. She sang the Macdonald twins' version of the poem, or the parts of it she could remember, sang it soprano and off-key. It was surprising how well the words fitted with the tune.

‘
Oh, Jim, please kiss my drooling mouth,

Before you venture way down south
.'

‘I hate you, you evil, filthy-mouthed stray dog,' Sissy screeched, which was preferable to her recitations.

The war might have continued for hours had Jenny not been desperate to go to the lav. No chamber-pot under Norman's bed,
but the big blue-green vase was on top of his wardrobe. It matched the parlour curtains. It used to be in the parlour, holding a bunch of peacock feathers. She'd need light though, to lift it down.

Hard to find the light cord in the dark. Norman had tied it in a knot so his head wouldn't keep hitting it. She had to reach high, but she got it, got the light on, got the curtains pulled, then lifted the vase down. It wasn't an ideally shaped vessel for the task required of it, but desperate people couldn't afford to be choosy. She'd barely avoided a catastrophe when she heard someone at her window. Thought it must have been Norman. Pulled her pants up and her skirt down, moved the vase in against the wall and lifted the curtain.

It wasn't Norman.

It's a shock to the mind when you see what you're not expecting, when you're looking from light into dark. She could barely see her features, just the monster's anger, and seeing it up so close was scary. Jenny let the curtain fall and stepped back. It was all very well to say she wasn't afraid of Amber, but a part of her was. What if she got the axe and broke that window? It was a good three foot off the ground. She'd have to climb on something to get in, but she'd get in if she wanted to. She was strong. She walked for miles some nights.

Wished Norman would come home.

Turned the light off then and sat on the bed. In a war, someone had to stop the killing first. She wasn't surrendering though, just regrouping her troops. She lay down, her eyes turned to the window, for a time expecting an axe to fly through. Eyes grow weary, they stop watching, close just for a moment—

She was asleep when he opened the door. She sprang from bed, ready to dodge an axe. Saw his bulk in the doorway, smelled his smell, which was the same as he smelled when he came home brave from his poker nights. She'd forgotten it was Friday.

‘What's the time?' she said.

‘Late,' he said. ‘Go to your room.'

‘I want to stay here.'

‘You will learn as you grow older that life is not about what we want. Go to your own room.'