Swords and Crowns and Rings (52 page)

The story of the old man who expired with cold and exhaustion in a pig-pen was the subject of that day's editorial. It was picked up by the wire services and reprinted all over the Commonwealth, for in its squalid way it seemed to symbolise the apparently unsolvable plight of the unemployed, now totalling thirty per cent of the population, working women not counted. Those in work struggled with radically reduced wages.

In her grandmother's old home in Sydney, Dorothy Moy read the story, and saw that John Luke Hanna had been spokesman for those travellers who had been with the dead man during his last hours. She was alone, and lonely, and for some time after she had put down the paper walked up and down the drawing-room, seeing her tall slender figure move like a ghost or shadow in the greenish Victorian mirrors, whispering to herself, ‘He's getting nearer.'

The little town of Edith was generous, and the fund opened for the de facto widow of the dead man quickly climbed to £400, a large sum for a district getting along on the smell of an oil rag.

On his way down the main street after leaving the newspaper office, Jackie Hanna saw a fourpenny bin outside a second-hand shop. It was full of dirty old books. There he found two textbooks on economics, so tattered that he bargained the shopkeeper into letting him have the pair for fivepence.

6

Jackie Hanna, Cushie Moy 1931–1932

Although it was spring, the evenings still belonged to winter. From the Harbour blew a pinching wind, smelling of cast-up seaweed and dying mussels, and turpentine logs tethered in rafts in Blackwattle Bay. Dorothy was glad the fire had been lit early in the drawing-room. Granny's brown plush chair was still drawn up beside it, her knitting bag pinned to the half-bald arm.

‘Shall I have it put away, Miss Dorothy?' the housekeeper had asked months before, after Clara Jackaman had died. Dorothy shook her head.

The woman hesitated, saying at last, ‘Excuse me, Miss Dorothy...forgive me, Miss dear. It's not my place, but I know Madam would wish...you should go out more. It's not good for a young person. You have to get over it. Mrs Jackaman would want that.' And she began to cry herself, her wholesome pink face putting on a grimace of shame and distress.

Dorothy put her arms about her, let her cry. Mrs Marion had come as housemaid to Jackaman Court more than thirty years before, when old Joseph Jackaman had died and left the ornate Victorian house to his estranged son, James. She had married James's first butler, dead a long time now. For the past twenty years she had been Clara's faithful servant and perhaps only true friend.

After a while Mrs Marion said, ‘We shouldn't grieve for her. She missed Mr James so much, and then there was the other—her little weakness.'

For Clara, old lady Jackaman, that genial, succulently kind old woman, passed over with impatience and a faint disdain by her snobbish daughters, had been a drunk. She had always been fond of a little tiddle, a tiny drop, a spot, phrases which she had accompanied by a roguish or deprecatory twinkle. But after the death of James she had flown to the bottle for everything—sleep, surcease from grief, loneliness, even her own shame and distress at her drunkenness. When her daughters had discovered her disgraceful secret she had been so humiliated she had drunk more than ever. There had been no one but Mrs Marion to protect her until her grandchild, Dorothy Moy, had come.

Sitting solitary beside the fire, Dorothy thought of that afternoon, so long ago, more than six years ago, when she had left Claudie and Iris and taken a taxi to Jackaman Court to ask her grandmother if she could stay with her. The taxi-driver had been plaintive. ‘Why didn't you say you wanted to go to Rag Castle, love? All this time looking for Whatsname Court!'

The house was of a style often seen in the older-settled Sydney areas, a fanciful Gothic castle with flat roof and corners enriched with turrets prickled like lobsters and encased in verdigrised copper. The small-paned windows were set in deep embayed arches, and here and there on the sandstone walls were niches as though to hold statues instead of the wind-sown ivy that tumbled or stirred like green banners.

She was ushered in by a flustered maid, and stood bewildered amongst her luggage on the black and white tiles of the cavernous hall. Then suddenly, down the staircase, came lurching and tripping her grandmother, with her hair fallen in thin plaits down her back, her face puffy and blotched. After her hastened a short, wiry, uniformed woman.

‘Granny, what's the matter?' cried Dorothy, hastening forward to catch hold of her grandmother as she reached the foot of the stairs. Clara wept. ‘Is that you, Dorothy? Is it really you?' She seized the girl frantically. ‘Don't let her get me, lovie. I'm frightened of her nose.'

As Dorothy looked, the short woman put a firm hand on Clara's arm and said authoritatively, ‘Now, Madam, stop playing up. Come along with me at once.' Dorothy saw that she did indeed have a huge lilac beak. Over her head the girl saw Mrs Marion, looking agitated.

Dorothy said, ‘You don't remember me, Mrs Marion? I'm Miss Isobel's daughter.'

‘Oh, Miss,' said Mrs Marion in a curious embarrassment, ‘we didn't know you were expected. Madam isn't herself. Now, Madam, let Nurse take you to bed, you're not well.'

The old woman turned upon Dorothy such a disordered face that the girl said, ‘I'll take her. Just show me the way.'

She had realised at once that Clara was drunk, and was dumbfounded. Did grandmothers get drunk? Her own grandmother? Such compassion and love swept over her that her eyes blazed, and the nurse fell back angrily, her nose turning a darker shade.

As they passed her, the old woman slurred triumphantly, ‘See? My little granddaughter is going to look after me. And you can get out of my home, and take your boko with you.'

Thinking of that evening, Dorothy could only recall herself and Mrs Marion half-carrying the heavy old lady up the stairs, and a scene of extraordinary unlikelihood going on in the hall: her Aunt Australia suddenly entering the front door, in a grey fur jacket, pulling off her hat as she came; the nurse losing her head altogether and shouting, ‘That's the end. I give notice. Boko indeed! Just the kind of word I'd expect from a common old boozer.'

‘Bring the car around for Nurse Riding, Robert,' Dorothy heard Australia's voice order some hitherto unseen manservant. ‘As for you, Nurse—get your things together immediately.'

When Clara was in bed, singing and muttering, Mrs Marion hovering beside her, Australia came into the room.

‘Disgusting cow, I'm glad to see the back of her. Never happy with her. Well, Dorothy, what brought you here this afternoon?'

Dorothy said, ‘I want to stay with Granny for a while, if she'll have me. I've had some upsets.'

Australia glanced at her sharply. ‘And do you still want to stay, now that you've participated in our domestic dramas? I must warn you, they occur frequently.'

The girl nodded.

‘Right,' said Australia. ‘Mrs Marion, you could put her in the green bedroom?' Suddenly she gave a harsh chirp of laughter. ‘Boko! That did it. Touch her boko and you've touched a tiger. Good for Mother.' She turned abruptly, saying over her shoulder. ‘No one but Miss Dorothy and myself for dinner tonight, Mrs Marion. We'll have it on the table in the bay window. Seven thirty, Dorothy.'

The bay window was full of flowering plants. Through the silken leaves of begonias Dorothy saw a lighted ship, towering over the house, only two hundred yards from the window.

‘Yes, we're just above wharves, docks, fitting yards,' said Australia. ‘The place is bedlam sometimes, with maritime noises. Then there's dust, dirt...oh, the whole district is running down like a clock. It's absurd that Mother should stay here by herself in a grimy industrialised dump.'

‘You don't live here, Aunt?' ventured Dorothy.

‘I've an apartment on the roof of the Emporium,' said Australia. ‘But since Mother really took to sozzling, I'm nearly always here. Mrs Marion is devoted, but I can't leave all the burden to her. Mother must have someone with her most of the time.'

‘There's me,' said Cushie. Australia shot her a look.

‘You've cleared out from the Duchess of York Annexe then, have you?' she asked.

Dorothy shook her head. She said, ‘I'd better tell you the whole story. You mightn't want to have me here.'

She told the tale baldly, as if she'd read it in a police report. Australia smoked, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another immediately. At last Dorothy stopped. She said almost inaudibly, ‘I suppose you're shocked.'

‘No,' said Australia. ‘I'm too old.'

Dorothy giggled nervously. ‘You're a funny aunt.'

‘Compared with my sisters,' said Australia, ‘I certainly am. We won't let them know anything of this. It's your personal affair. So tell me what you want to do now.'

Dorothy said, ‘I don't want to go to England with Mama and Daddy. I feel I can't go back to being...being a daughter.'

Australia widened her eyes. They were of a peculiarly attractive smoky blue. Her lashes were dark and curly, though her shingled hair was greying. She said, ‘You're astute, my dear. My sister Isobel is not going to take kindly to being defied, however.'

Dorothy said in a low voice, ‘I didn't mean to hurt Mama and Daddy, you know. And I get on very well with Granny.'

She began to cry silently.

Australia sat smoking, not saying anything. The window filled with fireflies—masthead lights, fuzzed portholes. She could hear the ferries grunting across the Harbour. She remained silent while the girl wept, recognising the monstrous simplicity of this young creature, victim of the terrible fevers of youth.

Recalling her own girlhood, she saw her niece as a similarly shapeless character, directed by nonsensical yearnings and ideals, hedged in by merciless prejudices and great barren despairs.

‘All,' thought Australia wryly, ‘to be pruned and deflated by life.'

‘You'll despise me,' muttered the girl at last, ‘for being so silly.'

‘No,' said her aunt. ‘I don't think you're silly at all. It's just that you've been expected to know things intuitively when it's quite impossible for you to do so. It's a mistake most mothers make with girls, I think. A nice girl ought to know without being told. But if she doesn't, it's her fault.'

Dorothy looked taken aback. Australia could see that she was thinking, ‘How does this old woman know?'

‘Come on. Off to bed,' she said briskly. She had a pleasantly fogged voice, doubtless from the cigarettes.

So began Dorothy's years with her grandmother. Old Clara was in raptures. She was a sweet-natured woman, a little frightened of her fashionable, patronising daughters. She enjoyed simple pleasures, cups of tea, a game of cards, lots of chat. She was adept at hiding bottles, in her wash-jug, amongst her hats, in the toy cupboard in the old nursery. But Dorothy kept her busy, so that she had little time for solitary drinking. Besides, she was happier. She did not need liquor so much.

Australia said, ‘I was at my wits' end. Thank God you came along.'

In effect, Clara became Dorothy's baby, a good-tempered, boozy old baby, docile and kind. Granny could be very gritty though, where her principles were involved. She wrote a hard reproachful letter to her daughter Belle about the abortion, and Isobel wrote a frigidly angry one to Dorothy, accusing her of treachery and lack of honour.

So when Bede Moy died with another heart attack it was Olwyn who broke the news to Cushie. It was fortunate that Clara was in the middle of a long drinking-spell; the girl had so many cares that her sorrow at her father's death could not be indulged. Clara, drunk, was a compulsive talker. She babbled most of the night about old times and forgotten people, old Joey Jackaman and the devil he was, how frightened of him all the girls in the workroom were; young James with his red hair and his trace-horse, which he would hitch onto gentlemen's carriages at the bottom of steep Druitt Street to help pull them up to the top, sixpence a time; and how one day he hitched onto the vehicle of a young gentleman with a pug face and hair even redder than the urchin James's, and how he turned out to be Henry Parkes, who was to be Premier, and, long afterwards, the Father of Federation. That was James Jackaman's start in life, said Clara.

She spoke, too, of old Joey's wife Beck, whose name had been given to Dorothy as her second. She was a black-eyed Cornish-woman, some said a gipsy, who could read and write, and had a certain refinement. She died in 1868.

Sometimes early in the morning Mrs Marion would come and whisper, ‘You go to bed, Miss dear. I'll watch her now.'

But Dorothy could not sleep. She roamed the vast empty house, twelve bedrooms, mostly shut up now, smelling wanly of lavender and naphthalene, bedrooms once occupied by Clara's large family. She imagined the girls dancing, running up and down the stairs, in those days of bustles, ostrich feathers, magnificent baroque hats. Australia hanging the black flag out the window on Mafeking Night. No, that would not have been here, but in the house Clara and James occupied before old Mr Jackaman died. But to this house, Jackaman Court, wicked Australia had run away to live with her wickeder grandfather, because her father would not let her be independent, would not allow her a position on his newspaper, and she had shouted at him that she would rather kill herself than just be a lady. So old Joey had let her learn the ropes at the Emporium, at first merely to spite James. And when he died, as the bells were ringing for Federation in 1901, old Mr Jackaman had left Australia full control of the great store.

Dorothy wondered if her own father had ever been in this house. But it was unlikely, for he had been only an accounts clerk on Grandfather's newspaper, the
Nation.
She stood in the dark room, her head downcast, leaving herself open to the pure grief she had for her father. How well she understood now the pathos of his life, his struggle to rise above that dock-side family into which he had been born! His had been a slender character, she could see that now; his small ambitions had seemed great to him—respect at the Bank, a secure job, childlike vanities. They seemed like buttons and brass farthings to his daughter; but he had worked for them; they had been his right. Yet she had, in all innocence, helped to take them away. She knew her mother would tell her, one day, that she had contributed to Daddy's death, and perhaps she had.