The Last Rose of Summer

by Di Morrissey

  ‘Now what?’ asked Odette trying to catch her breath.

  ‘Shine your torch to the side. There are metal spikes in the rock crevices and a chain between them, pull yourself up using the chain and keep your feet flat against the rock face.’

  These last couple of hundred yards were the hardest and then, they were there, sitting on top of a volcano that had erupted twenty million years ago and was frozen in time. The first streaks of piccaninny light bleached the night sky. Odette shivered as a cold breeze came up and she was glad to pull on her jumper.

  Zac pointed to the coast where a distant ribbon of lights glittered. Directly beneath them white mist floated, blanketing the valleys of the Tweed Basin. Then suddenly, far on the horizon, burned the first red and gold rays of the sun.

  Soon the blazing rim of the sun thrust a curve in the straight line of the horizon. Zac nudged Odette to look behind them. The full moon was sinking behind the mountains in a sky of gentle lavender and pinks. Before them the new day seemed to emerge from the sea, burning bright, with an intensity that was awesome.

  ‘We’re lucky it’s a clear morning; so often you get up here and the view is ruined by the mist, especially in the wet season.’

  Like an artist laying in a painting, the sun splashed colours on the drifty silver mist, steadily banishing it to deeper and darker hollows. Now revealed were the lush green valleys stretching to the coast. As the sun rose swiftly higher, the distinctive shadow of Mt Warning was thrown across onto the ranges behind them. Impulsively Odette jumped up and down to wave, hoping she’d see her shadow too on the grey-green carpet of mountain forest. Then she collapsed in laughter at her morning madness.

  Zac laughed and hugged her. They sat down on a rock and opened a packet of biscuits.

  ‘What else have you got in that bag of yours?’ Odette munched gratefully.

  ‘No hot tea I’m afraid. That can wait. So can the champagne, we’ll just celebrate with a kiss.’

  On top of that peak, seen for hundreds of miles, the two kissed and Odette felt they were alone in the world.

  ‘Thank you, Zac. For everything.’

  On the climb back down, morning light filtered through the trees of flooded gum, brush box and blackbutt, and they caught a glimpse of a sugar glider swooping home to hang upside down in a branch after a night of fruit hunting. The dawn chorus of the mountain birds had filled the air with an unbelievable volume of music and now they saw them, darting among the branches. A fat and unconcerned brush turkey marched ahead of them. Hearing an unusual call and scratching noises off the path, Zac and Odette parted some foliage to see in a small clearing a brown bird busily scratching leaves into a pile.

  ‘It’s an Albert lyrebird. They don’t have the big harp tail, but are rare. It’s considered a lucky omen to see one,’ whispered Zac.

  They took much longer than two hours to reach the base of the mountain and if it hadn’t been for the siren call of tea and toast from the Murwillumbah Cafe, Odette could have stayed in the bush all day. But the cafe had to wait.

  As they walked through the rainforest encircling the mountain, Zac took her hand and plunged from the track into the thickness of the undergrowth. In seconds they were in a lost land. Time ceased, centuries seemed but seconds when surrounded by the towering ancient trees. Moss-draped vines formed curtains between trees that were themselves covered with lichen, moss and sucker plants. On skeletons of fallen logs grew ferns and strangely coloured, weirdly shaped fungi. The light was soft green and misty and the pungent smell of rotting vegetation, dank earth and slow and eternal growth, was rich and sweet.

  ‘It’s like a fairy-tale movie set. But better,’ said Odette, her voice rasping with sudden emotion. She felt she was going to cry.

  ‘Could you do one last climb? I have a secret place.’

  ‘Climb? My legs are wobbly. Where?’

  Zac pointed to the top of the tree canopy. ‘Up there.’

  Taking her hand he led her to the base of an amazing tree. To Odette it looked like a filigree pillar stretching to heaven. A crisscrossed weaving of old fat vines stood like some abstract latticework ladder.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a strangler fig. A bird dropped a seed in the branches of a tree, it germinated, sent a shoot to the ground then more shoots grew around the host tree. The strangled tree finally rotted away leaving the fig with a hollow centre. See, it’s like a lacy ladder. Follow me. I’ve climbed this one before.’

  He reached out and helped her swing up into the tree. Odette was surprised at the strength of the twisted strangler vines. Slowly she followed Zac up the strange climbing frame.

  ‘Don’t look down,’ called Zac over his shoulder, watching Odette carefully following him, placing hand and foot where he did.

  They climbed past the tree ferns to about twenty feet above the ground, where several loops of the vine grew together making a safe platform — a natural treehouse. Zac sat down and helped Odette squeeze in beside him.

  ‘There. Isn’t this amazing?’

  Odette looked around her. Although the trees surrounding them still soared far up to make the canopy of the rainforest, she felt she was floating in green space. The air was moist and warm, and overhead was a thatched roof where smaller trees and vines interlaced, a green world protected from the sun’s harsh light by the umbrella of tree giants.

  ‘I feel like a bird in a nest. This is heavenly. Some treehouse, Zac.’

  ‘It’s a magical place all right. We must keep it this way.’

  ‘Well, it’s been here for centuries.’

  ‘This place has. But man has bitten into so many rainforests. They look strong but it’s a fragile balance in here. Once you chop into it, or make any change, it starts to die. It never comes back the way it was. These forests are the lungs of the earth. All the secrets of life are here. We just haven’t found them all yet.’

  ‘I know what you mean. Remember the Brush, the little patch of rainforest you first took me to in Amberville? When I last went back it had started to change. They’d cleared a picnic area, chopped down some trees trying to get rid of the flying foxes, and made it more accessible to the public. They’re ruining it. Why do we have to change everything? Why can’t we accept some things and leave them just as they are?’

  ‘That’s not human nature, Odette. Even you can’t always accept things just as they are, you want to change things sometimes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Zac took her hand. ‘Like me. What we have is special. But it will never be enough for you, because I won’t change to fit into your life or your world.’

  ‘But I can fit into yours,’ protested Odette.

  ‘It wouldn’t last, little bird.’ Zac took her hand and studied her palm. ‘And it says here, you will follow a very different path to me.’

  ‘What does it say?’ Odette asked in a small voice. She knew Zac was telling her something important.

  ‘My gypsy family told you that you had a definite path that will lead you to success and you must follow that or you will be frustrated. You have a gift and you must use it. Your heart line leads to happiness after a small detour and links back to its beginning.’

  ‘You’re telling me you are a small detour?’

  He curled her hand closed and looked into her eyes. ‘I’m telling you that you are special to me, there will only ever be you in my life, but not so in yours. Don’t try to understand or question this, Odette. There is someone who will make you happy. But it is not to be me.’

  ‘Zac, why not?’ Odette started to cry like a little girl. ‘I don’t understand. I won’t ever love anyone but you,’ she added fiercely.

  Zac smiled and smoothed her hair like a father settling down a small child after a tempestuous outburst.

  ‘Yes you will, Odette. I have been your first love and that is always special. Just remember that.’

  ‘You make it sound like it’s over.’ She stopped crying but felt immeasurably sad.

 
; ‘What we have doesn’t just go away. I’ll always be with you. Now come on, down we go to tea and toast. Let me go first.’

  Odette concentrated on the climb back down, peering into what had been the body of an ancient and massive tree, killed by the arms that had hugged it to extinction in a deathly embrace. Vaguely she wondered if it was possible to love so much that you smothered the one you loved.

  By the time she was tucking into raisin toast dripping with butter, and a pot of strong tea, Zac had restored her cheerful spirits with his chatter and a silly song sung softly across the table.

  While nothing seemed to change over the next few days, Odette realised thoughts of her other life were creeping in and she found herself wondering what was happening in the outside world. The more she thought of that other world, the more her thoughts turned to her future. Just where was she going? What was she going back to?

  Her experience on the mountain had opened up something within her and with great clarity she saw her future did not include Zac. Not as a life partner, although they had a special and spiritual connection, but somewhere there was another love waiting. Painful as it was, she realised she had to let go of Zac and put him in another context in her life. However, thoughts of returning to the familiarity of her previous routine disturbed and bored her. More and more she was feeling the lure of travel. New places, new people, new scenery, new challenges. A change would help the healing process, she decided. Was it running away? No, it was spreading her wings. The idea excited her.

  She had her bags packed when Zac returned to the cottage later that day.

  His gaze fell on the canvas bag by the door. ‘So. It’s time, little bird.’

  ‘Yes, Zac. I’m leaving. I’m going to travel a bit. Go abroad, I’ve decided.’

  He nodded. ‘A good idea.’

  He waited with her for the train and gave her a swift hug, whispering in her ear, ‘Fly high and safe. You know I’m always part of your life.’

  ‘Yes, Zac. But not in the way I want. I need a little time to . . . readjust.’

  As the train trundled south Odette scribbled the names of cities and countries on a piece of paper, realising there was a whole world to see. Too hard, she decided, so closed her eyes and stabbed her finger at the list. When she looked down she was pointing to Italy.

  Florence. That was as good a place as any to start. She started making plans. She’d be gone before she had the chance to change her mind.

  Two months later Odette travelled from Italy to Greece and then, needing money and wanting the stimulation of work, she went to London. Fleet Street, the mecca of journalists, beckoned. She rang the Gazette and its sister newspaper the Daily Telegraph and told them she was in London and they put her in touch with their bureau, anxious she start filing stories as soon as she could.

  Her reports for the magazine and newspaper from London were assiduously followed in Australia and she soon made a name for herself in Fleet Street as a feature writer for Lord Northcliffe’s string of newspapers.

  The era of the swinging sixties in London was fun and stimulating and as the decade of the seventies approached, she felt a new age was indeed around the corner.

  After nearly five years Odette didn’t make a conscious decision to return to Australia, but she was longing for blue skies, sunshine, warm surf and cold beer. Her bones had begun to feel constantly damp, it had been a miserable winter. She began to think she’d done every type of story Britain had to offer.

  She rang Aunt Harriet on a periodic check-in, for unlike her methodical aunt who wrote every three weeks, Odette found the phone was more convenient, if expensive.

  They exchanged pleasantries, news of the weather and suddenly Aunt Harriet asked when she might be heading back home.

  ‘I haven’t any plans, though I have been thinking about coming home.’

  ‘I wish you would. I think there’s a story you should do.’

  Odette groaned inwardly. ‘Give me the gist of it, this is long distance, remember.’ She didn’t have a lot of faith in her aunt’s news sense.

  In the lounge room of the little house in Amberville, Aunt Harriet drew a deep breath and spoke as fast as she could.

  ‘Mrs Bramble from next door to your parents’ home in Kincaid wants your help. Some group of developers want to pull down Zanana and chop up the land. She wants you to do a story and save it.’

  At that instant Odette came to a conclusion.

  ‘Do you want to know the details, dear?’

  ‘Not at the moment, Aunt Harriet.’

  There was no point. Odette knew she had to leave. To save Zanana.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Zanana 1922

  For the first time in her life, Kate felt lonely at Zanana. She wandered aimlessly in the rose garden, idly watched a green frog plop from a lily pad into the pond and traced the shadow of time on the sundial. She walked to the top of the rise where the swooping marble angel guarded her parents’ graves and finally she wandered to the Indian House and sat in its quiet and dim coolness.

  Kate wondered if she was finding it too quiet after the hurly-burly of the social scene in Sydney. Or was it because most of the war veterans had left, some going home, some taking up soldier-settler farms out west? Perhaps it was because Ben was no longer on the estate.

  Whatever the reason, she somehow felt her dreams for Zanana were slipping through her fingers. Kate closed her eyes and let the old magic of the Indian House take over her thoughts. Slowly she slipped into a world without light, without images, a world of floating tranquillity.

  Mrs Butterworth confided — as she did so often these days — in Wally Simpson. ‘She appears to be at some sort of crossroads, Wal. I don’t know how to help her. I suppose she will make her mind up about matters in due course.’

  ‘Or someone else will make it up for her.’

  ‘What do you mean? Kate is very independent, no one can tell her what to do.’

  ‘I don’t mean so much telling her what to do, as influencing her decision. You know how fate has a way of stepping in. Let her be, Glad, and see what happens. She’s not unhappy, just a little rudderless at the moment.’

  Gladys Butterworth sighed. How right he was. Looking back over the years, the pattern of her own life had indeed swerved from what seemed to be a set course. When she and Harold had first settled at Zanana from Bangalow, she imagined they would see out their days on the estate, tending to the needs of the Maclntyres. Then had come the death of Catherine and Robert. The war. Losing Harold. And now Kate, a girl who should have everything, drifting like a lost shadow through the vast grounds and vacant rooms of a mansion built as a sanctuary for a woman — her mother — who was deeply loved and never lonely.

  Kate slept in the Indian House till late afternoon. Her awakening was languid. As the world came back to her consciousness, she realised that something had changed. She felt very calm, very relaxed. Then she recognised what was different — she was free of the confusion of thoughts that had her wandering in mental circles earlier in the day. Her mind was at ease.

  Outside a magpie warbled and, as if responding to its song, Kate sat up. She paused at the edge of the ancient, ornate bed and marvelled quietly at the clarity of her thoughts. She was aware of a wonderful inner strength which, as she sat enveloped in the warm glow of the room, swelled into a feeling of great determination and a positive sense of direction. No longer did she feel lost. The way ahead was clear — it was time to claim her inheritance and take full control of Zanana.

  It was as if she had found a new sense of identity, a recognition of who she really was, where she had come from and what she must be in the future. It was futile, she recognised with relief, to pretend to be someone you weren’t simply because others had a perception of position based on inheritance. Instead, she now had a greater appreciation of the humble origins of her parents, the simple and honest values of her guardians — Gladys and Harold and now Wally — and the tremendous impact the role of Zanana had on he
r values and attitudes.

  She walked to the door and looked out across the rose garden to a golden sunset. ‘End of the day, end of a chapter,’ she mused to herself. But the chapter had really ended months before when she had celebrated her twenty-first birthday — she simply hadn’t recognised the full significance of her decision at that time.

  Kate had turned down suggestions that the occasion be shared with the Sydney social set. Instead, she insisted on holding a party for all the people of Zanana — staff and veterans. Hock Lee came out from the city and presided over the formalities, which concluded with a magnificent fireworks display that for a short while recaptured the glamour and spectacle of Zanana.

  The party had been immensely enjoyable for Kate, even though Ben hadn’t been there. Hock Lee had made a speech in which he announced that Kate had come of age and was now legally the mistress of Zanana. However, the significance of that had meant little to Kate on that evening of fun, fireworks, music and dancing.

  But it certainly meant something to her now as she shut the door of the Indian House and walked slowly down to the grotto. Following the twists of the fern-fringed path, she peered into the magical little caves where Ben’s whimsical creatures grinned out at her, and admired the tiny orchids that bloomed in mossy crevices.

  The grotto . . . he had built it as a gift for her. She would never forget the happy moments they shared here; but precious though it was, it was only a small part of Zanana. In her mind now was the future of her estate. It was time to act, and she knew clearly what she had to do to give her life purpose and direction.

  Her first step the next day was to telephone Hock Lee and she was only momentarily disappointed to find that he was away on a business trip. She quickly decided to handle matters herself and made another telephone call, this time to her solicitor.

  Zanana now had its own car, a Model-T Ford, which Wally Simpson drove, mainly on errands for the estate, transporting the veterans when necessary, and occasionally taking Kate to the city.