Vern’s car would carry six in comfort. Jim was picking the Morrisons up at six o’clock. Contestants in the talent quest had been told to present themselves at the Willama theatre by six forty-five, that the concert would begin at seven sharp. Sissy’s item was listed at number nine, so they couldn’t afford to get there late. Jenny was on at number twenty-two. Margaret, who was having second thoughts, was number thirty.
Sissy slept badly the night before the quest. Her hair in rags didn’t encourage a good night’s sleep, and she couldn’t blame her bedmate for keeping her awake either. Once her mother’s head was down, she didn’t move. Her deep sleep annoyed Sissy, or the pills she took to get that sleep, pills denied to Sissy, annoyed her. She’d pleaded for one last night, Norman had ignored her plea. She’d been pleading with her mother to go with her to Willama, just in case she stumbled on the third verse. She knew the first and second, knew the last, but that third verse always sent her mind blank.
Norman and Jenny, pleased with the new sleeping arrangements, had slept soundly. Amber hadn’t complained; she’d won the war of the dress. At breakfast on the morning after the epic battle, Norman had asked Jenny to hang up the frock and she’d hung it in Sissy’s wardrobe, which didn’t count as hanging it up now that Norman’s wardrobe was once again her own. Winning that bedroom back was a huge victory.
She’d be wearing her pink dress to the quest, which Maisy had repaired. She’d taken the side seams in, which had got rid of a part of the rip and a portion of the sweat-faded circles, then she’d reinforced both armpits with the material cut from the sleeves. It was a nice pink, and with her stockings and Dora’s sandals it looked good enough. She didn’t take it home, had no intention of taking it home.
Sissy was in a foul mood. She’d gone beyond demanding Amber go with her to Willama to sulking and throwing things because she wouldn’t. Around midday, Amber capitulated and went in search of her beige suit, unworn in years. She sponged it, hung it on the line to air, polished her best shoes. She was ironing when Jenny came home at three to bathe and wash her hair. Sissy’s green frock had miles of fabric in the skirt, fabric, Amber was attempting to explain to her, that would not travel well.
‘Wear your floral. It doesn’t crush, and if it is a little creased, it won’t be so obvious.’
‘I told you, I’m wearing the green,’ Sissy said.
They were still arguing when Jenny emerged half an hour later, her hair dripping. The iron had been put away. Cecelia was now seated between sink and table, Amber working around her, untying strips of sheeting, freeing thirty corkscrew curls and not doing it gently. Jenny stood in the doorway combing her hair and watching them, listening to a pair of cats snarling.
‘Stop pulling it!’
‘The rag is knotted. Sit still.’
‘Cut it then.’
‘If you sit still, I’ll get it undone.’
‘Get her the scissors,’ Sissy said.
Jenny got them; didn’t offer them but placed them on the table. No ‘thank you’, not from Sissy nor Amber, but they were used, the knot cut, the rag removed and the process continued. One after the other those curls were released. Amber would brush them later, let them fall just a little, then fiddle them into whatever style Sissy demanded.
How many times have I watched this? Once, twice a week since I was ten, Jenny thought. Maybe a hundred times a year for four years. How many times have I stood watching her powder Sissy’s freckles, shape her eyebrows, paint her mouth, dress her, pin on her hat? She’s like a kid dressing her doll, Jenny thought, but maybe she’s growing out of dolls, or maybe it’s just today. Her hands were shaking.
She had small hands. Granny’s hands were as big as a man’s and looked as hard-working as a man’s. Jenny looked at her own hand. Maisy had always said that she resembled Amber. Her hand didn’t. Jenny’s hand was larger; her fingertips were square, as were her fingernails.
Sissy’s fingers came to a point. Jenny had big hands, like Granny’s, but her fingernails were small, like Norman’s. She had Granny’s hair. Studying people up close was as interesting as studying fleas under the microscope.
She bit at a ragged fingernail. Biting it only made it more ragged. They weren’t using the scissors. She reached for them, snipped and watched a nail fly.
‘Pick that up,’ Amber snapped.
‘Where did it land?’
‘Probably in my hair,’ Sissy said, shaking her head as Amber untied another rag.
‘Sit still!’
‘You’re pulling it on purpose,’ Sissy said.
‘Get your hair permed and it will stay curly,’ Jenny said.
‘And end up like Mrs Bull with a head of wire,’ Sissy said.
‘Will you hold your head still, Cecelia!’
‘I’m holding it still.’
‘If my hair was straight I wouldn’t want it curled,’ Jenny said.
‘You say that because it’s not straight!’
Jenny snipped another fingernail, watching where it fell, wondering if it had landed beside its mate. Somewhere near the hearth. She walked around the table to find it, reached down to retrieve it, and Amber grabbed a handful of her hair.
‘You told me to pick it up!’
‘You bitch of a girl. I don’t need your agitation today!’
‘I don’t need you pulling my hair either. Let me go.’
She tried to pull her hair free. It was wet, it might have slipped free had Amber not wound a hank around her hand. If Amber hadn’t whacked her across the head, Jenny might not have done it, but the scissors were still in her hand and it seemed that she had three choices: drop them, stab Amber’s hand with them—or use them to free herself.
They were sharp. Close to her ear, they made a grinding noise—and Amber was left holding a hank of hair, more hair than Jenny had thought. She stood staring at it. Amber stared at it. Sissy’s eyes almost looked big.
You can’t take back the bite of scissors—like the sleeves she’d cut from that pink frock. You might like to take it back, but you can’t.
She tossed the scissors down and ran. Halfway across to the station, she found the bunch of blunt ends behind her left ear. She wheeled around, looked at the house, wanting to run back. Couldn’t go back and get that hair. Couldn’t even hide there. Looked at the station, pulled her remaining hair forward. She’d have enough to cover the gap when it dried. Could never tie it back again though.
‘Hell,’ she swore. ‘Hell and double hell and damn too,’ and she ran down the fence and across the railway lines, hoping Norman wouldn’t see her. In beneath the peppercorn tree to feel the damage. Should have run to Maisy—except the twins would kill themselves laughing if they were at home. Couldn’t go to the Palmers’. They were too sensible to ever do anything without thinking about it for two weeks. Over the road, running then, running down past the hotel. There was only one place she could go. Past old Noah, busy raking the dirt beneath the hotel verandah. They’d pay him with a meal, or maybe a drink. She didn’t speak to him, just kept running.
Norman would hate her. She’d never had her hair cut in her life. And she couldn’t go to the talent quest. And she couldn’t win the twenty pounds and buy that blue dress for herself. She’d done a stupid thing. She’d done the most stupid thing she’d ever done in her life.
Down past Hooper’s corner, past Macdonald’s mill, then out along the bush road to Granny. She’d have to hide down there until her hair grew back, that’s all.
Hide down there until her hair grew back. Cover up. Cover it up.
Her feet slowed. She glanced at the trees hugging each side of the road. There was something about haircuts and staying at Granny’s, something long, long ago. She’d . . . she’d cut her hair before. Once before.
Before what?
Before Amber went away.
Amber in her big white dress. Amber the monster. Mr Foster’s clunking boot.
‘Charlie’s jar of humbugs . . .’
Forgot the trees. Forgot their trunks were hiding murderers, their prison bars were locking her into the road, forgot everything except . . . hiding . . . hiding at Granny’s at the end of the road.
Gertrude saw her coming. She walked up the track to meet her, and Jenny was over the gate, howling now that she was safe, now that Gertrude’s big safe hard-working hands were holding her, patting her shoulder, smoothing back that tangle of drying curls—and finding those blunt ends and not believing the evidence of her eyes.
‘Did she do that to you?’
Jenny’s hand reached to cover what Gertrude had exposed. ‘I did it.’
‘Whatever would possess you to go and do a thing like that?’
‘I didn’t know I was cutting so much.’
‘You’re singing tonight.’
‘I can’t now,’ she howled.
Gertrude led her inside. She poured her a mug of water, offered a damp cloth to cool her face, while Jenny sobbed out the whole sorry tale of Amber not wanting to go tonight and Sissy snarly because she wouldn’t go. She bawled harder when she reached the chapter on Sissy’s green dress that was made of spider’s web.
‘And she bought me a brown prison dress, which no one would make the worst murderer in the world wear—even if she was being hanged. And he let her do it, Granny. And I told him Miss Blunt let me try on the blue dress. I told him she’d hung it in the back room for me, and he let her get away with buying me a brown thing that . . . that Mrs Duffy wouldn’t wear to a funeral.’
‘Shush, now,’ Gertrude soothed. ‘You’ll put my chooks off the lay for a week with all that noise.’
‘But it’s not fair, Granny. And you know Sissy’s daffodil dress—Dad gave it to me when they threw it out, and she burned it. She’s evil, and I remembered that she was always the same, even before, even when I lived down here. Why does everyone . . . why do you all cover up for her?’
Jenny rarely told tales. She was making up for lost time today, spilling the lot, shedding her every hurt, along with buckets of tears. Her eyes were swollen, her nose blocked by tears, her voice full of tears.
‘You have to stop crying, darlin’. You won’t be able to sing tonight.’
‘I can’t sing! I’m never singing again. I’m staying down here with you and Elsie and Joey and I’m never seeing anyone ever again.’
‘Vern gave me his old wireless so Elsie and Joey can hear you tonight. You’re not going to disappoint them, are you? And who is going to know if you’re wearing a prison dress or your nightie if you’re singing on the wireless?’
‘We have to sing at the concert first, and Maisy said they could only get tickets right up in the back row because they’ve all sold out, so thousands of people will know what I’m wearing it, Granny, and I wouldn’t wear that brown thing if I was ninety-nine and dying of leprosy—and I’m not wearing anything anyway, because I’m not going anywhere until my hair grows.’
‘It took fourteen years to get this long. Can you live down here until you’re twenty-eight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Or will we just cut the rest of it off to match it?’
Jenny sniffed, wiped her eyes with the cloth and looked at her grandmother. ‘Can you?’
‘Elsie and Joey trust me with a pair of scissors.’
‘Will I look stupid?’
‘No more so than you do now.’
Jenny’s hand reached for short tufts, shorter now than when they’d been wet. Given their freedom from the dragging length, they’d dried into tight curls.
‘Would it all go like those bits?’
‘It would.’
They took a chair out to the sunlight later and Gertrude found her scissors. She was afraid to begin, unsure of where to begin.
‘It’s going to be like harvesting a hundred-acre wheat paddock with a kitchen knife, darlin’. I hate making that first cut.’
‘I made it, Granny. Just . . . just finish it.’
She cut, and bunches of gold fell to the dirt. She snipped until she found a shape she could work with, then her scissors became more selective, while Jenny sat eyes closed, soothed by the sun and her grandmother’s touch, calmed by the snip of the scissors shaping her hair. Shaping it in at the nape of her neck, leaving it full at the crown, Gertrude’s fingers measuring, matching the mutilated side to the other, her hands very certain.
They’d learnt their skills from a hard taskmaster and she was back with him, standing beneath an earlier sun, snipping enough but not too much. He’d been a vain man. Cut his hair too short and when he washed his curls, they coiled like springs back to his scalp. There were two weeks between a good haircut and a bad. She’d suffered through a couple of bad weeks.
Such familiar hair, the feel of it, the smell of it. She wet her hands, wet the curls, knowing exactly how that hair would behave when given water. She combed it up from the nape of the neck, watched the stubble become tight springs.
A breath held too long, released in a sigh, she stepped back—like a sleepwalker suddenly awakened, and surprised to find herself in her own yard, outside her own front door, Jenny seated on a battered kitchen chair, a cloud of gold spread at her feet. She was surprised too at what she had created.
‘Have a look at yourself,’ she said.
Lengths of hair clinging to her skirt, her shoes, Jenny stood, brushing them, kicking them off, while Gertrude brushed more from her back. Inside to the washstand mirror then, and shocked at what she saw.
‘I look like a boy.’
‘But a beautiful boy,’ Gertrude said.
‘I feel light-headed.’
Gertrude’s own head felt light. Too long standing in the sun, or that was her excuse.
‘Dad will hate me.’
‘It will fluff up when it dries. It will look a lot more. Clean up the mess for me, darlin’, while I make us a cup of tea.’
Needed her outside, just for a moment, just until she gathered her wits. She walked to her table to lean a while, her eyes not leaving that girl’s head, bobbing about outside as she gathered that fallen hair. The sun had bleached the longer lengths, but close into the scalp the colour was a rich, burnished gold.
‘Do I look that terrible?’ Jenny said.
‘You look beautiful.’
‘You’re looking at me funny.’
‘I was thinking about Harry working for days on Vern’s old wireless, getting a truck battery to connect up to it so we can hear you sing tonight,’ she lied.
‘I got nits once. Dad wouldn’t let Maisy cut my hair. I can’t . . . I can’t let him see me like this.’ ‘You did what you did, darlin’. You should have thought of that before you did it.’
‘She was pulling my hair. I wanted to get away.’
‘Tell your dad. He’ll understand.’
‘You can’t tell him things he doesn’t want to know! He’s like a horse wearing blinkers. He can’t look left or right—and anyway, only the finalists will be on the wireless. I won’t get into the finals.’
‘You’ve got a darn good chance, and I’m not the only one in town who’s saying so. Mr Cox was talking to me the other day. His son is driving him and his wife down, just to hear you. Vern reckons you’ve already got it won.’
‘Why does a mother buy a gorgeous dress for one daughter and a prisoner’s uniform for the other?’
‘You’re fourteen years old, darlin’. Sissy is a grown woman.’
‘That doesn’t wash any more, Granny. She came home when Sissy was fourteen. She’s been buying her pretty things since. I love pretty things too.’
‘You’ll have them when you’re older.’
‘I thought I had that blue dress. I tried it on and it was perfect. And she took it back. It’s like . . . it’s like if someone gave you a whole bar of chocolate and you took one tiny little taste, then they snatched it away and handed you a huge bowl of raw liver. And I can’t swallow it, Granny. I just can’t.’
‘Don’t start crying again. You’ve done enough of that to last you for twelve months.’
‘You tell me then why she hates me.’
‘She doesn’t hate you.’
‘Oh, Granny, you know she does. You know she hates you too.’
‘That’s enough now.’
‘You’re wearing blinkers too. Every time you see me, you say, “How is your mother?” As if one day when you ask, I’ll say, “Oh, we had the priest around last night and he exorcised her devil out of her.” ’
‘I don’t like that sort of talk.’
‘Then you’re lucky you don’t hear her talking about you to Sissy. She says worse.’
Gertrude took her teapot outside to empty around the roots of her rose. Jenny picked up the damp rag and blew her nose on it. She was lifting the hot plate to burn it when Gertrude came back.
‘You walk away because you don’t want to know anything that’s true.’
Gertrude placed the teapot down. ‘I walk away because it’s easier on the heart, darlin’, easier if I pretend that something isn’t what it is. I gave your mother life, and when she was a little girl she loved me.’
‘I love you, Granny, and I always will.’
‘Do you want to know why?’
‘You tell me why.’
‘Because you’re the only other normal person in the family.’
They laughed then, and Gertrude looked at the clock. ‘What time are you leaving?’
‘I’m still not ever leaving, but they’re leaving at six. Sissy will have more room to spread her skirt. It’s got miles and miles of material in it.’
She stood before the washstand mirror, combing her hair and watching it settle back to where it wanted to settle. ‘Do I look like her with my hair short?’
‘You look like yourself.’
‘I remind myself of someone I’ve seen.’
‘What are you going to wear tonight if you don’t wear your brown dress?’
‘You don’t believe me, do you? I’m not going. I’m never even going home. You’ve got a spare bed now.’
‘Tonight is your big opportunity to show what you can do to more than Woody Creek and you’re not missing out on it.’
‘My big opportunity to watch my sister make a fool of herself and to watch Dad cringe. If I don’t go, he won’t go—more and more room for Sissy’s skirt.’
‘If you had a pretty dress to wear, you’d go.’
‘If pigs had wings, we could saddle them and ride up to take tea with the man in the moon.’
Gertrude glanced at her clock. There was a good hour to six—if her clock was right. She glanced towards her bedroom, then back to Jenny, who couldn’t get enough of pulling that comb through her short hair, or of the stranger in the mirror. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but Gertrude went to her bedroom and took the stranger’s gold crepe from her trunk.
‘Try that on.’
‘Elsie’s wedding dress?’
‘It should fit you.’
The comb and mirror lost their allure. ‘It’s . . . it’s too beautiful.’
‘Quickly then. It’s almost five, and that clock could be slow.’
‘God, Granny.’
‘Young ladies don’t blaspheme.’
Jenny stripped to her petticoat, tossed her faded navy dress over the back of a chair and slid into golden riches. Her petticoat was too long. The dress came off. Her petticoat came off. She didn’t need it anyway; that frock had its own built-in petticoat of gold silk.
‘It’s too—’
Lost for words then. It was too everything—the silk against skin accustomed to cotton, the weight of it, and the skirt, almost clinging to her hips but not quite. It was short. It barely reached to mid-knee. It had been longer on Elsie. There was very little of it, but what there was was far too much.
‘It’s so pure, unadulterated gorgeous, Granny. Who made it?’
‘It was bought a long way from Woody Creek, many years ago,’ Gertrude said, turning her around, needing to see the all-over picture. Its square-cut neckline was wide but not low. It had sleeves, small sleeves, no waist, a lot of beading. It was a woman’s frock, but modest enough for a girl.
‘Your neck looks bare.’
‘You just didn’t know I had one, that’s all.’
‘It hasn’t seen much daylight, darlin’,’ Gertrude said, and she returned to her bedroom.
This time Jenny followed her, stood over her eager to see what else she might whip up with her magic wand or dig out of her trunk. Old garments were lifted out to the floor, most stiff with age, her wedding photograph was placed face down. Jenny pounced on that. She remembered it, remembered its fancy frame.
‘Leave it!’
Too late.
‘It used to hang on your wall with your fly swatter.’
‘A long, long time ago.’
Gertrude removed a large embroidered tablecloth, a wedding present she’d never used. She offered it in exchange for the photograph, but Jenny had returned to the kitchen to stand in the doorway staring at that photograph, or at her grandfather . . . a curly-headed boy!
‘Why didn’t you tell me when I asked?’
‘Tell you what?’
Head down in that near empty trunk and Gertrude couldn’t find what she knew was in there. A fancy vase, another wedding present came out. Her father’s family Bible. A shoe with a turned-up toe.
‘That I’m the image of Itchy-foot.’
Gertrude pounced on a grey leather pouch. ‘I knew it was in here.’
Stepping over old frocks, old shawls, tablecloth, her fingers working hard to untie a leather thong stiffened by age. She lifted back her bedroom curtain and saw Jenny holding that photograph, but staring at her.
‘That’s why she hates me. Because I’m the image of her father.’
‘You’re nothing like him. You couldn’t—’
The gathering of the pouch neck demanded Gertrude’s full attention; it didn’t want to release its prize, but she got it open and poured a string of amber beads to her palm.
‘I am like him,’ Jenny said, uninterested in beads. ‘And why couldn’t I be like him?’
‘Because you’re a beautiful young girl and all you’re looking at is his hair, and the only reason it looks the same is because I used to cut his in the same style. Now turn around.’
The amber beads filled the space nicely, and matched the beadwork of the dress, as she knew they would. Those school shoes and socks didn’t match anything. The stranger’s shoes were somewhere, and she may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. She looked in the bottom of her wardrobe, found them in the lean-to wardrobe, and Jenny more than willing to swap the photograph for the shoes.
Things like this didn’t happen to her. The shoes had high heels. She craved heels. They were a size too large, though.
‘Elsie’s sandals will fit you. Get them off,’ Gertrude said, again glancing at her clock.
‘Who did they belong to?’
‘Someone left them here, with the dress.’
They were a light tan, more sandal than shoe, the leather straps stiffened by fourteen years, the toes a mote misshapen by the newspaper Gertrude had stuffed into them.
‘They’re not that much too big.’ She tried walking in them. They made her tall, made her walk tall. ‘We could cut something up and put it in them. Miss Rose is always doing that with shoes at the concerts.’
Gertrude looked at what she’d done, at the shape of her granddaughter’s legs. Everything about that girl was class. She was long in the calf, her ankles were slim. She’d done the wrong thing in putting that dress on her, had got more than she expected. Elsie had lent it little shape; it had been longer on her. Jenny was doing something else to it—as her mother may have done something else to it.
‘Can I cut this up?’
There was a cardboard carton down the bottom end of the kitchen, overloaded with newspapers. Jenny had the scissors. They cut and trimmed cardboard innersoles and the shoes were back on.
‘Can you walk in them? And it’s no use saying you can if you can’t.’
‘I can fly in them, Granny.’
‘You’ll need to. Joey will take you in on Harry’s bike.’
The skirt rose up to her thighs when she straddled the rear seat of Harry’s bike, one of her shoes fell off. Harry picked it up, ran it up to them while Jenny removed the second shoe. She carried them the rest of the way, carried them to the King Street corner, where she decided she wasn’t going home to wait for the Hoopers and probably get murdered while she waited. She wasn’t riding by Hooper’s with her shoes off either. She’d walk the rest of the way like a lady.
They stopped at King’s corner. She leaned on Joey while she brushed her feet and got those shoes on. She straightened her skirt, then, because the world was a different place tonight and she a different person, she kissed her finger and touched it to his cheek.
‘Ta very muchly, Joey.’
‘I’ll be listening, so you’d better win,’ he said.
‘Cross your fingers for me.’
Jenny walked the block to Hooper’s corner, taking care where she put her feet. Heels were all very well, but not if you wanted to walk. And the cardboard innersoles were slippery. Her toes had to cling on like fingers.
But the car was in the side street, Jim cleaning dead insects from its windscreen.
‘Gord’s struth,’ he said. ‘What have you done to yourself, Jen?’
‘Haircut.’
Margaret joined them, clad in floral frills. ‘Oh, my, but don’t you look the smart one tonight,’ she said, her fishbowl eyes wide.
Lorna grunted a greeting and got into the car. Jenny thought to get in beside her, but Lorna had other ideas. She liked a window seat. ‘Other side,’ she said.
Safe then, jammed in the back seat between the Hooper sisters, not safe enough to stop her heart beating like a drum, to stop her throat from drying out, but pretty safe when they drove around to collect the rest of the party.
Norman had walked down to the station yard to look for her. Amber and Sissy were waiting on the verandah.
‘We’ve got Jen with us, Mr Morrison,’ Jim called.
Sissy saw her hair. She stared bug-eyed but made no comment. Amber didn’t look at her. The car would hold six in comfort. It didn’t like taking the seventh, but it did; Amber in the back seat beside Margaret, Norman and Sissy in front.
If Norman saw Jenny’s hair, her frock, he chose not to, and once in, there was no room for him to turn around. Like Cinderella, she was safe until midnight.