Pearl in a Cage (56 page)

‘I was sorry I did it—as soon as I did it.'

‘God forgive me,' he said. ‘God forgive me.'

She placed her mug on the platform, and reached out to hold his face between her hands. ‘You didn't do anything to forgive, Daddy.'

‘Then God forgive me for that.'

He reached out with his free hand and touched her exposed ear. She was clad now in her old school dress, her school shoes, but the child was gone. The audience had applauded a woman. He'd watched a woman walk on stage, heard a woman's voice.

‘I borrowed you for such a short time,' he said. ‘The child has been lost with that beautiful hair.'

‘I'm sorry, Daddy.'

He lifted a hand for silence.

The lights were turned off in the railway yard once the train went through. The streetlights were turned off at midnight; no lights showing at Norman's house. Dark now, only the moon now—disappearing behind the water tower.

‘I remember things, Daddy—from before. I can't pretend any more. I know things from Jessie Macdonald too. I know my mother was in jail in Melbourne.'

Shock moved him, sent a jolt of white-hot pain radiating through his back to his bowel. ‘You . . .'

Too hard to find the words. He'd flung all he had at that slut, that diseased whore. Only the ache remained where those
words had been festering for years. Only a gaping hole in his gut now. Her infection had eaten through. So he watched the moon, going, going, gone.

‘You're making me scared, Daddy. Talk to me.'

She stood before him, reached again to touch his face, and he grasped her hand, held it to his heavy cheek and he wept.

‘My pride,' he whispered. ‘My only pride.'

She held his head against her, patted his back, kissed his face, like Granny had patted her, had kissed her. She was the grown-up now, holding her crying child. ‘I love you, Daddy. I love you best in the whole world. You know that. You know that.'

He stood later, much later, and he couldn't straighten. She helped him back to the house, supporting him up the steps, taking it slowly. She walked him down the passage, helped him off with his jacket. Took off his tie, removed the studs from his collar, held his arms while he sat down on the bed then lifted his feet up.

‘You'll be better in the morning,' she said. ‘Everything will be better in the morning.'

 

Deep, undisturbed sleep is the privilege of youth. Jenny had left her door open so she might listen for her father, but her day both physically and emotionally draining, she did not listen long.

Norman lay immobile, his back having found a nominal peace, though not his mind. It abused him, inflicting its bare-fisted blows. A man on his back cannot evade his own punishing mind; he cannot shield himself from self-inflicted pain. Imprisoned with self, by self, he lay, tears trickling, filling the cups of his ears, which overflowed and ran down the creases of his neck to his pillow. He thought of the brandy flask in his kitchen cupboard and for an hour or more willed himself to rise, to fetch that flask and kill his pain, still his mind.

The house was still, the town was still, when, in the early hours of morning, he rolled from his bed. Pulverised by pain, his feet on the floor, he knew the brandy was too far away so he reached for his underwear drawer and the bottle buried deep.

The pressure required to unscrew the cap ripped him apart, but he got it off and poured a mound of her poison to his palm, and from his palm took one pill with his tongue. She'd swallowed one dry tonight, he'd seen her do it. The taste was brutal. His tongue wanted to reject it. Cruel tongue, it deserved the punishment. He placed a second pill with the first, then stood, fingering what remained in his palm while his stomach threatened to vomit out her poison. Moved too fast. Excruciating pain overrode his stomach's need and, with a shaking hand, he attempted to pour the pills back into the bottle. Spilled them, to bed, to floor. The bottle top? His hand feeling for it found her pills, then found the cap. He replaced it and made his slow way to the kitchen to spit the vile paste. Or wash it down. Kill his pain as she killed her pain . . . killed her . . . humanity.

Did she feel pain? Did she feel anything other than what a rabid bitch might feel for her pup?

He swallowed the paste as he reached for his brandy flask, placed high in the kitchen cabinet. One sip to cleanse his tongue. He took it with him to the window, where he stood supporting his weight, his hands on the kitchen sink, while staring out into black. Silent house. Silent world. A second sip from the flask, a third, then, its comfort in his hand, he started back to his room. His feet stilled before Cecelia's closed door. He'd lost his fight for that girl when her mother came home—or perhaps before.

The door squeaked as he opened it, only opened it an inch or two, enough to see two heads on two pillows. How many pills had the whore horded in her handbag? How had she settled that girl tonight? Did he care tonight?

He should care.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against . . .

Forgive her betrayal? He could not. It was a dagger driven deep into his heart and worn there daily since she had attempted to decapitate him with the garden shovel. He could not remove that dagger, could not forget its presence, only ignore it, only
bury it deep in the darkest pit of his mind and stay far away from its entrance.

He'd entered there tonight. Now he couldn't find his way out.

How many beds had she shared in the years she'd been gone? How many diseased dogs had she lain with? How many fools had she diseased? How many in this town looked at him and saw the dupe, the fat fool who had taken his whore back into his home?

Jessie Macdonald knew, a girl, a mere slip of a girl, eighteen, nineteen. There were eight Macdonald girls, and if each of the eight had told eight more . . . Eights began to multiply in Norman's mind, became sixteen, became thirty-two and sixty-four and one hundred and twenty-eight, and two hundred and fifty-six, and five hundred and twelve and . . .

The town would take no more of his multiplication. It escaped Woody Creek's boundaries to multiply in Melbourne.

Ogden had found that spitting shrew. Ogden's wife had seven sons, one wed to a Macdonald girl. Multiplication doing well in Melbourne.

And Charles knew, so every Duckworth knew. How many Duckworths were laughing at him tonight? He closed the door, slid the metal flask into his trouser pocket to clink against her bottle of poison, while he deducted Duckworth deaths, tried to recall family births. He could not, but certainly each flat-faced, newborn Duckworth looked north tonight and named him fool.

Born a fool, fatherless, friendless. His mother's fool, his wife's fool, his daughter's fool.

Until he'd chanced upon his Jenny-wren, his fairy child with her pink shell ears, content for so long to perch upon his shoulder, to lift him high on her fragile wings.

Not so fragile tonight. He'd seen those wings flexing, had heard her pure, sweet voice filling that large hall, reaching out, reaching out over all of the land, calling to others of her kind.

He was not of her kind. He was a fat fool, fit only to keep food in the mouth of a diseased whore who'd traded her body
for bread—but offered no such trade with him. Ate his bread. Spent his money.

A man with a dagger buried in his heart could know these things but keep his distance from that knowledge while that knowledge was his alone to know.

‘He cannot hide from the multitudes,' he said, patting his pocket. Flask and bottle clinked, comfortingly, companionably, bitterly.

The taste of her pills still on his tongue, he washed his mouth once more, then opened the front door and stepped out to the night.

At that point, the man who was not himself felt whoever he had become entering into the muddy wallow of an unknown place.

Jenny may have slept until midday had her window not caught the full force of the morning sun. Her sleep had been heavy, but her body and mind rested, she began emerging slowly from dream and her sheet—a butterfly shedding its clinging cocoon. As the sun crept higher, her bed, placed alongside the window, absorbed every ray. Not willing yet to awaken, she rolled to her right, turning her back on the glare.

The stirring of air opened one eye. Amber was at the chest of drawers removing sheets. The eye closed and Jenny feigned sleep until Amber walked out, until the door closed.

And the key scratched in the lock.

Norman was in charge of that key. What was she doing with it? And what was she doing getting out clean sheets on Sunday morning? Clean sheets were for Mondays.

Had Norman locked that door last night? Then she remembered last night, remembered putting him to bed, or getting him onto the bed.

She sat looking at the chest of six deep drawers, all bar one containing linen. A junk room, favourite dumping ground for anything that didn't have a home. Two vases and the big preserving pan lived on top of her wardrobe. A calico laundry bag hung by its drawstring on a hook behind her door—not for her dirty washing but for old clothing saved for the relief committee ladies. The wardrobe was against the wall between her room and Sissy's, and in the corner, at the foot of her bed, a carton of old newspapers sat on a whatnot that had once lived
in the passage where Norman could knock it from its three legs on dark nights. Nowhere else for that whatnot to go but in the corner of her room.

She stripped off her nightgown, dressed in the clothing she'd worn yesterday and walked to the door, aware that it was locked but trying it anyway. She was being punished for last night, for the haircut. She'd expected that, but had expected it to happen last night, not this morning. She shrugged and returned to her bed to squeeze out a few more winks of sleep.

Except she couldn't. Her mind was awake now. And she knew why Amber had come in after clean sheets too. Sissy had wet her bed.

She crept across to the strip of wall between wardrobe and whatnot, placed her ear to the wall. No talking, but activity on the other side, brisk footsteps, sheets flipped. Then Sissy's whine. She'd whine for a week about what those twins had done, and if it took a wet bed to convince Norman that she was suffering, then that's what she'd do.

Jenny returned to her own dear, narrow bed to spread herself in celebration of having it to herself, while listening for sounds of Norman, his voice, his footsteps, his chair scraping in the kitchen. Couldn't hear him. He must have gone to church. Then she was up again and lifting her curtain, attempting to judge the time. It could still be church time.

Why hadn't he woken her? Why hadn't he taken her to church to ask God's forgiveness for her sin of pride or something?

Fast footsteps walking by her door and across the verandah. Fast footsteps crunching on gravel. Amber would soak those sheets until tomorrow. Monday was washing day.

‘Daddy!' Jenny knocked on her door. ‘Daddy. I need to go to the lav.'

He didn't come. Amber came back and Jenny stopped knocking.

The relief bag had something in it. Knowing Sissy, her green dress was probably stuffed in there, as the yellow had been. Too many bad memories attached to that green dress to ever wear it again. And it crushed like a rag. Jenny lifted the bag
down, drew its gathered mouth wide and peered in. No green, but something beige, something embroidered. She retrieved Amber's old blouse. It was coming apart at the sleeve seam but it had an embroidered collar and matching embroidery halfway down the front. That seam could be fixed, or made bigger. A needle and thread could fix a lot of things. She stuffed it into her bottom drawer, then dug for more buried treasure. Only Norman's old work trousers and one of Sissy's nightdresses. Jenny had plenty of raggy, baggy hand-me-down nightdresses. She stuffed it back in. Someone would wear it. Someone would wear Norman's old trousers.

Back on the bed, on her knees, her head beneath the curtain, she looked out on what could have been a midday sun. There were no shadows. She hadn't gone to bed until one o'clock. Norman had let her sleep in, had gone to church alone, was probably talking to someone there. Wished he'd come home. She'd drunk too much cordial last night. She looked at the preserving pan. Her bladder felt as if she might need that, but she lifted down the blue-green vase. It had served her well enough before and would serve her again if he didn't open that door soon.

Half an hour more she waited for him, until the last of the sun left her window to beat down on the roof. Church was over by eleven thirty. Where was he? Had he forgotten she was locked in? Had he left the key in the door so Amber could let her out?

He wouldn't do that.

Sleep is the best way to pass time in an airless room. She dozed a while and woke with a dry mouth. The way to stop moisture evaporating was to breath through the nose. She lay on her back, mouth firmly closed, staring at the ceiling and wondering how long it took a person to die of thirst, wondering if the body decided to hang on to any moisture it had trapped in the bladder. She thought of Vern and Jimmy Hooper and the day they'd picked her up when she'd gone for a walk along the railway lines, thought of the taste of cool water from Vern's water bag, and the mirage she'd believed was magic, the butterflies she'd chased. Butterflies were more beautiful then, larger then—or they'd seemed larger.

‘Dad.' She rapped at the window. ‘Daddy, are you out there?' Her window was only feet from the back verandah. He sat out there some Sundays. She knocked harder on the glass. Sometimes he chipped at weeds down the back on Sundays. ‘Daddy.'

Yelling dried her mouth. Had to raise spit so she could swallow. Glanced around her prison, not scared but concerned. He'd been strange last night. He'd been worse than strange.

‘Daddy.'

Sissy was only a wall away. She knocked on it. ‘Sissy. Tell someone to open this door. I need to go to the lav.' Not that that would concern Sissy. ‘I'm dying of thirst.'