Pearl in a Cage (23 page)

Thirteen years of not thinking about him, then he'd turned up at her door, better looking in his forties than he'd been in his twenties, and dressed like a toff. She'd greeted him in boots and trousers, and he'd laughed in her face. She'd stopped his laughter. She'd loaded up her father's rifle and pointed it, told him there were easier ways of getting shut of him than the divorce courts, and there was plenty of room on her land to bury vermin too, then she'd let off a shot at his shoes and laughed at him when he'd danced.

He'd gone, though not far enough. He was a nephew of Mrs Monk, out at Three Pines. He'd gone out there, and on the
following Sunday, he'd ridden in with Max Monk, a chap of Vern's age, neighbour and friend of Vern's since boyhood. She could hardly pull a gun on him. And Amber was at home. She'd seen that wedding photograph. She'd known who he was. Thirteen, at the stage of crossing over from girl to woman; he couldn't have chosen a worse time to show up.

‘That mongrel would charm the bloomers off a nun and have the choirboys' off for seconds,' she told the night.

They hadn't stayed long that Sunday. She'd made it clear to Monk that she didn't want Archie on her land, and he hadn't come back. But, unbeknown to her, he'd gone to the school and taken Amber from the playground, bought her fancy shoes from Miller's store, a white Sunday-go-meeting frock from Blunt's. She hadn't brought them home, not then. She'd hidden them somewhere.

Gertrude may never have found out she'd been meeting her father if not for Amber's first verbal attack.

‘You had boyfriends all the time you were married to my father,' she'd said. ‘You took me away from my father because he loved me. I'm going to live with him in Melbourne, and his house has got more rooms than Monk's house.'

She'd raised her girl to believe her father was a good man. How could she turn around and tell her he was the devil incarnate who had so violated his family's trust they'd paid him to stay out of the country? She couldn't. How could she stop a thirteen-year-old girl from hankering after her handsome doctor father? She'd tried.

He'd hung around town for a month, then disappeared, still owing Richard Blunt for Amber's frock. Gertrude paid for it. Amber had worn it until it turned to rags. Bad months those, and the bad became worse. Amber blamed her because her father had gone, blamed Vern too. Angry months.

‘She'll get over it faster if you stay away for a while, Vern,' Gertrude had said — which had got Vern's nose out of joint, and when it was out of joint he'd damn near cut it off to spite his face.

Lorna was two or three years old at that time. He'd employed Rita Jones, the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of Monk's labourers, to nursemaid her. Rita must have been doing a bit
more for him than she was paid to do, because the next thing Gertrude knew, Vern had wed her, on the quiet. The marriage lasted nine years, and during those nine years, Gertrude had rarely set eyes on Vern or his wife.

He'd come for her the day Rita died. There was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do. A crazed stallion had trampled her, smashed in the side of her head. She was dead within hours. She went to the funeral, heard later that he'd taken his girls down to a city boarding school, then a week or so after Rita's funeral, he rode down to Gertrude's and tossed a wedding ring at her.

‘Put that on your finger, or I'll hold you down and hammer the thing home.'

‘It's been a week, Vern!'

‘Eight days,' he'd said. ‘Put it on.'

‘I won't be a party to it. Six months is the least you can wait.'

‘Six months less eight days,' he said.

He'd still been a farming man then, and living alone in their grandfather's old timber house. Amber was in her twenties, working as a pastry cook at the hotel and spending her weekends in town with Maisy and George Macdonald, so Gertrude started spending her Saturday nights out at Vern's farm. Happy months those, maybe the best of her life. She was in her late forties, but certain she'd have time to bear a son or two, and every month praying they'd got one started. Too happy, too involved with each other, they hadn't noticed the Morrisons, hadn't noticed Norman pursuing Amber.

Amber brought him down to meet her one Saturday afternoon. Gertrude had been rushing around getting things done so she could ride out to Vern, but she'd put off her chores, made a cup of tea and done her best to talk to Norman. They'd left for town at five, and by five thirty she'd saddled her horse and ridden off.

They were bird-watching on the bridge when she'd crossed over. ‘A pleasant night for a ride, Mrs Foote,' Norman said. She'd agreed it was and continued on her way.

Amber was waiting for her on Sunday evening.

‘You've got the principles of a trollop,' she said. ‘If the Morrisons find out that you're on with Vern Hooper, and his wife hardly cold in her grave, they'll have nothing more to do with me.'

Which, in hindsight, might have been a good thing.

‘Give her a month, Vern,' she'd said.

‘That girl has been dictating my life and yours for too long, Trude. Pack your bags and leave her to her Morrisons.'

That's what she should have done — should have moved in with him when the creek flooded that year. He'd wanted her to. She had two foot of water running through her house, ninety per cent of her land underwater. Her chooks took to the trees, Amber moved in with the Morrisons and Gertrude and her goats had moved in with the McPhersons — which had put a bee up Vern's nose. He was a man who liked to get his own way, and when he didn't, he took it hard. He hadn't come near her for a month and she'd been too busy to concern herself with a grown man's sulking.

Joanne Nicholas was widowed around the same time as Vern. Her husband had got himself caught up in one of the belts that drove the big mill saws. He'd died badly, and Joanne hadn't taken well to widowhood. How Vern had become involved with her, Gertrude didn't know, but he had, and within two months they were wed. Then Amber wed Norman and, to rub salt into a weeping wound, Joanne became pregnant. She was over forty, too old to be having her first child, even if its father had been a midget — which Vern was not. By seven months, she was at bursting point.

‘If you don't want to lose her, you'll get her down to the city doctors,' Gertrude had told Vern. He'd taken her advice.

Amber gave birth to Cecelia in March. Six weeks later, in a city hospital, Vern's son was cut early from Joanne. She'd never got over that operation.

‘I had the height, the hips,' Gertrude told an owl as he whispered by. ‘I had the strength to give him a dozen sons.'

Should have defied their grandfather, run off and wed at
eighteen. Should have. Too late now. She had a good life down here. She loved her accidental grandson, loved Elsie.

What other reason did she have to stay down here? A life of hard labour, that's all. And for how much longer could she keep it up? Ten years? Fifteen? And what happens when I'm too old to labour?

Joey will be old enough, she argued.

She could have a good life with Vern. They'd grown together. They laughed at the same humour. In so many ways they were two of a kind.

He's pig-headed, she argued. He doesn't sulk often but, by God, when he does, he takes his time getting over it.

He's an honourable man, honest to a fault. I trust him.

You swore once that you'd never trust your life to another man.

I'm only fifty-nine. I'm young enough to need a man. And Norman needs help with those girls. And Jimmy might grow on me.

And Joey? Your dreams for Joey?

She sighed for lack of an answer and for all of her sons unborn, sighed for the daughter she'd dreamed for, and the dead grandsons she'd brought into the world and watched die. She sighed for Cecelia, the only blood she had to continue her line, then sighed more deeply because the only line that girl would ever continue would be the Duckworth line.

The dregs of her mug flung in the face of the night, she stood and reached for her water ladle, dipped out half a mug of water, dipped her finger into the salt pig she kept on her dresser and walked outside to clean her teeth, as she did each night. Rubbing, spitting salt, rinsing and spitting — and thinking how nice it might be to turn on a tap when she wanted to brush her teeth.

Not so nice sharing the bathroom with Vern's daughters. She could never find more than two words to say to either of them.

But they'd stay in Melbourne.

She rinsed her mouth, gargled, spat and looked up at the moon. It was throwing its weight around tonight, splashing her
house and yard with its softening light. Her world looked a picture by moonlight.

She reached up to withdraw the Japanese pins from her plait. Only two of those pins left. Archie had bought her a half dozen. Lost, broken — all but these two. She took more care with the two than she had of the six, placed them each night on the top shelf of her washstand. Her hair was as heavy as it had ever been, and as dark — thanks to the bottle of dye Jean White swapped for a few dozen eggs. Gertrude took pride in her hair, and in her figure. Maybe her waist wasn't as slim as it had been at nineteen, her breasts not so firm, but she wasn't in bad shape for a woman nudging sixty.

So proud to lose her waist when Amber was inside her, every day looking at herself, searching for evidence that her baby was growing. But damn pleased too to get her body back when Amber was born. She'd tried on every frock she'd owned, every skirt. Not that they'd been a lot of use around this place. Wire fences ripped sleeves, thorns grasped at hems. Amber was six weeks old the day she'd gone hunting in one of the trunks she'd brought home from India, seeking something serviceable. She'd found a pair of Archie's trousers. They'd fitted her well around the backside though she was longer in the leg than he. She'd had to let the hems down.

Her mother had been aghast. She'd told her she was not stepping outside the door dressed like a hoyden. She'd called Gertrude's father. He'd taken one look at Archie's trousers and laughed. He'd had a laugh on him worth listening to, a laugh that could make her mother laugh. In time she'd got used to seeing her daughter in trousers.

Three pairs of his trousers she'd brought home with her, four or five of his shirts, a jacket, two pairs of his shoes. She'd left that sod nothing when she'd packed up their room in India, not his clothing, not his books. She'd had an hour to pack and she'd done it in less.

It had taken her parents longer to realise she wasn't going back to handsome Archie. They'd thought she'd walked out on the match of the century, had visualised their Gertie at the side of her handsome doctor husband.

‘He can give you the world, darlin',' her father had said when Archie came asking for her hand.

He'd given her the world all right — or all of its filth and degradation.

She shook her head, attempting to clear that sod from her mind. ‘Bed,' she said.

Her bedroom hatch, closed all afternoon to keep the sun out, now kept the moonlight out. She heaved it wide, propped it, pleased by the breath of cool air coming in off the walnut tree.

She'd slept in huts that had no hatch, slept in shelters without walls, slept on trains and in bug-riddled beds in filthy hotels — and in a few that were fine. She'd sailed on tramp steamers and on ships of the line, had travelled up rivers in native dugouts, had seen more of the world during the years she'd spent with Archie Foote than most in Woody Creek would see in ten lifetimes. He'd had no fear, would try anything, go anywhere. He could make himself known in a dozen tongues.

She'd feared — had always feared — what she couldn't control. Needed to know she was in control of her own small space in this wide, wide world. Amber had been the largest part of her world. Couldn't control her, not once she'd grown. Had feared for her. Feared for her still. Not a day went by when she didn't think about her, wonder what she was doing, how she was living, if she was living.

And she couldn't talk about her to Vern. On a few occasions lately when she'd brought up Amber's name, he'd made his feelings very clear on that subject. Not that she blamed him. She'd always put her girl before him.

Maybe it's time to start putting him first, she thought. Elsie and Joey will do all right down here, and it's not as if I'll be far away. I can come home whenever I feel like it.

How often will I feel like it? Once a week? Twice a day?

I'll have a refrigerator at Vern's, electric light.

‘To show up all of my wrinkles,' she told the moon.

Didn't know if she wanted to live with him; maybe thought she ought to want to live with him. And those girls in town — they needed her. Norman needed her in town.

‘What do I need?' she said.

Her head out through the hatch opening, she searched the sky, seeking the stars' guidance. The moon was shining so bright, she couldn't see how the stars might be aligned.

‘I'd be running back here every night,' she whispered to the man in the moon. ‘I'd be back here every morning and most afternoons. And who needs electricity when they can have your old light for free?'

‘Independent bugger of a woman,' Vern muttered. Ten or fifteen times a day he found himself repeating those words. And she was an independent bugger of a woman and he was staying away from her. She was also staying away from him — and he didn't want her to stay away. He wanted her hammering on his door, pleading for a second, or maybe a fourth, chance. He considered hanging his hat up to Nelly Dobson, who did a bit of the heavier cleaning for him. He took pleasure in imagining Gertrude's face when word got back to her.

‘Independent bugger of a woman. You always were and you ever will be. A man needs an independent bugger of a woman like he needs a hole in the head,' he said, but before the words were out of his mouth he knew he spoke a lie. He needed her like he needed sugar in his morning cup of tea. A man won't die if he doesn't get that heaped spoonful of sugar stirred into his cup, but without it, every day starts off sour. He needed her in his bed. And he probably wouldn't die of that either, though he maybe wouldn't want to live as long. He needed her to tell him what he ought to do about Jimmy, needed her to hear what he was thinking about doing.