By May, Harry Hall had a permanent invitation to Sunday night tea at Gertrude’s house, sharing what they had. They ate a few rabbits. Joey liked trapping, and you had to taste Elsie’s rabbit curry to know what a curry was.
Gertrude had little time or aptitude for cooking. These days she rarely peeled a potato. She’d decided she had no aptitude for teaching either, during her first years with Elsie. Hours she’d spent with her, trying to interest her in writing her name and learning her ABC. Then Amber had disappeared and Gertrude had invited Norman and his girls to share their Christmas meal. She hadn’t made a Christmas pudding in years, but she’d dug out her old recipe book and, her finger following directions, she and Elsie had rounded up the ingredients. That was the day Elsie saw some sense in knowing how to read. She’d taken a fancy to that recipe book, learning quickly to see the difference between a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. Once Joey was old enough to take an interest in pencil and book, Elsie progressed along with him.
With card-playing, Elsie had never required a good reason for doing it. She and Joey both might have been born with a pack of cards in their hands. Mention a game and they’d drop what they were doing to play. They were playing five hundred on a Sunday night in June when rain started pouring down and hissing onto the stove. Harry smiled when the women rose from the game to place saucepans in strategic places, which stopped the hissing but began the song of the drips.
‘Better than some of that music you hear on the wireless,’ Harry said.
‘What?’ Elsie said.
‘The music of the drips, Else.’ He played his card and the game continued. ‘It reminds me of Collingwood,’ he said. ‘Of playing cards in Collingwood. We used to have a wireless.’
Harry never spoke of his home. He’d talk about the news, the town, the truck, anything other than his family, but he’d opened the door so Gertrude asked her question.
‘Are your folk still down there, Harry?’
‘Dead,’ he said and he played his card.
‘Your mum and dad both?’
‘And two little brothers. Your turn, Else.’
Elsie wasn’t playing. She was staring at him. ‘How?’
‘Flu,’ he said. ‘Or that’s what killed my little brothers. One was seven, one nine. I was going on twelve. We all got it. Five or six years back.’
He looked at the musical saucepans, looked up at the ceiling, expecting it to start leaking. The rain was thundering on the old tin roof, muffling their voices. Joey had placed his cards face down and gone to the window, expecting the power of the rain to smash through the glass.
‘How did your mother die?’ Gertrude said.
Harry lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and for an instant she though he wasn’t going to reply.
‘Killed herself, Mrs Foote. Blamed herself, Dad reckoned, for my little brothers dying — about six months after they died. It’s still your turn, Else,’ he said.
They were waiting for more. Joey returned to the table, waiting for more. Harry shrugged knowing he’d already let out too much of his private business, but the noise of that rain cancelled his words as they came out, so he set a few more free.
‘Dad’s eyes had started going wonky on him before Mum died. They got worse afterwards. He reckoned it was the shock of her doing what she’d done that made them worse. We thought they’d get better. He died a year after Mum. It turned out that he had a growth in his head, pressing on his eye nerve. They found out after he was dead.’
He glanced around at the listeners, and Elsie played a card — chose the wrong card. Joey took the trick.
‘I’ve gone and put you off the game,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind me. It’s just the rain. It washes off my outer layers, sort of gets under my skin a bit. I’ll get going home then.’
‘You’re not going out in this weather,’ Elsie said, as she may have said to Joey.
Harry slept the night on the kitchen floor, and the following morning, between showers, he fixed the leaking chimney. The lead moulded around it where it joined the roof had moved away. He hammered it back where it ought to be, and when skies opened up again, not a drip hissed onto the stove.
‘You’re a godsend, Harry Hall,’ Gertrude said.
‘Cut that out now or you’ll make me go all coy, Mrs Foote.’
That boy needed a family and she needed that boy. Her shed was dry. Its back corner, currently used as a bathroom, was partially partitioned. A bit of work could make that corner into comfortable enough quarters, or more comfortable than McPherson’s hut, and she could see that Harry ate regularly.
She told him he’d be doing her a favour, that he could work for his keep; told him that Joey needed a big brother to teach him things women couldn’t teach him. Harry didn’t put up much of an argument.
An odd relationship theirs, one of mutual need, mutual respect. Two independent people, a boy who looked sixteen but swore he was going on eighteen, and a woman past sixty, both more accustomed to giving than to receiving. He moved in that day, and a month later had added to the old partition and hammered down a rough floor. There was room enough in the corner of that shed to squeeze in two single beds. They moved Joey’s bed out of the kitchen.
An equally odd relationship was developing over Norman’s side fence. Jenny hadn’t told Mr Foster about Amber’s embroidery needle, but somehow he knew. On a Friday night in July, Jenny ran again from Amber, ran out the back door and tumbled over his back fence in the dark — and almost landed on him. He must have been out there listening, but he didn’t ask why she was there so she didn’t ask why he was standing outside in the dark.
She’d started visiting him on Saturday mornings, and he put her to work stamping Woody Creek’s postmark on the envelopes; she stood on a chair behind his counter sorting mail into the alphabetically marked pigeonholes.
The XYZ pigeonhole never received a letter. She watched it for months, then one day played a trick on the little postmaster. She wrote a letter to Mr Zebra, signed it Cara Jeanette Paris, and sneaked it into the XYZ pigeonhole while Mr Foster wasn’t looking. She popped in after school on Monday and the XYZ pigeonhole was empty again. Then, on Saturday morning, while she was filing new mail, she came on a rough-made brown-paper envelope, the stamp cancelled with a horseshoe footprint and the letter addressed to Miss Cara Jeanette Paris — in very clumsy Zebra print.
Give an imaginative child an imaginative friend and she’ll push it to the limit. Cara and Mr Zebra corresponded weekly for a time.
Give a shy little man a pseudonym to hide behind and he can become a hero. While glancing at an issue of Methodist Mission’s Magazine, he read of a woman’s sorry plight and Mr Bob Zebra was moved to post off a small donation which he asked might be directed to that particular woman. He could afford it. He had few needs and a steady wage.
A week before Christmas, a card arrived from Melbourne addressed to Mr Bob Zebra. Had his little assistant not seen it, had her big blue eyes not been stretched to capacity by this magic she’d raised within a pokey little post office, he would have ended the game there. He could not deny those eyes. They opened the envelope together. It was a beautiful card with angels on it, a sheet of writing paper tucked inside.
Thanks to your kindness to a stranger, I am back on my feet once more, and this week I found a position as a copy typist. It is only for three days a week but this could increase if things continue to pick up. My disability restricts many activities, but I enjoy reading, writing letters and making new friends. If you should again find time to put pen to paper, I would be pleased to hear from you.
Best regards, Mary Jolly
Jenny wrote a two-page reply to Mary Jolly, about a brown elf who lived in a house built of letters. His house smelled like a papery bouquet of all the world . . . She signed it, Cara Jeanette Paris.
That child had magic in her soul and it was rubbing off on the little postmaster. And what harm could be done in posting off her little story? He could see no harm in it at all. He supplied the envelope and stamp; Jenny postmarked it and dropped it into the mail sack to ride the train to Melbourne. Perhaps that was the end of it.
But it wasn’t. A week later a letter arrived addressed to Cara Jeanette Paris.
My dear Cara,
What a pretty name you have. And how delighted I was to hear that my letter ended up keeping the cruel winds away from that little brown elf. I do hope that he has found a new door for his house . . .
Jenny, now eleven, was finally growing, and far too old to believe in fairies, but still desperate to believe that a few might survive at the bottom of some people’s gardens if not in Norman’s. A clothes line lived down the bottom of Norman’s garden and a lavatory and a few trees that didn’t care if they grew or not. Stinging wasps hunted in Norman’s garden for soft green spiders to lock in their umbrella-nest jails so their maggots could eat them alive. Fairies would never live there, but they might next door.
The elf’s garden is a dark forest of trees and vines all growing happily together, so that purple trumpet flowers bloom on gum trees and orange roses bloom on grape vines and flowers pop up from the weeds wherever they like, though they have never been planted there. It is the safest place in all of the world because a good spell has been cast over it which keeps all evil witches out . . .
Norman’s house smelled safe, smelled of polish and clean and cooking, but it wasn’t safe and Amber wasn’t safe sometimes. A lot of places that seemed safe weren’t. Like Granny’s forest wasn’t safe, and even the swimming bend. Nelly had thought her big brothers could keep her safe from everything, everyone, but people had to learn to keep themselves safe.
Mr Foster was safe. Mary Jolly was safe. She was like a forever book, a paper friend, and she’d stay safe while she stayed a secret. Whenever a letter came for Cara Jeanette, she read it to Mr Foster then folded it back into its envelope and he put it in a box beneath his counter.
Waiting for Mary’s letters could make a week go slowly. Writing back to her could make a Sunday be gone in a wink. Jenny could even write letters to her in her head, in bed at night, and at times make Sissy disappear from that bed.
Once upon a time, to a land called Creaky Woods where fairies once danced and played by moonlight, there came a wicked witch who was jealous of the fairies so she cast a spell over all of the land. No grass grew there, no flowers, and any tree where a fairy might find a hole to live in was quickly eaten by the witch’s sharp-toothed monsters who howled and growled all day of hunger . . .
Some nights Sissy refused to disappear.
‘Will you stay over your side, Sissy.’
‘Shut up your moaning. I’m trying to sleep!’
‘Then move over to your side and sleep!’
‘I am over my side!’
‘You’re not. I’m on the edge.’
‘Fall off then and go to hell.’
With her hair in rags, the only way Sissy could sleep was face down, sprawled on her stomach like a starfish, arms and legs spread. Jenny was half her size. She didn’t need as much bed.
‘You take up enough space without your arm and leg taking up my space. Move.’
‘It’s my bed! I’ll sleep how I like in it. Now shut up, or he’ll be in here again.’
‘I’ll yell out louder if you don’t move.’
Norman still threatened that Amber would have to leave if their fighting in bed continued. Jenny wanted her to leave. Sissy didn’t. She placed her arms beneath her pillow and gave up an inch or two of bed. There was peace for minutes, but her arms weren’t comfortable under the pillow. One fell across Jenny’s back. She picked it up, threw it back.
‘I told you not to touch me!’ Sissy snarled.
‘You touched me first!’
‘As if I’d ever touch you!’
‘Well, you did!’
‘You’re a liar. It’s you who is always touching me and waking me up.’
‘If I was shipwrecked and you were the only thing floating, I’d sink before I touched you and got your BO all over me,’ Jenny said.
That was below the belt. Sissy grabbed a handful of her hair and tried to rip it out, so Jenny grabbed two rag sausages and clung on until one of the rags pulled out.
‘You rotten evil little stray dog. Now look what you’ve done. Mum! Mum!’
She could call all night and Amber wouldn’t come. Once she went to bed, she stayed there.
Norman came. He did the old sausage blanket trick, which, once he’d closed the door, lasted for about five seconds. He came back and did the old ‘Apologise to your sister’. He always made them apologise.
‘She started it,’ Sissy said.
‘I did not. She pulled my hair first.’
‘You didn’t have to pull my curl out.’
‘You didn’t have to pull my hair out by the roots.’
‘Apologise to each other,’ Norman said.
They had their apologising down to a fine art. They did it together, on the count of three. It meant nothing, but pleased Norman.
‘That bit will be straight in the morning, Dad,’ Sissy whined.
‘If you can stand me touching you, I’ll put it back in,’ Jenny said.
Sissy could stand anything in the cause of beauty.
Norman turned on the light, though Jenny may have managed in the dark. She’d watched it done a hundred times. He stood at the door watching the operation, watching those deft hands, that mass of dark gold hair, wild after its fight with the pillow. Childhood had started its withdrawal from Jenny’s features; the woman stirring within was already showing brief glimpses of her face — though not yet of her shape. Still his skinny, nightgown-clad child, kneeling on the bed behind Sissy, rolling the hair around the rag, then the rag around the hair, tying a bow.
‘Now, no more of your squabbling,’ he said, plunging the room again into darkness. ‘You are sisters. Treat each other with respect.’
He’d always said that. Before Amber had come home, he’d said that, and they’d tried to treat each other with respect. But respect wasn’t easy when you shared a bed, when you shared a wardrobe, when every pretty frock in it belonged to Sissy.
Until Amber had come home, Sissy’s frocks had looked much the same as Jenny’s, and the worst part about that, which Jenny had learnt since she’d started growing, was that Norman had saved all of Sissy’s outgrown dresses in a cardboard carton he kept in his bedroom. All of those faded greens, those washed-out navy blues, years and years of them waiting there like a threat for her to grow into.
Until Amber came home, Jenny had believed she had a mother somewhere, that her mother was like Dora Palmer’s and Gloria’s mother. This year, the year of her growing, was also the year of her knowing. Her mother wasn’t like Mrs Palmer or Mrs Bull — and her father wasn’t like their fathers either.
Dora Palmer’s father called his wife ‘love’. She called him ‘darl’, and when he got his pay, they sat together at the kitchen table putting money into different jars so they could pay the bills.
Norman called Amber ‘Mrs Morrison’ and she didn’t call him anything. Every Friday, he gave her seven and sixpence — which she spent on or gave to Sissy. On Saturday mornings, Norman walked around town paying his weekly bills.
And the bedrooms too. Mr and Mrs Palmer slept in the same room in the same bed. Amber slept alone in the biggest bed in the biggest room. Norman slept in the smallest bed in the junk room, with the relief bag and his carton of Sissy’s old clothes and his piles of old newspapers, and the preserving pan, and old vases, and even the chest of drawers where the clean linen lived.
Amber went to church now with Norman, but only since Sissy had joined the choir, which she’d only joined because Margaret Hooper liked to sing and Lorna wouldn’t allow her to join the Methodists’ choir. Amber sat beside Norman in church and that was as close as she ever got to him.
Mr Palmer crept up on Mrs Palmer sometimes and put his arms around her while she was cooking, kissed her neck sometimes, flicked her with the tea towel, laughed with her. Norman never went into his kitchen if Amber was in there.
At times, Jenny tried to remember what home had been like before Amber had got sick and gone away. She tried to remember seeing Norman ever putting his arms around Amber. Couldn’t remember seeing her until that first night at Maisy’s house — except for the wedding photograph. She’d always known that bride was her mother, though when she was small, she hadn’t noticed how the bride wouldn’t look at her. It was weird. Whichever place Jenny stood, Norman’s photograph eyes were looking at her but Amber’s never did. No matter what angle she stood on, she couldn’t make Amber’s photograph eyes look directly at her. She wondered if they looked at Sissy.
A third relationship of mutual need had evolved this past year.
During the Hoopers’ two-week stay in Frankston, Lorna as snarly as a Tasmanian devil with fleas, Margaret had done as her father had instructed and kept an eye on Sissy Morrison. They’d gone to a local dance on the second Saturday, Jim delighted to accompany them if it meant escaping Lorna for a few hours. He’d sat for most of the evening at Sissy’s side. Margaret sat out very few dances, and danced three times with Arthur Hogan, who, it turned out, was a builder from Willama. He and his father took work where they could get it. They’d taken jobs in Frankston. He’d spoken of the Willama Catholic Ball, held the first week in July, had suggested he may be there. She’d said she may see him there.
In June of 1935, Margaret saw an advertisement for the Willama Ball and she wanted to go. Perhaps Arthur Hogan might be there. When they were girls in Melbourne, Lorna had, on rare occasions, been coerced into accompanying her to balls. Not this year. Margaret walked around to Norman’s house and asked Sissy to accompany her.
Sissy received few invitations. She said yes.
Norman said no. He told her she was too young to be attending balls, that she was not travelling to Willama by night. He told her that ballgowns cost money, that the railway department did not pay their stationmasters sufficient to supply ballgowns for sixteen-year-old girls. For two days he said no, but Sissy won. She always won.
She and Margaret chose the fabric, the style. Miss Blunt took her measurements. She and Margaret chose the shoes, with heels, and Sissy needed high heels like a rooster needs a pond. She was Gertrude’s height, which in combination with the Duckworth hips, legs and ankles wasn’t good. But Margaret wore high heels so Sissy wanted heels.
The entire house revolved around Sissy on the day of her first ball. Amber spent an hour on her hair. She powdered her freckles, painted her lips. Her eyebrows, plucked fine, were shaped with an eyebrow pencil, her eyes made larger with the same pencil. Then the gown was on, a green taffeta with a frill around the shoulders and a waist that would barely do up — and when it was done up, the gathered skirt made Sissy’s backside look the size of a barn door.
Margaret Hooper arrived at seven, flushed and clad in frilly pink. Her backside wasn’t as broad as Sissy’s, but stuck out like an old-fashioned bustle.
Jim was driving them to Willama. He’d been driving since he was twelve. Half-boy, half-man, too tall and skinny, his front teeth rotting. Tonight, fashion or Margaret had decreed that his normally wiry hair should be parted in the centre and slicked down with grease. Nature knew best. His ears stuck out like car doors.
‘G’day,’ Jenny said.
‘G’day,’ he said.
‘Have you got a licence for driving now?’
‘No, but Margaret has.’
‘Is she driving?’
‘She can’t — much.’
Jenny watched them walk out to the car, already planning her next letter to Mary Jolly. It was about a stick insect clad in a brand new dinner suit, who was escorting a plump little ladybird and a well-fed caterpillar to the ball. That poor green caterpillar attempting to walk upright on its back legs in high heels. It didn’t look comfortable.