Pearl in a Cage (72 page)

The Willama sergeant drove down in a sleek black car, Denham at his side. They had spoken to Norman and to Amber.

‘We need to speak to Jennifer, Mrs Foote,' Denham said.

She didn't argue today. She led them into her kitchen, where Jenny sat knitting beside the stove, knitting green, not white. She kept her eyes on her knitting, kept her mouth closed, but she listened, and at times shook her head.

They left, and Norman came, on his bike.

Jenny wasn't knitting. She was seated at the kitchen table, setting out worn playing cards. She glanced up when he filled the doorway.

‘Come to take me home already?' Her eyes derided him. They were not a child's eyes.

‘A decision,' he said. ‘It must be made.' He stepped inside, glancing around for the crib, the infant. It was not there. ‘Sergeant Thompson . . . He spoke to you?'

Jenny shrugged and placed a card.

‘They were here yesterday,' Gertrude said. ‘Vern is taking the baby down to the hospital in the morning.'

‘Ill?'

‘It's sturdy enough.'

They stood side by side, Gertrude and her son-in-law, watching the cards fall, watching an ace placed down, listening to the rhythmic slap of cards, three, then three more. Nothing was as Norman had expected. Perhaps he had visualised the young mother seated, the child at her breast.

‘I had expected —'

‘Elsie has been caring for her. I'll fetch her over.'

‘Don't bother, Granny,' Jenny said, but Gertrude was out the door.

Norman stood watching the six of hearts placed down, then the jack of diamonds, a black five on the red six.

She looked up and caught his eye. ‘Want me to get married, Daddy? Is that why you're here?'

He shook his head and stared at the cards.

‘Maisy said you think I should marry one of them — for my good name's sake. Is that what you want?'

‘Forgive me,' he said.

‘I can't,' she said. ‘I won't. Ever.'

She placed a card, flipped three more, then three more, concentrating on those cards, not wanting to see his face, to see the weight of his spectacles drawing his lower lids down, forming pouches beneath his bloodhound eyes. She'd warned him. He wouldn't listen. It was too late now.

Black ten on the red jack. She'd almost missed that one. You needed to concentrate when you played Patience. And moving that ten gave her a space for a king — if she could still get that red king from the pack. Once more through, but the
king was buried. ‘Damn.' Once more those cards were slapped down. Three, and three more, and three more, until there were no more.

‘When there are no more moves, the game is over,' she said, sweeping up the cards, shuffling the pack. Sooner or later she'd win. It just took patience, that's all. That was the name of the game.

‘If I said I'd marry one of them, would you say it was for the best, Daddy?'

‘I would never advise —'

‘It would make her happy, wouldn't it?'

He didn't deny that. His jowl rags folded in on themselves.

‘Maisy said it would be a marriage in name only. I'd live with her, not them.'

He couldn't advise. He couldn't think. The Willama sergeant had told him to speak to her. He'd ridden down here to speak to her, but could find no words to say. What did he think? What did he want?

The peace of death.

She read his mind, or his eyes, and looked away. ‘Constable Denham and that old policeman told me what it would be like in a courtroom. Do you want to sit at my side in a courtroom?'

‘If that is your decision.'

‘She wouldn't let you.' She set out the cards for another game. ‘Anyway, I'm not doing it.
Jennifer Morrison, Woody Creek songbird, sings in court
— do you want to see those headlines in Mr Cox's shop?'

‘No,' he admitted.

‘Me either.'

She flipped the cards. This was a bad deal. There were too many black cards turned up. She needed a red jack, a knight in shining armour who would come through that door to fight off all the infidels, but Gertrude came through the door with that whimpering white worm in her arms.

Norman turned to look at the featureless being, bald, its ears crumpled. His index finger reaching out to touch was withdrawn and he turned back to the child he'd fallen in love
with. Her head was down, her concentration on her game of cards. She didn't acknowledge the infant's presence and Gertrude took her away.

‘A nameless child has no future,' he said.

‘Fair is fair. It stole mine.' She placed a red eight on a black nine. ‘Sit down,' she said.

He sat, sat in silence, watching her flip through the cards. She got the ace of clubs. That was better. She placed it, moved the two of clubs, and turned up the ace of spades.

‘Looking better,' he said when the silence grew too long.

‘Better and better.'

The king of diamonds made it better still. The queen of clubs to the red king and suddenly she had a game.

‘They made me filthy,' she said. ‘I've had three baths and I can't feel clean. Their lawyer will make me filthier still. So will your very dear Mrs Morrison.'

She got a red four, which meant she could move the black three. And she turned up the jack of diamonds. She was going to win this game.

‘Do you know if she's still got her wedding gown?'

‘Your mother?'

‘Mrs Morrison,' she said. ‘It would fit me.'

‘I . . . I believe . . . so.'

‘Saved for Sissy?' She smiled. ‘That's a joke, Daddy. Smile.' He tried to smile and it looked like a death mask. Looked away, looked away fast. ‘Tell them I'll get married if I can wear her dress — and my pearl in a cage pendant and earrings.'

‘It wouldn't be . . . be . . .'

‘Fitting? Am I too soiled to get married in white?'

No reply. She turned the king of hearts, showed it to him before placing it in the space, which meant she could move the queen of spades, which meant turning up her last hidden card.

And she had it. She smiled, pleased with herself, almost his Jenny-wren's smile. Older, though. The child was gone from her face. That sweet innocence was gone from her eyes.

‘You never know what is going to happen next, do you? Maybe a toad will turn into a prince when I kiss him at the altar.'

 

If the news of Jenny Morrison's baby had gone through the town like a dose of Epsom salts, news of her wedding sent the town's collective bowel into spasm.

Margaret Hooper learned about it at Blunt's when she went in to buy two more skeins of maroon wool for a sweater she was knitting for Vern; he needed more room in his sweaters these days.

‘Amber and Maisy were in there with what looked like an old wedding gown,' she reported back at the house.

‘Hmph,' Lorna said.

 

The twins were released from their cell on 26 April, the day Bob Menzies was voted into the top parliamentary job. Maisy wouldn't let them into the house until they'd bathed and shaved. They considered taking off for Melbourne, but Denham had their bike chained to a tree in his backyard. Not that the idea of a wedding wasn't appealing, not that the gaining of legal right to Jenny Morrison wasn't very appealing, except they couldn't both have her.

They bathed but didn't shave. They put on the clothing Maisy had laid out on their beds, helped themselves to a few bob from her purse and headed over the road to the hotel.

Denham cut them off at the pass. ‘If you want another dose of your cell, keep heading the way you're heading.'

They didn't want the cell. They went home.

By April's end, they were fighting over which one should get her, but too well matched in height, weight and reach, knowing the other one's move before he made it, left both of them bruised but no closer to a decision. Bernie was the oldest by five minutes. He argued that it was his right to wed first. Cecil, still known as Macka, said he was the first on her that night, that the kid had to be his, so he ought to be the one wedding her.

The date had been set. The wedding was to take place at eleven thirty on Saturday 24 May. The sooner the better, Maisy said. The baby, still unnamed, unregistered, could be registered late and who was to know the difference. She drove
her sons to Willama to be fitted out for wedding suits. Neither twin had owned a suit since they'd grown out of their boarding school suits.

George tossed a coin that night. It came up tails for Cecil, but Bernie refused to accept one toss, so they made it two out of three. The coin came up heads on the next two tosses, so Cecil wanted three out of five. George could have stood all night tossing that coin. They wouldn't have agreed.

A week before the wedding, Gertrude watched Maisy's car pull up in front of Elsie's house, a common enough occurrence. Then she saw George and those raping little bastards step from it.

‘You can't mean to go through with it, darlin'.'

‘Stop worrying, Granny. It's turning your hair grey.'

Grey hair was the last of her worries.

‘You don't want to raise that baby. You loathe those boys and you can't do it. It doesn't matter what Maisy says she'll do — or what those boys won't do, so soon as you're wed to one of them, you're giving him the right to take what he wants from you, whenever he wants, any way he wants.'

Jenny smiled and played with the knotted threads keeping open the holes pierced in her lobes. Gertrude had used a red-hot needle, which brought back memories of Amber's needle but hurt more. They'd almost healed. Norman had brought down the pendant and earrings. She couldn't wait to try them.

‘You're throwing your life away.'

‘You know, in one of Itchy-foot's books, they write about the old people sacrificing virgins to the gods so the tribe stays healthy. They mated virgins with horses, it could have been worse, Granny.'

‘Don't talk like that. You sound like your grandfather.'

‘I look like him too — even if you won't admit it.'

Gertrude had cut her hair short again, short like a boy's. She'd wanted it short to show off her earrings. Her face was thinner than it had been a year ago; she was thinner, still a beautiful girl, but damaged, and vengeful.

Jenny glanced out the door. The Macdonalds were talking to Elsie, or Maisy was talking to her. George and the twins were
looking across at Gertrude's house. She shrugged, walked to the dresser drawer and removed her playing cards, drew out a chair and sat shuffling them.

She had no fear of them. Maybe they'd stolen her fear along with her innocence. She walked that bush road now and didn't flinch, walked it alone by night. We all need a little fear, Gertrude thought.

The light from the window behind the card player turned her hair into a glowing halo of gold. He was in that hair. He was in the lift of her chin, the shape of her brow. He'd had no fear. He'd dragged Gertrude into places few white women had seen. She'd feared. For a time she'd lived in fear.

Shook him from her head and turned back to Jenny, saw him in her eyes and again turned away.

‘God help you, darlin'.'

‘He's already helped me. He got it out of me before I even knew it was coming out. Now I'm helping myself, Granny.'

Someone had been watching over that little girl while Gertrude had been walking in the moonlight — and had been helping her since. She'd been up eating pancakes the next morning and outside reading for the sunny part of the day, making up for lost time, she'd said, or taking back lost time.

They were coming, Maisy leading the way, George behind her, their duo walking side by side behind him. Strange how features are passed down through a family, Gertrude thought. Those raping little bastards were the image of their father. Strange too how the eye seeks out family resemblances. Man's instinctive need to find a continuity of life. That baby's eyes were a slaty grey, as were all babies' eyes at birth; they'd end up the Macdonald purple. There was little of Jenny in her.

‘You're a beautiful girl, and cutting off your nose to spite your face will only make you ugly. Go to court like Denham and that Sergeant Thompson want you to, and let the judge punish them. I'll stay by your side all the way.'

‘I know you would.' She picked up the battered old queen of diamonds and turned it front and back. ‘It's filthy, Granny, and you can't make it clean again. Too many hands have been
on it. That's what I feel like — as if nothing will ever make me clean again. Going to court would be like letting more hands touch me. And the newspapers too. They've got photographs of me when I was clean and new. I'm not letting everyone make them dirty.'

‘It wasn't your fault.'

‘Who cares, if it's on the news?'

The twins were in her yard and Gertrude couldn't stand to look at them, couldn't keep her mouth shut if she was in the same room as them. She went to her bedroom, leaned against her dressing table.

‘Are you there, Mrs Foote?' Maisy called.

‘The door is open,' Jenny said.

Maisy came in, followed by her men. ‘Is your grandma about, love?'

‘Try the orchard,' Jenny said.

‘We're here to see you, girlie. We had a talk to the minister this morning,' George said.

She eyed him and slapped three cards down, then three more. Her game wasn't progressing.

‘The problem here is we've got two very willing grooms. We need you to make the decision.'

‘There are legal papers the minister needs filled in, love,' Maisy explained.

‘He says we can't both have you,' one of the mongrels said.

‘Why not? You did last time,' Jenny said, sweeping the cards together, collecting and shuffling them while Maisy coloured and George looked out the door.

She dealt the cards then, in two piles, one in front of each twin. She dealt the pack, slapping the final card down hard. ‘Whoopie. You win.'