Pearl in a Cage (68 page)

 

The share market was making up lost ground. Unemployment was down to eight per cent. There was room for optimism, the newspapers reported.

Little optimism for the farmers. Wool prices were down to eleven pence a pound, well below the last five-year average; wheat was bringing in two and six a bushel.

September came with its scent of almond blossom and milking cows and crushed grass, but little hope.

The situation in Europe was becoming critical, the newspapers reported.

“I propose to come over at once to see you, with a view to trying to find a peaceful solution,” Chamberlain wrote to Hitler. “I propose to come by air and am ready to make a start tomorrow. Please indicate the earliest time that you can see me and suggest a place of meeting.”

‘Give him six months, twelve at the most,' Charlie White told anyone who would listen.

‘The Germans don't want another war,' many argued.

‘They're ready for this one. You mark my words. We'll see a war like the world has never known,' Charlie said.

Woody Creek was at its best in spring, but winter was coming in Europe.

By November, Norman had dropped two stone in weight. He looked ragged. His knees felt ragged. He spent too much time on them, prayed each night beside his junk room bed.

‘
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation . . .
'

‘For God's sake, Norman, will you shut up your praying and get into bed? You'll catch your death of cold, and give it to me and Cecelia again.'

He had given them everything else. Why not a cold?

 

December, and the green of Woody Creek surrendered to brown, the bush road surrendered to dust, and Norman surrendered to depression. He forgot where he was going, forgot the time, forgot to wake in the morning — or wished not to. He forgot to bathe, to shave. Forgot to forget.

In December, Miss Rose finally surrendered to John McPherson. She wed him in the Catholic church on the Sunday after the school concert.

‘She's years older than him. What does she think she's doing getting married at her time of life?'

‘Such a pretty wedding,' Margaret Hooper said, still unready to surrender to spinsterhood.

A magical wedding, trapped by the groom's own camera, Joss Palmer behind it that day, given instruction on what to press
and when to press it, while John took his proud place, for once on the wrong side of the lens.

On the final evening of December 1938, half of Woody Creek said goodbye to the old year at the Town Hall Party. Gertrude had spent the evening preparing fruit for her apricot jam. Now she sat reading, catching up on her newspapers.

Looking back over 1938, which for the world was a year of tremendous shocks and difficulties, Australia could be grateful for coming through it so well. Although there was a decline in the volume of international trade, a heavy fall in the prices of some of our major exports, and the effects of the drought were felt on our agriculture, as the year draws to a close Australia finds herself in a better position generally than most other countries.

There have been wonderful advances in our manufacturing industry. The number of hands employed in these industries increased by twenty-two thousand. An aircraft-manufacturing plant is now at work in Victoria on the first large order of modern planes for the Royal Australian Air Force. Australia is a step nearer to manufacturing cars. A company with fifty thousand in capital to invest is now setting up a factory which will produce radiator assemblies.

She turned the page and glanced towards the green curtain. Jenny had been in bed since nine. Hard to believe that fifteen years ago tonight, Nancy Bryant had carried that tiny mite into her house. Fifteen years? ‘The older I grow, the faster a year goes,' she murmured.

Her mind far away, she sensed rather than heard movement behind her.

‘I hope that's you and not a burglar, darlin'.'

‘Hold me, Granny?'

Gertrude held her, held her closer when she felt that slim nightgown-clad frame trembling.

‘What is it, pet?'

‘Can you put the light out?'

It came out in the dark, came out shredded like the skirt of that blue-green gown, came out at times like a cat dragged backwards through a hole, fighting and clawing all the way, but it came out.

‘I was so stupid. I was so stupid. I wasn't even scared. I was mad because Dad had locked me in, I was madder at them because it was all their fault. I called them names, Granny, and told them to go to hell. I thought it was just another one of their tormenting games.'

Perhaps it had started out as a game, one twin egging on the other. When they'd taken her arms and run her across the oval, when they'd pushed and pulled her through the hole in the cemetery fence, it had seemed like the sort of stupid childish thing they'd always done. Perhaps it had still been a game when they'd held her down on Cecelia Morrison's fancy tombstone and told her they were sacrificing her for some decent weather.

‘Whoops, we forgot to bring the sacrificial dagger,' one said.

‘Have you got something that would do the job? Because, by the Jesus, I have,' the other one said.

‘I dare you.'

‘Don't you dare me, you ugly bastard.'

That's when she'd known it wasn't a game. That's when she'd got scared. That's when she'd known that climbing out the window didn't matter; when she'd known it didn't matter if everyone at the town hall came running across the oval, if Amber called her a common little trollop in front of the whole town. She'd screamed, until one of them had shoved his filthy hand into her mouth and she'd gagged.

You can't scream when you're gagging. Tried to fight them — like a choking rabbit fighting off two rabid dogs.

‘They took turns, Granny. They swapped places and took turns on me.'

Gertrude held her all night in her bed. She didn't close her eyes and was out at the break of day, her stove lit, her pan of apricots placed over the central hotplate to start their long boil. Jenny was still sleeping, Gertrude bottling jam when Vern drove down at nine with a few bags of wheat she'd asked him to pick up for her chooks. She didn't invite him in, didn't want him inside and waking up that little girl who hadn't slept until dawn.

He expected tea. She had to tell him. Leaned against his car and talked, blamed herself for not knowing, blamed herself for not asking.

‘I should have seen it, Vern.'

He wanted to drive her in to speak to Denham. He wanted to hang that pair of raping runty little bastards.

‘I'll speak to her father first. I'll get you to drive me in tonight. I can't do it yet.'

She spoke to Elsie at midday, spoke to Harry at five, and, like steam forced through a pinhole in a boiler, Jenny's trouble leaking out into other ears released some of the pressure in Gertrude's head.

Jenny didn't want her to tell Norman, but he had to be told.

‘He won't blame you, darlin'. No one will blame you.' Vern came down after the seven o'clock news broadcast. Jenny left in Elsie's care, they drove into town. Norman wasn't at the station and Gertrude wasn't going to the house. She sent Vern in to bring him out.

He came, with the smell of drink on his breath. They spoke to him on the street, the car between them and the house.

‘What's going on, Norman?' Amber called from the front door. Norman signalled her back, but she came to the gate. ‘What's going on out here?'

‘Your daughter is in trouble,' Vern said. ‘The Macdonald twins raped her.'

‘The twins went back to Melbourne on Christmas Day,' Amber scoffed.

‘The night of the ball,' he said.

‘I knew it,' she said. ‘What did I tell you, Norman?' She sounded jubilant, and Gertrude who had vowed she wouldn't speak to her, broke her vow.

‘Get inside Amber.'

‘I caught her in the lavatories with those boys, and I'll bet you a pound to a penny it wasn't rape —'

‘Get out of my sight or I won't be responsible —' Gertrude said. Norman stepping from foot to foot, wanting to be anywhere but on this street. Knees too weak to carry him away. Vern standing back smoking, wondering how far he should let this go.

‘She's been seen riding around with your darkie. It's probably his,' Amber said.

She was close, her face was in Gertrude's face. She looked like her father, and Gertrude had been suffering from the internal shakes since they'd brought her into town that night to stitch up that bastard's head. Her hands weren't shaking. They were large and work-hardened. It was more reflex than violence, a backhand, saved forty years for Archie Foote. His daughter felt the sting of it in her jaw. She backed off but didn't back down.

‘For all I know, she's been on with half the town louts for years.'

‘You're transferring your own sins onto the innocent. You've got less conscience than your father — and that's saying a mouthful.'

‘You grabbed his money fast enough when he was dead, you old trollop —'

Vern had hoped for this confrontation thirty years ago. Too late now. He tossed his cigarette down.

‘She wasted a lot of it in buying you out of your madhouse, you snake-eyed bitch of a girl,' he said. ‘And got poor value for money spent.'

A big man, Vern, accustomed to lumping bags of wheat around. He tossed her over his shoulder as he might a bag of chaff and carried her in through the gate.

‘You take your filthy hands off me, you ugly old bastard!'

‘You've had plenty worse on you from all accounts,' he said, dumping her in the passage and slamming the door on his way out.

Denham was drawn out onto his verandah by the action. He stood staring, his wife staring as hard from behind a lifted curtain. Norman saw his neighbour and turned to follow his whore indoors.

‘We have to talk,' Gertrude said. ‘That little girl is going to need you.'

‘In the morning,' he said. ‘I will . . . I will discuss it . . . in the morning.'

 

Gertrude looked for him before train time. She looked for him after train time. He didn't come. He hadn't come by noon, by evening, when Jenny walked Gertrude's track looking for him. And the night came down and still he didn't come.

For two days Jenny waited for Norman, then she gave up.

Vern drove down each day. On the evening of the third day, he brought news from town.

‘He's telling everyone she's in Melbourne, that she's taking singing lessons. Margaret came home from the post office with the story at two, then just before dinner Jim came home with it, got straight from the horse's mouth . . . or from your other granddaughter's . . .'

Jenny lay in the sag of that old lean-to's bed, her eyes staring up at the corrugated-iron roof. It had nail holes in it, and when the sun was in exactly the right place those nail holes turned into flashing stars. Only dark up there tonight, only the little light from Granny's table lamp peering around the green
curtain, painting eerie patterns in the corrugations. No ceiling ever placed in Gertrude's lean-to, no door, only that old curtain to offer the illusion of privacy. It didn't block out sound. She could hear Vern's voice clearly, hear his every word. Gertrude's replies were not so clear.

‘Maybe it's time you took a step back, Trude. For all legal intents and purposes, he's her father.'

‘Then where is he?'

‘He looks like death warmed up. I saw him leaving the hotel around five and he was weaving.'

‘Have you told your family anything?'

‘They know nothing.'

‘I need a cigarette.'

‘They don't suit you.'

‘I need something, Vern.'

‘I've been trying to look at this thing from another angle since tea, and maybe I can see where Norman is coming from. He could be doing the best thing for her — in the long term.'

‘She's a schoolgirl. She was a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl when that pair of bastards held her down and took what they wanted from her. They can't be allowed to get away with it.'

‘I hear what you're saying. I hear you. Now look at it from her angle.'

‘I can't see past watching them hang!'

‘And what good is that going to do her? What good can come out of dragging her name through the mud while you're getting them hanged? I'm not saying that what he's doing is the right thing, but sullying her name won't do her one skerrick of good in the long term. That's all I'm saying.'

‘They'll do it again.'

‘And no doubt they've done it before, but forget them for a minute and think about her. Isn't it better for folk to believe she's down in the city with her parson uncle, having singing lessons, than to know she's down here hiding a swollen belly? She can come home from her singing lessons in a few months' time, her head held high, and no one any the wiser.'

‘What about the baby!'

‘The town doesn't need another bloody Macdonald. It's overrun by purple-eyed Macdonalds!'

‘Girls don't come through something like this unscathed.'

‘I'm not saying they do, but she's not the first it's happened to and won't be the last. There's places in the city set up to handle this situation. They take the infants at birth and find homes for them.'

‘And two rapists get off scott-free?'

‘What's the alternative?'

‘I don't know.'

‘It's days of sitting at her side in a courtroom, that's what it is. Days of every newspaper in the state reporting it word for word. It's that girl up against a pair of bastards who couldn't lie straight in bed, and your own bitch of a daughter throwing more mud at her. Innocent or not, you toss enough mud around and some of it sticks. Where's her future then, Trude?'