Pearl in a Cage (48 page)

‘Infinitely suitable for your item,' he said. Jenny was singing ‘Painting The Clouds With Sunshine'.

She tried it on, and apart from its length and width, it was perfect. Its sleeves were the best part. They were barely sleeves at all, just small caps, so it didn't matter if the shoulder seams hung low.

Maisy cut three inches off the hem and, not satisfied with the narrow belt that bunched the fabric at the waist, made a new and wider belt from the piece of excess hem. She bought stiffening and a brass buckle for the belt. The frock, almost new, had looked good before. With the wide belt hiding the bunching at the waist, it looked perfect.

On the Sunday before the concert, Jenny brought it home, already starched and pressed. For safety's sake, she hung it in Norman's wardrobe. It was there on Wednesday when she came in from final practice. It was there on Thursday, but when she opened Norman's wardrobe on Friday, the afternoon of the concert, that flash of yellow was gone.

She ran to Sissy's wardrobe, knowing Norman must have moved the frock. He hadn't. Maybe Amber had stuffed it back in the relief bag. She hadn't.

Down to the lavatory then, knowing, knowing Sissy had got rid of her daffodil dress the same way she'd got rid of the Alice Blue Gown. Held her nose, held her breath, looked down. No yellow, or not that she could see.

Back to the house, slowly, though her heart wasn't beating slowly. It was racing so fast she couldn't get a breath in deep enough. Inside, sucking air in through her mouth, and too fast, standing in the doorway watching Amber toss perfect cubes of meat in seasoned flour.

‘What happened to that yellow dress?'

Amber didn't turn from her task.

‘It was hanging in Dad's wardrobe.'

No reply.

‘Where is Sissy?'

Might as well talk to the man in the moon as Amber.

‘Maisy fixed that dress up for me to wear tonight.'

Maisy was Amber's friend — her only friend.

‘Where is it?'

A large blackened pan waited on the stove, a lump of lard sliding as it melted into smoking fat. Amber took her plate of seasoned meat to the stove and stood placing each cube into hot fat. And the blood pumping through Jenny, rushing to her head, made her know what was heating that frying pan. The yellow dress was in the stove. She could almost smell the scorch of cotton, almost see those pretty yellow buttons glowing in the coals, the belt buckle buckling. Her heartbeat went wild, preparing her for flight. She stepped back. Or was her heart preparing her for fight?

Steak sizzling, fat spitting, Amber's fork turning the cubes, just going about the business of cooking dinner. It would be a tasty stew. She could cook very well. She could clean very well. She could shop, smile at church, serve tea in her good cups if Mrs Bryant or the minister and his wife came to call.

Breathing, breathing hard, hurting breaths but feeling breathless, Jenny stepped forward again. ‘You burned it, didn't you?'

That received a response. Amber swung around, loathing in her eyes, her fork raised to gouge out Jenny's eyes, a cube of bloody meat impaled on its tines.

‘Were you scared that dress might look better on me than it did on Sissy?'

The fork flew; it hit the doorframe, the meat leaving its fatty, bloody mark behind but still impaled. It fell to the floor where the fork spun in a half-circle, painting a curved bloody smear on Amber's clean floor.

The steak in the pan sending up smoke signals, Amber turned to lift it from the heat. Jenny stepped back, expecting the rest of the meat to follow the cube on the fork. But that would mean no meal ready at six. She always made a meal. She took another fork from the table drawer, placed the pan back on the stove and began turning the cubes, one at a time.

Jenny walked out to the verandah, thinking to walk over and tell Norman. He didn't like waste. And what would he do about it? Nothing. He didn't like disagreements and he did like her tasty stews. And what was the use of starting a war that would resolve nothing?

She stood at the window watching Amber wipe the smear from the doorframe, chase it across the floor. She didn't like dirt, couldn't stand mess. Interesting watching her work, like watching the fly's flea under glass at Granny's, and tonight Jenny felt a similar abhorrence, but a similar compulsion to watch that parasite move around.

When her Alice Blue Gown had disappeared, Jenny had grown years older. Today she could feel a hundred years of age swelling her head, a hundred tons of disappointment attempting to make her cry. She'd have to wear that pink dress. Have to keep her arms down. Cover up Sissy's faded sweat circles.

So stop covering everything up. Just stop it.

Can't. Norman likes to keep things covered up.

Cover up.

They covered it up.

He kept it covered up
. . .

Maybe her pounding heart was pumping too much blood to her brain. Maybe her brain had exploded, because for an instant, for less than an instant, she saw Amber from before. Saw a white-clad monster, huge, bigger than the world. And a brown elf with
his clunking boot who had saved her from the monster. Mr Foster. She knew why she'd always known he was safe. She knew.

Stared at the steamy glass.

The specimen beneath the glass looks like a mother. It wears an apron and stands at the stove for hours like a mother. The steamy glass between the specimen and the viewer helps with the illusion . . .

Not so big now. Like Granny's forest road, the monster has shrunk, Jenny thought, and I'm not letting her win any more.

Ignoring Amber, she went to Sissy's wardrobe, snatched that pink dress from its hanger and ran with it over to Maisy. She wasn't home. Jessie was there. Jenny borrowed Maisy's scissors and hacked two inches from the hem, hacked those flapping sleeves off to almost nothing, then Maisy arrived to take the scissors from her hand.

‘Her mother has done something with the yellow,' Jessie said.

‘Tell your father,' Maisy said.

‘He never does anything,' Jenny said.

They stitched. Maisy did what she could with what was left of the sleeves. She made a decent belt from fabric cut from the hem. Norman called to Jenny at six. She didn't go home.

He ate stew, with potatoes and pumpkin. He asked after his missing daughter. Amber said she hadn't seen her. Sissy didn't reply. He ate rhubarb with custard, drank his tea, then returned to the station. He hoped the train would be on time.

It came in at seven ten; he was back at the house by seven twenty, where he changed quickly from stationmaster's uniform to suit.

‘Has she been home?'

No reply, but the yellow frock hanging with his suit these past few days was not there. She had gone early to the hall.

He was seated before seven thirty, in the third row. Gertrude and Vern arrived early. They took the seats beside him. For years he'd been attending these school concerts. He came to see one performance. And was finally rewarded. The senior girls came on
to sing two numbers. He was expecting to see a flash of yellow. He saw pink, then forgot pink as he relaxed and listened. Jenny's voice carried the group. He was watching her intently when the pink frock ripped from armhole to mid bodice. He drew breath, half-rose from his seat. Thankfully, she noticed, and stepped back to the second row. The item continued, her hand over her heart.

Clothing was necessary to cover the naked body. Clothing went in and out of fashion, but if one was not a slave to fashion then clothing might serve its owner for years, never quite in but also never quite out of fashion. His purchases for the girls, when their sole carer, had been made with that thought in mind. That pink frock was memorable only because he had not wished to purchase it. He preferred to see his daughters clad in more functional shades. The last time he'd seen Jennifer wearing it, it had covered more. He dared a glance, noticed the swell of breast, the developing shape of woman.

Mrs Fulton was waiting to grab Jenny as she came off stage. Miss Rose joined them to pull and prod at a faded armpit.

‘I could put a stich in it, but I doubt it will hold. That fabric is rotten.'

‘Leave it,' Miss Rose said, removing her own plum jacket.

Jenny stood, her hand still covering the gap. She had to go back on the next item bar one, and she'd have no one to hide behind.

‘Slip it on, quickly,' Miss Rose said.

Jenny released the rip and did as she was told. It was a tailored jacket, nipped in at the waist. They got her buttoned up, turned her around.

‘Get those shoes and socks off,' Miss Rose said. ‘Dora, may we borrow your sandals, please? Quickly.'

They got Jenny's clodhoppers off, her socks off, got her shod in Dora's sandals. They fitted well enough. Then Miss Rose dragged the ribbon from Jenny's bunched-up hair.

‘Leave it free tonight, Jennifer. You're painting the clouds with sunshine, so show the audience a little of that sunshine. A comb, please, Mrs Fulton.'

Mrs Fulton had put her comb down somewhere. They found it and dragged it through the frizz of Jenny's waist-length curls, and continued dragging until each hair was free to fly.

‘It looks like spun gold,' Mrs Fulton said.

‘I look top heavy,' Jenny said.

‘You look like a sun goddess, now go out there and sing like one,' Miss Rose said.

She was as tall as she'd ever be, a smidgen under five foot five; Miss Rose's fitted jacket moulded her breasts, flared at her hips. Her hair, wild and beautiful tonight, took many a breath away.

Old Noah was at the hall, though not in the hall. He stood at an open window, listening and if he moved during her performance, he was unaware of it.

He moved while the audience applauded, found the unlocked door leading to the lavatories and, while the foot-stamping, the whistling, the calls for more continued, he let himself in.

The headmaster was on stage, calling for silence, and ignored. Not until Jennifer was drawn back to the stage by the infants' mistress did the clapping ease, though it didn't silence until the mistress sat at the piano to play the introduction to ‘The Last Rose of Summer'.

He stood mouthing the words into his hand.

‘
No flower of her kindred,

No rosebud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes,

Or give sigh for sigh . . .

So soon, may I follow,

When friendships decay
. . .'

There were times when Norman forgot Jenny was not his own, or chose not to recall that nameless infant he'd taken into his house out of Christian charity. In the days following the concert, he strived to forget.

He had never courted the limelight. He was plain man, lacking in confidence, a man without friend, without home — until Jenny came into his life. This town had taken her into its heart, and with her it had opened its doors to him. Now, when the limelight shone on her golden head, it radiated out, showering warmth onto his own bald head, his own rounded shoulders. It raised them up.

He stood much taller when the bank manager congratulated him on Jenny's behalf. He glowed when her name was mentioned at town hall meetings, and his jowls lifted in pride when the church ladies praised her.

Perhaps he was too prideful. Perhaps he should have seen that Jenny's limelight was getting up Amber's nose, that his older daughter suffered agony for Jenny's success. He didn't notice. Norman didn't notice much. He was a happy man that December.

He should have noticed the missing yellow frock, should have recognised the remains of the brass belt buckle when he cleaned the ash from the stove. He didn't. The buckle had been blackened and deformed by fire. He tossed it with the ash to a pile already heaped beside the back fence, behind the lavatory. A shovel of ash in the lavatory pan helped kill the smell, some said.

Jenny didn't go looking for the buckle. She was loading a shovel with ash when she found it and, like a gold digger faced with a giant nugget, for a moment she couldn't believe what she had found. Sadness then, overwhelming sadness for a pretty dress; sadness too when she washed the ash and the black from the buckle. Then sadness was replaced by a need to avenge that dress. She strung the remains of the buckle on a length of twine and hung it like a long pendant around her neck.

Amber was making pastry on the marble pastry board. She didn't look at Jenny standing twirling that string in the doorway.

Sissy looked at her. ‘What do you think that looks like?' she said.

‘A cooked belt buckle from my yellow dress,' Jenny said. ‘Maisy bought it from Miss Blunt.'

Amber folded the pastry, wrapped it around a large lump of butter, belted it flat with the rolling pin. Her hands were covered with flour.

Jenny twirled the pendant as she walked by her to fill a glass with water at the tap.

The trouble with Amber was she never gave a hint of what was in her mind. She snatched at the string with her floury hands, spraying flour to her polished floor. The twine burned the back of Jenny neck, became entangled in her hair, but she got away, with her pendant.

She wore it all day, wore it at the dinner table, put Amber off her meal with it. Norman didn't notice.

Family wars are fought on many fronts. Pretty frocks become casualties; beds become the battlefields; Christmas Day — on Christmas Day even the soldiers took time off in the trenches.

Norman gave his daughters slim books of poetry, their names and the date written on the flyleaves. What did Sissy want with a poetry book? She wanted that green dress in the new catalogue, wanted her own bedroom, wanted to go to Frankston with the Hoopers. She knew they were leaving sometime between Christmas and New Year. She'd expected an invitation before Christmas but all she'd got from them was a lousy box of hankies.

The war recommenced on Christmas night, in bed, and during that gap between Christmas and New Year, Jenny spent her days donating her services behind the post office counter.