Pearl in a Cage (55 page)

It took time to silence the laughter. A few were still tittering when the next contestant was introduced.

The twins came back to the waiting room, lit cigarettes and helped themselves to cordial. Jenny kept her distance, remaining with the group near the stage door, her back to them. They didn't recognise her until a fifteen-year-old boy went on stage, until the listeners were cringing at his awful rendition of ‘Ramona'.

They grabbed her. ‘You're under arrest for flaunting your kiddy tits,' one said.

‘Do something worthwhile—arrest him,' one of the redheaded sisters said, nodding towards the stage door.

‘You were so funny,' the other one said. ‘We didn't realise it was a comedy act when she walked on.'

‘Which was what made it so hilarious,' they said in unison.

Jenny left them to their four-way chat. She found a seat between a woman who looked fifty and a man who looked eighty, safe from the twins there.

A tenor went on next. He was a big man with a big voice and as soon as he opened his mouth, everyone knew who would win the prize money. He was better than Caruso. He was followed by a soprano, then another piano player, who was followed by a tap dancer, then a boy soprano who wasn't bad. The red-headed sisters went on after him, and the twins, having lost their first fans, left the waiting room.

The crowd of contestants had thinned and continued to thin. The fifty-year-old woman went on and a clarinet player gravitated to Jenny's side. He offered her a cigarette. She considered accepting it. People said they were good for nerves. She was nervous.

‘My throat is too dry already,' she said, and he went over to the table and poured her a glass of cordial. Maybe he thought she was older. He looked about thirty.

A mixed bunch, the tail-enders: a woman in her thirties; a boy who might have been eighteen, who played the trombone; a woman of Amber's age; the old bloke, who looked eighty and was going deaf; the clarinet player; and a few who kept to themselves. The trombone player stopped and started twice. The audience gave him a clap for trying. The old bloke recited from ‘The Sentimental Bloke'. Jenny had never heard of it, it wasn't Norman's style of poetry, but she loved it and wanted more. Strange how three minutes can alter in length, she thought, and wondered if Sissy was sitting at the back of the hall, wondered if Amber was listening to how a recitation should sound.

Amber had never heard Jenny sing, or not on stage. The thought of her sitting out there was scary, like she could will her to freeze, will her voice to seize. But Miss Rose was somewhere out there. She'd come down with John McPherson and Miss Blunt. And Maisy and George and five of their girls were out there, and Mr and Mrs Cox and their son and daughter-in-law. Anyway, Amber was probably outside comforting Sissy.

Wouldn't it be funny if Sissy and the twins got into the finals, she thought. The audience had loved them. What would Sissy do if she heard her name called?

But the judges wouldn't pick a comedy act, not for the wireless. Singers or musicians would make up the finalists; that's what most of the contestants said.

She drew a deep breath, held it long and wished those shoes would stop hurting. The right one felt as if it was cutting the ball of her foot in half, due to the cardboard innersole having split. She'd be pleased to get them off.

Her turn next. She stood, straightened her skirt. It felt as if it was sliding. Probably only its slippery lining that was sliding. Loved that dress, loved the colour and the beading. Another deep breath, straightened her shoulders, touched the amber necklace one more time for luck, then the black-suited man beckoned her forward as the applause died. And she walked on, in her borrowed dress, in her borrowed shoes, walked on, her head high. Easy to do. It felt so much lighter tonight.

‘Miss Jennifer Morrison, the golden girl with the golden voice,' the master of ceremonies said, and the pianist, who had worked in London, played the introduction, which sounded much as Miss Rose played the introduction, if a bit more fancy.

Judges with their notepads in the front row. Amber sitting in the aisle seat, a couple of rows behind the judges. Jenny opened her mouth and sang.

The tenor won, the red-headed harmonising sisters came second and Jenny came third. She won five pounds, in an envelope with her name on it, which she held to her breast while the cameras flashed. When asked to hold it lower, she folded it, tucked it beneath her bra strap. It was her own money to spend on what she liked. And she liked that blue print dress, and she was going to buy it and leave it at Maisy's, and she'd buy a pair of sandals that fitted, with heels, but smaller heels.

The clarinet player, who had also made the finals, shook her hand outside the hall. Jim shook her hand and told her she should have won. Margaret Hooper kissed her cheek, Miss Rose hugged her, Miss Blunt gave her a peck, and Maisy and Jessie Macdonald danced her up and down the footpath. Norman kept his distance, kept his silence. He agreed with Lorna that they should start for home.

They'd found Sissy leaning against the car bawling her eyes out. Amber knew she'd been crying since she'd run off stage. Jim and Jenny knew she'd been sitting at the rear of the hall with the other contestants, that she'd been sitting there when the finalists' names were called. Jenny didn't know what had happened after that, but Jim knew. She'd taken off from the hall.

There was little conversation on the way home, only Jim's apology when he bumped Jenny's exposed knee while reaching for the gearstick. Only Norman's brief comments on the road, only Lorna's yawn from the rear seat, Sissy's blubbering, Margaret's and Amber's soothing.

The radio broadcast, timed for nine thirty, had started on time but ended late. Then the newspaper photographer had to line up the winners for a photograph, and not one either, but a dozen. It was after eleven when they got away.

There were car lights on the road ahead. One would be Maisy, one John McPherson. Jenny wished she was in Mr McPherson's car, or wished the road much longer. Didn't want to go home. Wanted to stay out there, bobbing along a dark road in the middle of no-man's-land. They were approaching the town when she broke the silence with words she'd practised for the last fifteen miles.

‘I promised to take the necklace and Elsie's things back tonight. Can we drive down there first, please?' She'd made no promise. Her throat knew it was telling a lie. It choked the words out.

‘That fine with everyone?' Jim said.

Not fine with some. ‘Cecelia is distraught,' Amber said. ‘Take them back tomorrow.'

Six hours of multiple Morrisons was five and a half hours too long for Lorna. ‘Stop here,' she said. Jim stopped the car on Blunt's corner. Lorna got out to walk the last block home.

‘Which way, folks?' he said.

‘Home,' Amber said, so Jim turned left, over the railway lines, then right into Norman's street, Jenny's heart pounding like a hard-punching fist in her stomach, afraid now of Norman's lack of response.

Sissy was eased from the car, supported by Amber until Norman took his share of the load.

‘Out,' Amber's demand was directed at Jenny who had remained in the car.

‘I'll run straight in and straight out, Daddy. I promise.'

Promises going left, right and centre tonight, but she had to put off the inevitable, had to stay away from Norman's eyes, get to tomorrow and to daylight before she had to look at his hangdog eyes. Had to get that necklace and dress back safe to Granny too, get her prize money safe down there or it would end up in the stove.

‘Off you go,' he said.

Margaret, happy to continue her outing, drove with them out along the forest road where the car's headlights lit their narrow way between those trees, showing a strange green world never noticed by day, showing the colours of the great trunks, glinting in the eyes of wild things, that light like a moving pool, erasing the black for an instant, but only an instant.

Jenny opened the gate, then slid back into the car to ride the last track. The balls of both feet were screaming, her toes so tired of clinging on. She couldn't bear to put those shoes on the ground when she stepped from the car, but she forced them to carry her just a few yards more.

‘Granny,' she called, but not too loud, just in case she was sleeping. A light was showing beneath the door. Jenny opened it, took the shoes off and crept in. She peered into Gertrude's bedroom, expecting to see a shape in the bed. It was empty.

The table lamp burning low, its flickering light playing with her shadow, she unhooked the necklace, placed it on the table, removed the folded envelope from her bra, placed it beneath the beads, took Elsie's wedding frock off and hung it over a chair, pulled her own frock on, found her shoes where she'd left them. That was the beauty of Granny's house. Things stayed where they were put.

She was tying her shoelaces when she saw broken glass on the floor, saw the photograph propped against a bucket, its ruined frame fallen into the hearth tray. She reached for the photograph, took it to the lamp and turned the wick a little higher. They were like a film-star bride and groom, Granny's hair done in much the same style as she did it today, his hair cut in the same style as Jenny's.

‘I love your haircut,' she told Itchy-foot. ‘And I'm glad I look like someone, even if Granny doesn't want me to.'

She placed the photograph face up on the table, beside the beads and prize money, and was out the door. They were coming through the goat paddock gate in single file, Gertrude, Elsie, Harry, Joey and little Lenny. She walked through the dark to meet them.

‘We thought you had it won, darlin'. We couldn't believe how beautiful you sounded over the air.'

‘I said to Mum it was like hearing some singer on a record,' Elsie said.

They talked as they walked her to the car, but Jim was in no hurry. He joined the group, then Margaret came high-stepping around the car.

A minute can be ten minutes long or ten minutes can become one. Time is stretchable. It's shrinkable.

 

Those same minutes in Norman's house were agonisingly long, loud, and painful.

Cecelia had collapsed in the passage and his attempt to lift her had moved something in his back. He couldn't straighten.

‘Give her one of my pills,' Amber demanded.

‘Walk away from her, Mrs Morrison. She enjoys an audience.'

Certainly a poor choice of words. They increased the volume of Cecelia's wail, and offended her mother.

He stood in the passage supporting his back with a hand and considering that pill bottle he'd taken charge of. Tonight he was tempted, sorely tempted, and tempted too to help himself to a handful.

‘You loved it, didn't you? You loved them making a fool of her, didn't you?'

He attempted to walk away, but pain shot from his back down his buttocks to thigh. He groaned and was forced to stay.

‘You wanted to laugh at her with the rest of them, but you didn't have the guts.'

In any argument, there must be two participants. He tried once more to move and almost joined his daughter on the floor. Gathered himself, sighed.

‘Let us not forget it was your decision that she should recite, Mrs Morrison. Let us not forget that it was you who chose to allow that girl to make a fool of herself. Go to your room. I will deal with my daughter.'

‘Give her a pill and she'll settle down.'

‘If you remove yourself, she will settle down.'

‘Remove myself to where? I have to sleep in her bed?'

‘No doubt you have shared worse beds.' His mouth was working independently of his head, but his back was killing him. He needed to sit down, lie down. He made a conciliatory gesture. ‘Use my room if you wish.'

‘I'll sleep in the gutter first.'

‘As you no doubt have.'

He was not a cruel man. He knew himself to be soft-hearted. He had never raised a hand in anger, rarely raised his voice in anger. He was in pain. He wasn't himself. He heard his voice rising, then heard his words silence Sissy's wail. He saw Amber step back, then back again as his mouth sprayed her with the venom of his tongue, whipped her, then brutalised her with the bludgeon of Cousin Reginald.

Cowed by his bastardry, she backed into Cecelia's room, closed the door. And he saw Cecelia rise green from her collapse, her eyes staring at a monster. She got away from it. She followed her mother, slammed the door as car lights played across the parlour window.

That car shocked him back from the place where his mouth had been, jarred him, sending new pain screaming down his buttock, down his leg. God's punishment. He punished evil tongues.

Got himself out to the gate, where he took Jenny's arm and walked her away from the house, walked her through the railway yard to the station, moaned as he eased himself down to the station bench where he sat in silence, waiting for the pain to abate.

‘I'm sorry, Daddy,' she said.

He offered his station keys. ‘Tea,' he said. ‘Tea and silence.'

He had thought to discuss the desecration of her hair, the borrowed frock. Now? What did it matter? What did anything matter? He had sworn never to use Amber's adultery against her, and he'd flung it in her face, and in front of Cecelia. What breed of man was he?

He sat staring at the water tower and at the moon perched on its rim, looking like a child's lost balloon caught up there by its string. Watched it for minutes, willing it to fly free, while she brought him tea, brought him biscuits, then sat with him, in silence, or silent for a time.

‘She was pulling my hair, Daddy. I had the scissors, so I cut it.'

‘Silence!'

He sipped his tea, refused the biscuits. She ate four, emptied her mug and stood, waiting for his, and looking at the moon. Hated standing there and no words. Wanted him to lecture her, lock her in her room, tell her she couldn't sing any more, anything.