Pearl in a Cage

 

 

Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which,
Diamonds in the Mud
, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels
Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday's Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry's Daughter
and
One Sunday
.

 

 

 

 

 

Also by Joy Dettman

 

Mallawindy

Jacaranda Blue

Goose Girl

Yesterday's Dust

The Seventh Day

Henry's Daughter

One Sunday

Diamonds in the Mud

Joy
Dettman

Pan Macmillan Australia

 

 

First published 2009 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

 

Copyright © Joy Dettman 2009

 

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

 

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

 

Dettman, Joy.

Pearl in a cage / Joy Dettman.

 

9781405039574 (pbk.)

 

A823.3

 

The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

Typeset in 11.5/13.5 pt Times by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Printed by McPherson's Printing Group

 

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

 

 

These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

 

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

 

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

 

Pearl in a Cage

Joy Dettman

 

Adobe eReader format: 978-1-74198-643-3
Online format: 978-1-74198-587-0
EPUB format: 978-1-74198-755-3

 

 

Visit
www.panmacmillan.com.au
to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

Cover

About Joy Dettman

Also by Joy Dettman

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

BOOK ONE

THE MIDWIFE

THE RELATIVES

THE STRANGER

HOT GOSSIP

EXPECTATIONS

A CRUMBLING HOUSE

RECOGNITION

AN UNTIDY LIFE

THE BIRTHDAY

GROWING FAMILIES

DESERTION

AN AGREEABLE CHILD

THE RETURN

PAPER PETALS

AMBER'S ESCAPE

SIMILARITIES

LOST AND FOUND

THE PROPOSAL

OLD LOVERS

DISCOVERY

PROBLEM CHILDREN

CASH SALES ONLY

MAKING IT THROUGH

ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

DISTANT PLACES

LOST AND FOUND

BOOK TWO

COMMUNICATIONS

MIRACLES

MRS MORRISON

DAFFODIL YELLOW

BLUE ANGER

SAND IN THE DESERT

RIPPLES IN THE CREEK

LIFE GOES ON

OF MUTUAL NEED

BIRTHS AND MARRIAGES

OF CABBAGES AND KINGS

ALL HIS WORLDLY GOODS

BABY BREASTS

LIKE WHITE SILK

THE LIMELIGHT

PEARLS IN GOLDEN CAGES

GALLERY OF FOOLS

GOLD CREPE AND BEADS

MEMORIES

THE RADIO QUEST

THE AFTERMATH

THE WINDOW

PILLS, PAIN AND NEWSPAPER

AMBER ROSE

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES

FORGIVENESS

UNIFICATION

DUFFY'S DOGS

THE WOODEN SPOON

THE BALL

EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED

VINDICATION

THE SPIDER AND THE HORNET

CHOICES

SORTING THINGS OUT

SEPARATION

THE MIRAGE

 

 

 

Dedicated to my Mum. She's dancing the Charleston in high heels, singing ‘Ramona' – out of tune. She's sweeping up stardust to powder her nose, playing hide and go seek with the moon.

 

 

To Don, who read the first draft of
Pearl in a Cage
as the pages came hot from my printer, and to Kay Readdy, insightful friend and trusted early reader, I offer my heartfelt thank you.

Until that December morning Gertrude Foote had found little good to say for Vern Hooper's new motor car. It was noisy, it stunk to high hell, and she'd ridden more comfortably on a camel's back. That morning, she blessed its noise and ran indoors. If he'd come on horseback, he would have caught her head down in a dish of water, rinsing the dye out of her hair. There were things folk needed to know and a lot more they didn't, and that she dyed her hair was one of the latter.

There was little vanity in Gertrude. The dyeing of her hair wasn't about vanity; it was a means of keeping old age at bay, that's all, and so far it seemed to be working.

She had a lot of hair; it took a lot of rinsing, more than could be done in one dish of water, but with no time now to do more, she grabbed a towel and got it wrapped on turban fashion. She emptied that telltale rinsing water around the roots of her climbing rose, propped the tin dish upside down on her tank stand and before the car came puttering and spluttering into her yard, she was waiting for him behind her chicken-wire gate. It wasn't much of a gate — tall enough to keep her chooks away from the house and garden, though offering minimal protection should that motor car turn feral. But he got the thing stopped and she opened her gate.

‘You put my chooks off the lay for a week every time you bring that thing down here,' she said. ‘What's wrong with your horse?'

‘He's out at the farm and I'm in here.'

Vern Hooper unfolded his lanky frame from behind the steering wheel. There was a good six foot five of him to unfold, plus a thatch of wiry steel grey hair to offer a few extra inches. Apart from his eyes, lost years ago in the creases of a farmer's permanent squint, his features were of a size to suit his build — big nose, big ears, long jaw. By no stretch of the imagination could Vern be called a good-looking man.

‘Cecelia Morrison just dropped dead,' he said. ‘Ogden wants you, Trude.'

‘I've got an alibi,' she said, and was rewarded with a grin. There was something about Vern's grin, sort of shy, a little lopsided, something about it that made his face look just about right to Gertrude.

‘Guilty by intent?' he said.

‘Could be too. What happened to her, Vern?'

‘Something very sudden.'

‘I'm halfway through washing my hair . . .'

‘Finish it,' he said. ‘I've got nothing better to do.'

Christmas was over, the New Year not yet born, and as far as Vern was concerned, those few days between the two just wasted time. Six years ago he'd wed a widow with a modern sawmill and a nice house in town. She was no farmer's wife. He'd put a manager in on his farm and moved into town to learn what he could about her sawmill.

There was money in Woody Creek timber; there always had been, though it was hard fought for until a few years back. Three big modern mills, to the north, west and east of the town, had changed all that. Six days a week folk lived with the constant shrieking howl of the big saws, the constant stream of bullockies hauling logs in from the bush, of drays hauling cut timber up to the railway yards.

There was a shocked, lost feeling to the town when the mills shut down over Christmas, a lonely, waiting feeling, which Vern shared. His wife didn't enjoy having him underfoot. His housekeeper didn't enjoy him poking around in her kitchen. He'd been roaming, looking for something to do, and now that something had happened.

He followed Gertrude into her house, which was only a house by reputation. Rough-built fifty years ago, it was a two-roomed hut, its front door opening onto a clutter of kitchen table, chairs, stove, cane couch, washstand, dresser, big old Coolgardie safe and no room to swing a cat — if she'd had one to swing.

‘What time did it happen, Vern?'

‘Your daughter found her around ten . . . in the dunny.'

‘No.'

‘Fact.'

‘No.'

‘As true as I'm standing here. She told Ogden she hadn't sighted her mother-in-law since breakfast and thought she must have been lying down. She said she went down to the dunny and there she was, skirt up, bloomers down.'

‘Oh my God! What a place to breathe your last breath . . .'

‘Yeah, but as Moe Kelly said when he saw her sitting there, it's sort of poetic justice.'

Maybe it was. Cecelia Morrison was an overweight, overbearing bugger of a city dame who'd suffered from a severe case of delusions of grandeur. She and her stationmaster son, Norman, had moved up to Woody Creek eight years ago, and two years after that, Amber, Gertrude's only daughter, had wed Norman.

‘Amber must have got a shock.'

‘She's running the show. Norman, being Norman, is . . . being Norman,' Vern said, and no more needed to be said.

That marriage had been a recipe for disaster, even without a live-in mother-in-law. Gertrude had tried to talk some sense into that girl, but trying to stop Amber from doing anything she'd set her mind on doing was like bullfighting with a handkerchief for a cape.

A heavy brown curtain hung at a gap midway down the western wall of the kitchen. Gertrude lifted it and disappeared into her second room, as long, near as narrow, more cluttered than its mate and offering less light. The head of her double bed was against the southern wall, her dressing table squeezed in beside it. She had two unmatched wardrobes set along the
western wall, and crates, trunks, boxes, piles of newspapers and sundry filling the northern end. It was an unholy mess she kept promising herself she'd clean up one fine day, but she had a fifteen-acre property to run and on fine days she was busy — and on the other days she was just as busy. For the past twenty-odd years she'd delivered most babes born in Woody Creek, then stitched them up a few years later, set the limbs of a few. Always someone at her door wanting something, always more pressing things to be done than housework. Anyway, her mess was familiar and as long as she moved nothing around, she could put her hands quickly on whatever she needed.