Pearl in a Cage (46 page)

For Jenny's generation, a white wedding was from the storybooks of
Cinderella
and
Snow White
. The last generation had expected white weddings, as might the children now being born, but not this one. The last generation of girls had not been expected to work. They worked now. A business could employ two female workers for near the wage of one male.

Emma Fulton had worked for Charlie White since her fourteenth birthday. Now Sally, her sister, had the job. She was less than a year older than Jenny. Dora could have taken Irene's place as Hoopers' maid. She'd wanted to take it, but her father told her that no more of his daughters would go out slushing for two grown women capable of doing for themselves. Nelly Dobson got the job.

In the years to come, when people spoke of those terrible years of the Great Depression, Vern's daughters would raise their eyebrows in question. Had there been a depression? They were above it, protected from it. No paint peeled from their roof, no pickets fell from their fence, no chook, no cow, defiled their lawn. They sat on their backsides and rang their bell.

In the years to come, when people spoke of the Great Depression, Jenny would speak of Emma Fulton's wedding dress, and Vern's roses that just didn't understand that they should have controlled their blooming. She'd speak of how the town had seemed to lose its raw, red timber stink for a time, and of the swagmen wandering the roads, and of Nelly Abbot too who had probably been murdered by one of those swagmen.

There were men on the move all over Australia, men who'd walked away from wife and family, all they possessed on their backs. City men walked to the country, hoping things might be better up there; country men walked to the city for the same reason. Just changing places, just waiting for the waiting to be over. Depression: a dip; a sinking; a despondency, the dictionary said. Whatever the depression meant to the older generation, those of Jenny's generation knew no other life. They left school
at fourteen and got a job if they could. The newspapers might report that unemployment was down to twelve per cent in the city, that the economy was picking up, but the Woody Creek kids saw little evidence of it. A few came to school barefoot, many came shod in cheap canvas shoes you could buy at Blunt's for two bob a pair. They were fashionable and Jenny wanted a pair. Norman said they advertised a family's poverty so she wore leather shoes and wore them out fast. She walked too much, walked each school day between three thirty when school came out, and six each night when Norman went home. Never, never, ever went home until Norman was there. Some afternoons she went to Dora's house, but Dora had jobs to do, and if Jenny went there too often, they'd grow tired of seeing her. She went to Maisy's some days, but not if the twins were home. She went to Blunt's shop to look at the materials, to the post office to talk a while, but no more than once a week. Mrs Palmer had put her off visiting Mr Foster.

‘He's an unmarried man, pet. I don't think it's a good idea for you to spent too much time there,' she said.

Since Nelly had died, there'd been a lot of talk about dangerous men who did terrible things to girls. Jenny didn't know what terrible things, didn't know how kids were supposed to tell a dangerous man from one who was safe, or why a married man was safe and an unmarried man wasn't. She knew Mr Foster wasn't dangerous, knew that he was the least dangerous man in Woody Creek. Grown-ups thought they knew things, but they didn't know much. Mothers weren't dangerous — that was what they thought. Jenny stayed away from her mother, and on Friday nights when Norman played poker and Sissy went out somewhere with the Hoopers, Jenny still went over that paling fence to listen to Mr Foster's wireless.

Her daily wandering always ended in the memorial park, on the swings. She loved swinging, eyes closed, listening to the shocked world-ending silence which seemed to enclose Woody Creek once those mill saws stopped screaming. She could think herself into other places on that swing. And when she opened her eyes and swung high enough, she could see the
world, or her world. See right into Maisy's backyard, see the station, and Norman as he walked across the station yard to the side gate.

She was looking for Norman when she saw the old swagman, the one who had found that pearl-in-a-cage pendant. She could tell him by his white beard — and he was still wearing his big black coat. He looked like Noah from the Bible. She watched him cross the road, wondering which way he'd walk. And he kept on coming. He was going to walk through the park. Didn't want him to recognise her. He wouldn't, she was only ten when he was last here, but she tucked her chin down, closed her eyes and swung higher, visualising his footsteps and counting them, counting a hundred slow steps before she had a quick peep, then a glance over her shoulder.

He was standing near the bandstand looking at Maisy's house, maybe smelling her dinner cooking. Jenny could smell onions frying. Wondered what the old swaggie would eat tonight, or if he'd eat.

He walked on and she swung, backwards and forwards, the rhythmic motion, the whoosh of air, and nothingness of being nowhere, so peaceful. She let her mind roam where it would on that swing, dreamed of pretty frocks and Melbourne and aeroplanes, while the sun disappeared down behind Charlie's shop to set over the slaughteryards.

She wrote mind letters to Mary Jolly on that swing, and sometimes poems, which were easy with the squeaking song of metal on metal to make the rhyme.

Pretty frock hanging, that hands worked hard to make,
Dead cow hanging for tomorrow's steak,
Old swaggie hanging in the showground shed,
Knowing that in Woody Creek he may as well be dead.

Old Woe-is-me, an ancient swaggie who had wandered the area for months, had been found swinging from a rafter in the showgrounds shed. No one knew his name. No one knew if he'd hanged himself or if someone else had hanged him. Moe Kelly buried him, and Joss Palmer, one of the boys who found him,
made a cross for his grave and painted his initials and the date of his death on the crossbeam:
W.I.M. R.I.P. 27-8-37
.

He'd become
Wim Rip
now. Poor old Wim Rip, just another part of Woody Creek folklore, like
J.C. LEFT THIS LIFE 31-12-23
. Just nameless strangers who came to Woody Creek and stayed.

Summer has come now, the creek is very low, Spring birds have gone to wherever they may go, The tomorrow I dream of, flies so far, so high, Like it knows that in Woody Creek, it's pie in the sky.

She swung higher, repeating the words of her poem, memorising it. Backwards and forwards, higher and higher, her eyes closed, and when she whooshed down, it didn't feel like coming down, but going higher still, higher and higher until she was flying.

The old swaggie looked like Noah, but his thoughts weren't biblical. He was watching her from behind the shrubbery at the southernmost section of the park. He'd recognised her. Had recognised that hair. He stood, hands cupped to his mouth, taking the evening air from between the cage of his fingers, taking it in and releasing it in time to the squeak of that swing, his eyes following her arc, watching the push of air meld the light cotton shirt to her breasts.

‘Baby breasts,' he said, his words little more than a purr in his throat, then he turned towards the showground. Last night he'd slept in a farm shed. The night before he'd camped down by the creek. Tonight . . . tonight was still a few hours away.

Shadows lengthening though, corellas screeching, a cloud of white flying overhead, protesting the loss of their day and too dumb to know there was always another one, that the sun would rise again tomorrow. He knew. He was like the sun, up and down, but even at his lowest ebb knowing he'd rise again.

He followed the arc of her swing, his head turning from side to side, his tongue creeping from between his lips, almost tasting the scent of pre-woman. She was perfection in rags, her skirt billowing high as her legs flexed and straightened. Backwards and forwards. Heavy chains couldn't hold her to those complaining posts.

‘Kick,' he purred. ‘Kick yourself free, my beauty.'

A glance over his shoulder. Not a soul moving about. No one to hear him. He glanced left to the town hall, tall and silent tonight. The house to his right was a blaze of lighted windows, and he sighed for watching eyes at windows and for sweet temptations that should have been locked safe indoors at twilight.

A step to his left took him deeper into the shrubbery, then, carefully, he worked his way through half-grown trees, and dense shrubs until he had closed the space between him and his lovely. And when he lifted a branch, just a little, he had his reward. On her downward arc that rag of skirt lifted and he glimpsed the full length of colt-slim legs. It took his breath away.

He moved a little to his right, his breath short, taken in sips of air between his teeth, a whistle of air, but enough. He ought not to be here. Self-control was necessary in this place — but control was so . . . so controlling.

Eyes alert, he stepped around the shrubs. Barely three yards between them now, but his vision blocked by some flowering thing, with thorns, which he discovered when he made a viewing space with his hand. But so close, close enough to see her pretty face. Her cloud of hair swept back by the push of air.

‘Flawless.' The word breathed into his hand. ‘A bud, waiting to burst open.'

‘Jennifer!'

A male voice broke the spell. It jarred him. He had been watching his back, his sides. She was before him, the road before her. He had not been watching the road. A reflex step back almost undid him. Should have gone to the side. Caught his foot on a root and grasped a branch to save his fall. No thorns on that one, but the shrubbery moved, exposing him, and at the top of her arc she saw him.

He had come too close. Her pretty mouth opened.

But what had she seen? An old, old man, old as time, a weary old chap looking for a place to sleep.

At full extension of her swing, she jumped, landed on her feet and ran from him. And he felt her loss.

He stood in the shrubbery watching the swing's disturbed momentum. With no child to guide it, it twisted, barely missing its supporting posts. It would right itself. That was the nature of swings, the nature of all things — just a matter of time and they righted themselves. He watched it slow, watched it steady, watched her join her father on the road, and when they were gone, he walked to the swing to place his palm on the wooden seat where she had sat, seeking the warmth of her left on wood.

‘What a pretty thing,' he said. ‘What a pretty, pretty thing.'

If not for old Noah, Jenny would never have gone down to Granny's place that Saturday. Since Nelly had been killed, she saw every big tree as a threat, but she'd been down to the bridge to look at the birds, and as she was walking back, she saw Noah limping towards her. One of the Duffy kids had told someone at school that he was her grandmother's old boyfriend, that he stayed out there sometimes. To Jenny he didn't look the type of friend the Duffys might have. He looked too clean.

She knew she shouldn't stare at him, but he intrigued her, or his beard did. It wasn't like most old men's beards. It looked biblical, or elfin, like combed white silk. His hair was as white and silky, and almost as long as his beard. He never took his coat off. It was too big for him, it brushed his boot tops, and today he must have been hot wearing it, but he didn't look as if he felt the heat. Most swaggies looked as if they hadn't washed in years. He looked as if he had a hot bath every morning. Maybe that was where he was going, down to the creek for a wash. Maybe he carried a bar of soap in his coat pocket.

She nicked in behind a tree, determined to watch where he went and to maybe see him take that coat off. She was opposite McPherson's gate, near to where Granny's road forked off from Three Pines. The trees were tall down here, tall and wide. He wouldn't see her. Except he must have seen her nick in behind the tree, because when she popped her head out to see if he'd gone down to the creek, he was standing there spying on her, and only about four yards away.

‘Hiding from me, Jennifer?' he said.

Didn't like him knowing her name. It made cold knives run up and down her spine.

‘I'm going down to visit my grandmother,' she said.

‘Didn't Goldilocks visit with the three bears?' he said.

She took off like a startled cat, cutting a diagonal course through the trees to Granny's road, and when she got to it, she kept on running, straight down its centre, running as fast as her legs would carry her — until a stitch in her side slowed her pace. She didn't stop though, didn't glance back either, just in case he was running behind.

And of course he wasn't; he was as old as Methuselah. He couldn't run if he tried, and now she'd got herself locked onto this road by trees with murderers hiding behind every one of them.

‘Stupid.'

Hated this place, hated those trees lined up like prison bars on both sides of the road. Hadn't hated them when she was small. She'd loved them when she'd ridden down here behind Norman. Hadn't hated walking down this road on Christmas mornings either, Sissy lagging behind, complaining that her shoes hurt. Just hated them now, because of Nelly.

Dora knew everything — almost everything. She'd heard her father telling her mother that the murderer had done terrible things to Nelly with a knife, and that she'd been placed in her coffin with a cloth covering her face because if Mrs Abbot had seen what was done to her, she would have lost her mind. She'd lost it anyway, or she had for a little while, so Dora said. Which wasn't a good thing to be thinking about down here. Jenny walked faster, holding her side, hearing her own footsteps on the gravel and hoping they were her own, her eyes darting from one side of the road to the other, seeing movement where there was none.

Everyone said that some wandering stranger had killed Nelly. Noah could have been wandering around Woody Creek back then, and even if he couldn't run, couldn't catch someone who did run, he could be waiting behind a tree to pounce out when she was walking home.