Pearl in a Cage (47 page)

It was her fault. She'd tried to spy on him when she should have walked straight back to town, down the centre of the road, and if he'd said, ‘Good afternoon, Jennifer', she should have said, ‘Good afternoon'. That was what she should have done. Too late now.

Things had a way of shrinking as people grew. She'd noticed it with the merry-go-round at the park, which had been huge the first time she'd spun on it. Now it wasn't worth riding. Granny's road must have shrunk because it wasn't nearly as far as she remembered. She could already see the track leading down to the boundary gate. A minute later, she was scrambling over it, and safe.

Granny's house looked shrunken, which may have been because there was a second house in her goat paddock, standing too tall, too high off the ground, which was because the creek had flooded in the olden days and floodwaters had covered all of Granny's land. Years and years ago, Granny had told her that.

It was good to be down here now that she was down here, to see those clucking chooks pecking, to see the walnut tree. It was even better seeing Granny.

‘Well, my goodness. I knew it was going to be a good day when I woke up this morning,' Gertrude said.

‘It's not as far as I remember, Granny.'

A pint-sized boy popped his head from behind Granny. ‘Why's her say Granny?'

‘That's Jenny, and I'm her granny too,' Gertrude said. ‘I was just about to pick a few sticks of rhubarb, darlin'. I won't be a minute.'

They saw Lenny off across the paddock with a bunch of rhubarb larger than he, then they went inside, and it was a fine thing having Granny all to herself, crunching oatmeal biscuits, drinking tea that tasted of goat's milk, which wasn't good, but it was the way Granny's tea had always tasted.

‘How is your mum?' Gertrude said.

Jenny didn't feel like answering that one so replied with a question. ‘How come you didn't move into the new house and let them live over here?'

‘Six of them and one of me, darlin', and if I moved anything, I'd never find it again.'

They laughed, but no doubt it was true. Nothing was ever moved in Gertrude's house. Her frying pan still hung on the same nail, her clock had grown roots in the centre of her mantelpiece, her couch was still beside her washstand, her preserving pan still hanging over the Coolgardie safe, and when she opened that heavy old safe door, that same old stone bottle of water was inside.

The microscope on the table stuck out like a sore toe.

‘When did you get that, Granny?'

‘It came with your grandfather's things,' Gertrude said.

‘It doesn't look that old.'

‘I doubt it is, darlin'. I doubt it had been out of its box until Joey started taking it out.'

Jenny stood and moved to the end of the table to place her eye to the glass. Just a blur.

‘You need to turn it around so the mirror gets the light.'

‘You were sort of divorced from Itchy-foot, weren't you, so how come you still got all of his things?'

Gertrude smiled at Jenny's use of her childish name for Archie Foote. ‘I was his legal wife when he died, darlin'.'

‘Did you get anything else interesting?'

‘Books in the main.'

‘She tells Sissy —'

Jenny closed her mouth and fiddled again with the contraption, fiddled until Gertrude took control and got it focused.

‘There,' she said. ‘Feast your eye on that.'

There was something gruesome in it, something weirdly gruesome. ‘It's moving,' she said, springing back. ‘What is it?'

‘Joey said it was a fly's flea.'

They took turns then, Gertrude adjusting the mirror just a little to bring it into clearer focus.

‘It's like some sort of awful beast creeping through a forest.'

‘Flies have hairy legs.'

‘Are we all crawling with those things?'

‘The book that came with the microscope says we are. It's got coloured drawings of all the germs we live with, all different shapes and sizes for different diseases.'

Jenny looked at her hands, expecting to see them crawling with beasts, but that microscope and its captive was addictive. She was drawn back for another look.

‘Did Itchy-foot have this to study germs?'

‘I suppose he did, darlin'.'

‘Did he work in other countries?'

‘He spent a lot of time in other countries.'

‘She says that you got five hundred pounds from his will. He must have made a lot of money.'

‘It was his father's money.'

‘Was his father rich?'

‘He was a doctor, and comfortable enough.'

‘Was Itchy-foot comfortable?'

That wasn't a word Gertrude might have used to describe him. She turned away, hoping to evade more or the same questions.

‘Dad does that,' Jenny said. ‘When he thinks I shouldn't ask, he walks off to do something important, which isn't important at all. How come you didn't live with . . . with our grandfather?'

Gertrude had never lied to her and didn't want to start. She'd made the mistake of allowing Amber to grow up believing her father was a wonderful man — a big mistake. Maybe she could get away with a mild watering-down of the truth.

‘He wasn't a healthy man, darlin',' she said.

‘What was wrong with him?'

You name it, Gertrude thought, brushing the soot from her stove and seeking a truth she might tell that was not too severe. Couldn't find one in time.

‘He was sick in the head like her, wasn't he?' Jenny said, turning her eye again to the microscope. ‘And you're not game to say it, like Dad's not game to say it about her. He pretends to people that she's normal, but she isn't.'

‘She's better than she was, darlin'.'

‘She must have been pretty bad then.'

‘Your dad seems to think —'

‘He . . . makes allowances. We must make allowances for those who are less fortunate than we,' Jenny said, in near perfect mimicry of Norman. ‘The trouble is, Granny, if you keep on making allowances, one day there's nothing left to allow. Like with sharing your bed. You allow the person you sleep with two-thirds, then sooner or later she wants three-quarters, and one night you roll over and fall out. She's got the lot.'

Gertrude laughed, but learned something. She'd wondered at the sleeping arrangements in that house, had wondered if Norman put up with Amber because of the bed. Apparently not. More could be learned at times by not asking questions. She opened the firebox, poked in a few sticks of wood, then went to her bedroom to fetch the book that had come with the microscope.

‘Do germs make people stink of BO?'

‘The questions you ask!'

‘But do they?'

‘I don't know.'

Gertrude was on her knees sorting through Archie's books and not finding the one she was looking for when she heard Jenny's chuckle. Loved that sound. It had never changed.

‘What are you giggling about?'

‘Nothing. Just the flea on the fly.'

‘What's it doing?'

‘Nothing.' She giggled again. ‘It just . . . it just reminded me of Amber shaving Sissy's hairy legs.'

‘That's not nice.'

‘She's like Sissy's flea, Granny, always crawling over her, shaving her legs, or plucking her eyebrows, doing her hair — living off her, like a parasite. Sissy doesn't mind most of the time, and when she does, she flicks her off and goes over to the Hoopers'.'

‘A beautiful girl deserves a beautiful mind, and those sorts of thoughts don't do yours justice,' Gertrude said, placing a slim book on the table.

‘They've got worse thoughts — worse words and actions too. Want to see the parasite's last action?' She didn't wait to
see if Gertrude would like it or not, but hitched up her skirt to display a fading blue and yellow inch-wide stripe across the back of her upper thigh. ‘She got me with the poker.'

‘Your mother?'

‘Mrs Morrison.'

‘She didn't do that to you!'

‘She did so. I didn't know she had the poker or I would have dodged.'

‘Did you show your dad?'

‘He doesn't know I've got legs yet. And it doesn't matter anyway. I just showed you so you'd know why my mind isn't very beautiful.'

She opened the book. It changed the subject. They removed the fly and flea later and pulled hairs from their heads to stretch side by side on the glass. They shook pollen from a rose and studied that; they watched a smear of blood race like a river.

‘This is the only true magic,' Jenny said. ‘This is the real fairies at the bottom of the garden, Granny. I think I might be a nurse or a scientist or something when I grow up. Girls can even be doctors now.'

‘You'd need a lot of schooling for that.'

‘In Melbourne. Which would be good. Gloria Bull goes to school in Melbourne.'

‘Since when?'

‘Since most of this year. It's sort of strange without her. Like . . . like there used to be four of us. We all started school on the same day, and now there're only two of us left. I'd love to go to school in Melbourne. It's safe down there.'

‘Worse things happen in Melbourne than up here, and happen more often,' Gertrude said.

‘Yeah, but it's not the same. There are so many people down there so you don't know the ones it happens to. Like, you read about it in the papers and you say, Oh, my goodness, isn't that dreadful. Then you forget about it and look at the cricket score. Up here, it's different. Nelly's photos are in Miss Rose's concert book. There's one of her and me, one of all four of us. Me and Dora and Gloria grew up and Nelly didn't, and it's horrible. I
hate coming down here now. Your trees give me shivers up the spine.'

‘We can't allow the terrible things that happen to dictate the terms of our lives, darlin'.'

‘I know, but I'm still going to live in Melbourne when I'm old enough. I've got a penfriend who lives down there. She tells me heaps of things about it.' She glanced at her grandmother, aware she'd given up her secret. ‘You're not allowed to tell anyone about her.'

‘How did you meet her?'

‘I didn't, not yet. She's a bit crippled like Mr Foster and she lives in a place called Surrey Hills. I got her address sort of by accident and we just keep on writing. I don't know what she looks like even, but she's got the most beautiful mind with nothing at all that's bad in it.' She didn't tell her that Mary Jolly was a woman in her forties. She hadn't meant to tell anything.

At five, Gertrude packed the microscope back into its box, back into the trunk, the space waiting for it between stacked books.

‘There's a pretty jewellery case in here you might like to look at,' she said, removing books enough to expose a polished box, its lid inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

‘It must have been like a lucky dip when you first opened that trunk.'

‘I felt like a pirate searching for buried treasure.'

Jenny took the box to the table and the better light, more interested in its contents than its fancy wood. She flipped through a small notebook, dug deeper for the photographs.

‘Who is she?'

It was a shot of a bride and groom, or a bride and her father. Gertrude shook her head. She shook her head again when Jenny showed her a shot of two children dressed in their Sunday best.

‘They must be people he knew after my time. I don't know any of them,' she said.

‘Are these his diaries?'

‘I doubt it. They're written in some foreign language.'

Jenny opened one with a black cover. ‘It's not foreign. It's just mirror writing. Mr Curry showed us how some ancient old bloke kept his journals so no one else could read what he'd written.'

Gertrude was frowning.

‘You know, you write things backwards then hold them up to the mirror to read.' She took the diary to Gertrude's washstand mirror and reversed it. ‘That's what it is, Granny,' she said, eyes squinting to read the minute script. ‘It says,
Dec 17th, '22. Old trull like a meat grinder tonight — gold-plated though. I'll let her grind my beef until new year. Leave for Spain on 2nd. Might find her a bullfighter
.'

Gertrude helped herself to the notebook. Maybe she'd get those new reading glasses — or burn the filthy thing. She tucked it back into the box.

‘The day is done, m'darlin'. My chooks want their dinner.' Jenny didn't take the hint.

‘It's weird how when people die some parts of them stay behind in photographs.' She picked up the photograph of the children. ‘They're truly dead because no one remembers them, but Nelly's not because heaps of people remember her. One day she will be, though. One day in the far distant future, someone will pick up Miss Rose's album and they'll point to Nelly, and someone else will say, Oh, I don't know who she was. She must have been before my time. And they'll burn it. Then she'll be dead, Granny.'

Gertrude gathered her into her arms, held her tight for a moment, kissed both cheeks, then walked outside to call for Joey.

He came from around the side of the new house, came across to the fence.

‘Will you walk back in with Jenny? She doesn't like walking through the bush alone.'

He did better than that. Harry had an old bike with an extra seat on the rear. Jenny straddled it, held on tight and they took off with a wobble. Gertrude watched them to where the road rounded a bend, and in the distance she heard that giggle.

‘She's getting to be a pretty girl, Mum,' Elsie said.

‘She's out of the top drawer, that one,' Gertrude said.

Two days after Sissy's hurried exit from the stage, Norman had found the daffodil yellow frock stuffed into the bag of old clothing saved for the relief ladies. He abhorred waste. When Miss Rose chose Jenny's song for the school concert, he went to his carton of Sissy's hand-me-downs and removed that yellow frock.