Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  ‘It’s kind of you Danny, but – ’

  I cut off as a young woman approached us. She smiled at me as she took her place by Danny, touching him on the arm to get his attention.

  She made a series of swift signs, all of which I missed. Then she looked at me, still smiling, and thrust out a slender hand. ‘Hi, I’m Nancy, Danny’s vet nurse.’

  She was everything I’d feared. Tall, blonde, supermodel gorgeous. She had a lip piercing, and wore her hair plaited into kooky bunches that were pinned behind her ears. She wore a red embroidered shirt-dress, stylishly belted around her trim waist, offset by the coolest pair of cowboy boots I’d ever seen.

  ‘Audrey,’ I near-whispered as I shook her hand, ‘good to meet you.’ I was wearing my own rather embarrassing fashion statement: a Harley Davidson T-shirt that had once belonged to Tony, and a pair of Bronwyn’s cast-off track pants.

  ‘You live at Thornwood?’ Nancy asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Cool,’ she said, bobbing her head, ‘it’s gorgeous country out there. How are you settling in?’

  I deflated. Not only gorgeous, but nice as well. How could I ever compete with that, I wondered. Not that there even was a competition, but . . .

  ‘Yeah, good,’ I told her, but as the words left my mouth I realised with a jolt that they weren’t quite true. It had been good to be at Thornwood, dreamily good, almost perfect . . . until recently. At first I’d been intrigued by the notion of proving Samuel innocent, and then by the mystery presented by Glenda’s diary. But as time wore on, and especially now after the horror of this morning’s dog attack – my dream home was beginning to feel a touch like a nightmare.

  Nancy warmed me with a smile, then transferred her gaze to Danny, elbowing his attention back to her.

  We should go, she signed, then gave me a dimpled grin. ‘Nice meeting you, Audrey. See you around again sometime.’

  Then she was gone.

  Danny wrote in his book, then passed me the note.

  I’m free later this arvo. I’ll head up to the hut and sort out your squatter.

  I’m coming with you, I signed.

  No. You’ll pop your stitches.

  ‘My leg’s fine!’ I stood tall, placing my leg square on the ground, wincing as I forced a breezy smile. ‘It’s just a bit of a graze, really, the dog’s teeth barely broke the skin. Nothing to fuss over, see?’ I took a couple of tiptoe steps in place to prove my point. ‘Besides,’ I lied for good measure, ‘I’m an experienced bushwalker.’

  Danny studied my face for so long that I worried he was planning to lift my pants leg and inspect the injury for himself. Then he wrote in his book.

  How about Friday? Give you a few days to recover.

  ‘Friday’s good.’

  Friday was good. I was curious about the man who – until this morning, anyway – had been in possession of Aylish and Samuel’s war letters. Curious too about why he’d created a memorial shelf for Aylish . . . and whether he’d been the one to take roses to her grave. It would have been foolhardy to confront him myself, but having Danny along for the ride meant safety in numbers.

  Danny was scowling now, apparently in no hurry to go.

  I shrugged. ‘What?’

  Stay out of trouble.

  ‘Sure.’

  He shook his head as he scribbled another note. You’re like a kelpie I had once. Always chasing cars. You know what happened to her?

  A kelpie? Grimacing, I took his next note.

  She got hit.

  Without another word, he turned on his heel and stalked off. I watched him cross the road, catch up with Nancy on the far kerb. He made a series of swift signs, and Nancy shook her head to all of them. Then they strode along the pavement, bumping shoulders like a pair of comfortable old friends. Just before they slipped into the hardware I thought I saw him smile.

  I wanted to run after him, tell him he’d got it all wrong. I wasn’t a car-chaser, not usually – back in Melbourne I’d tried so hard to be level-headed and dependable, normal and nice, quite boring really, a person he could’ve set his watch by. It was only now, after leaving all that behind and taking possession of Thornwood, that I’d changed. After spending the majority of my days surrounded by wilderness, accumulating a store of unguarded moments in which I’d shed my need to please anyone other than myself – change had been inevitable. But snooping in huts, stealing letters, getting bitten by dogs? I wasn’t generally that sort of a person . . .

  Maybe I was chasing a car that would stop suddenly and finish me off . . . yet wasn’t it better to be chasing something – anything – rather than standing helplessly in the middle of the road waiting to get hit?

  The urge to run after Danny was strong, but I decided to let him go. Danny was out of reach. Not just in physical distance, but emotionally, spiritually. We were worlds apart. He was gorgeous and volatile, a dark horse; a silent enigma driven by the need to prove himself, to make his mark on the world.

  I was a mouse.

  Drab. Uninteresting. Colourless.

  Worse, my leg was throbbing up a bitch and I needed that cake.

  After a toasted sandwich followed by a slab of sticky date pudding and several Panadol, I took the box of letters out to Samuel’s room and sat on the bed.

  Emptying them across the quilt, I set aside the ones I’d already seen and then began arranging the others in order of date, sliding out the fragile old notepaper and clipping each page to its envelope. A few were bent and grubbified after their excursion across the hut’s dusty floor, and I came across several that had dark fingerprint-like stains . . . dried blood?

  I noticed there was a break in Samuel’s letters that spanned from February 1942 until December 1945. This gap came as no surprise. His last letter must had been posted just weeks before his capture.

  On February 15, 1942 the Japanese had achieved what the Allies had, until then, considered impossible. Marching down the Malayan peninsula, the Japanese army had stormed the supposedly impregnable port of Singapore. Over a hundred thousand Allies, including 17,000 Australians, were taken prisoner.

  This crippling blow – coupled with the bombing of Darwin four days later – had marked the end of Australia’s perceived remoteness from the conflict sweeping the rest of the world. Suddenly everyone was building backyard bomb shelters, digging trenches in the schoolyards, stockpiling food and clothing and medical supplies in anticipation of shortages. Wardens patrolled the night-time streets, enforcing strict brownout laws. The entire country began preparing for the now very real possibility of invasion.

  Sliding one of Aylish’s envelopes from the pile, I unfolded the letter and smoothed it on the bed before me.

  6 February, 1942

  Darling Samuel, I went into the post office again this morning to pester Klaus Jarman about missing letters, but his answer is always the same: ‘There’s a war on, my dear, delays must be expected.’

  Yet I can see in his eyes he’s as puzzled as me.

  He claims that some days there is more mail than the postal service can manage. Add to that the difficulty some of the hospital ships have had evading air attacks, and you’ve got a sure-fire recipe for late mail.

  I was spoilt while you were at university in Sydney, I got several letters from you a week. Now, when I’m so desperate to know that you’re alive and well and in good spirits, your silence terrifies me.

  Yet I refuse to lose hope. I’m certain you’re alive, don’t ask me how. I know you’d never abandon me, not even by dying, so whatever your reasons for not responding to my letters, I understand it’s not neglect that keeps you silent. I pray that you’re safe and that my letters and parcels are by some miracle getting through to you, bringing at least a small degree of comfort.

  14 July, 1942

  Take heart, my darling Samuel, for you are the father of a healthy little girl. She entered the world on Tuesday 23 June, a 9lb bundle of perfection. I named her after your mother, Luella Jean – but I call her Lulu because
she’s such a bright-eyed little button. She has my thick hair, but otherwise her resemblance to you is striking – the wide intelligent eyes, the determined chin, the milky Irish skin. She’s a real beauty in the making, and though only three weeks old, I can already tell she’s going to be a brain just like her clever father.

  A flush of warmth at this one, and a strange sort of sorrow too. It gave me a curious chill to see Luella’s name written in Aylish’s orderly copperplate, a reminder that the world of the past was real . . . at least, it once had been. Aylish might be long gone, but there’d been a time when she was flesh and blood, a young mother with the same fears and hopes for her little girl as I had for mine. Did that explain my connection to her? Or was there another cause for the feeling that an essential part of her lived on in me?

  17 September, 1942

  Samuel Dearest, as you can see by the return address I’m no longer at Stump Hill Road. After Poppa’s arrest in August, some inspectors from the Commonwealth Bureau started showing up at peculiar hours – right on teatime, and once very late at night, no doubt hoping to catch me unawares – checking, so they claimed, on the welfare of my child. They affected concern for my marital status (or lack of it) and cross-examined me about the child’s father and whether or not he was also a ‘coloured’ man. I tell you, my cheeks burned the whole time and I longed to let loose at them, but I bit my tongue. I’d seen other little light-skinned children taken from their Aboriginal mothers, and families so damaged by their loss that they never recovered. The thought of anyone taking Lulu from me was beyond my ability to comprehend – I only knew I had to prevent it at all costs.

  One morning when the inspectors called, Ellen Jarman happened to be here delivering a bundle of khaki wool for the Red Cross’s latest knitting campaign. Now Ellen has a sharpish tongue at the best of times, but that morning she was in fiery form and gave them an earful that still makes me blush to remember it. Samuel, those men couldn’t get out the gate fast enough! Clutching their clipboards to their chests, they dived into their motorcar and drove off in a whirlwind of dust.

  Afterwards, Ellen regarded me for a long while. Then she said, ‘Don’t be offended, Aylish dear . . . but would you consider working for Klaus and me for a while – just until Jacob returns?’

  I declined, but Ellen rushed on to tell me that with her sister taken ill and her home overrun by billeted servicemen, and her housekeeper recruited by the manpower commission to cook for the mess at Amberley, she was run off her feet. Which, she pointed out in her determined way, meant that her volunteer work for the Red Cross was suffering, and that I should consider my position in their household a vital contribution to the war effort. Besides, she added, seeing the reluctance that must have shown in my face, she could help watch over Lulu, and with the advantage of having been a trained midwife, she could help me give my little girl the very best of care.

  While she spoke, I stared down Stump Hill Road watching the dust still swirling in the wake of the Bureau inspectors’ motorcar. Knowing that the next time they came – or the next, or the next – I might not be so lucky.

  I thanked Ellen and told her I’d consider her kind offer. But Samuel, my mind was already made up. As Poppa used to say, When the wolf is knocking at the door, you don’t hang about waiting for him to come down the chimney.

  31 October, 1942

  Darling, you’ll never guess where I am, notepaper balanced on my knees as I lean against a great shady stone? Yes, our secret ferny glade near the gully!

  It’s just as it was when we last came here – full of sunbeams and ringing with the songs of a million bellbirds, the air deliciously cool, and the shadows green with all the ferns shooting up between the trees . . . and most wonderful at the moment are the lichens, so vibrant after the rain – gold, pink, purple-grey, and brilliant vermillion. I’ve picked a few frills to press into this letter, as you used to admire them so. I’ve also collected some young eucalypt leaves, a tiny piece of home for you.

  Lulu is lying here beside me in a shady patch, kicking her little legs on the blanket I laid out for her, gurgling up into the sunny trees. I’ve been telling her the names of all the birds: whip-birds, butcher-birds, flycatchers, and whistlers. Though she’s only four months old, she peers up at me with her big wise eyes and I’m convinced she understands every word.

  All is well at the Jarmans’, though I confess they are part of the reason I like escaping up here. It’s an hour’s walk pushing Lulu’s pram (then another twenty minutes to carry her up the gully track), but worth the trouble. Don’t get me wrong, the Jarmans are kind. While I sweep or do laundry or churn butter or scrub potatoes or run errands, Ellen hovers around Lulu, watching and fussing over her. She and Klaus adore our little girl, which is a good thing, isn’t it?

  And yet there are times when I get a touch of the green-eyed monster about me. In particular, those times when Lulu’s smile seems brighter, her eyes more alight, her giggles chirpier because Ellen is near. And then Klaus comes home and tickles her under the chin and makes her twitter with glee, and young Cleve puts his two cents in, brushing her hair, or telling her stories, or tickling her ears until she’s cooing like a baby dove. Meanwhile I’m stuck with the mop and broom or milking pail, watching from the wings, imagining I could happily strangle the lot of them (but not my Lulu, of course!).

  So I bring Lulu up here to our magical glade, and tell her stories about the birds and lizards, and the flowers that emerge from the warming earth. I tell her about the Bunyip who dances in the shallows of the creek far below, and about the wise spirits watching over us from inside the trees . . . and I spin stories about her brave daddy who’s gone to war and how happy we’ll be when he returns.

  And you will return, dear Samuel, I know you will; there’s no doubt in my mind or my heart about that.

  24 April, 1943

  Darling, don’t be alarmed but I had a bit of a spill yesterday.

  I’m all right, it was a stupid thing, I was overtired and not paying attention – anyhow, last night after tea I was scrubbing the back steps when my worn-out old shoes slipped on a soapy tread and I went tumbling, landing in an ungainly heap on the path below.

  I wasn’t hurt, just a few scrapes along the shin – and, of course, a severe dent in my dignity – but as I sat a moment to catch my breath, a cry came from indoors, followed by a mad scuffling. Before I could get to my feet, young Cleve burst out clutching a bottle of mercurochrome and oversized roll of sticking plaster. I protested, but he’s a stubborn little fellow. While he dabbed my barked shin with a cotton wad, he took great pains to tell me he was learning First Aid in the Cadets.

  ‘Aren’t you rather young to be a Cadet?’ I teased, knowing the entry age was sixteen.

  ‘I’m tall for my age,’ he said loftily, then had to confess: ‘Dad lets me tag along to the weekend camps at Amberley. I’m not enlisted yet, but I do everything the older chaps do. We’re learning Morse code and tons of other terrific stuff – identifying aircraft, that’s my favourite. As soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to enlist as a pilot.’

  I swear, Samuel, the boy is ten going on forty, such a little old professor, interested in everything and quite the know-it-all – in fact he reminds me of a certain handsome young doctor I used to know! Cleve’s also a diligent collector of glass bottles and bald tyres and tin cans, and does the rounds once a week cadging old newspapers – all to be re-used in a variety of ways for the war effort. A couple of years back he started helping his father at the post office, sorting mail before and after school, and on top of that he still finds time to help me around the house, picking up after Lulu, drying the dinner dishes, chopping wood, and feeding the hens – making himself quite indispensable.

  Honestly, Samuel, if I only had half that boy’s industriousness . . . and a quarter of his energy! It’s just a shame Ellen seems to think so lowly of him – going cranky on him for the slightest slipups, nagging and criticising his appearance. I’ve even seen her humiliate the p
oor child in front of her Red Cross cronies. I do feel sorry for him at times. He doesn’t appear to have any friends of his own, which might explain his dedication to filling his every waking hour with chores.

  Anyway, his enthusiasm is touching, and it was so very kind of him to help me after my soapsud calamity – but his comment about the RAAF made me sad. I only hope that by the time Cleve is old enough to enlist, this wretched war is long behind us.

  21 May, 1943

  Hello Darling, did you get my Easter parcel? I know you’ll love the photos of Lulu, and you’ll be able to use or barter the cigarettes and soap and box of Anzac biscuits. My baking skills are wretchedly inadequate and young Cleve declared the biscuits akin to gnawing on shoe leather but I posted them anyway. Perhaps where you are, you’ll be glad of them? This time I’m sending socks, hand-knitted, only marginally better than the biscuits, I’m afraid.

  On top of my duties in the Jarman household, I’ve begun working at the telephone exchange, night shifts while Lulu (soon a year old!) sleeps under Ellen’s watchful care. My shift finishes at ten o’clock and I wobble off home on my bicycle, dodging those blasted sandbags they’ve piled everywhere, ringing my bell so I don’t run anyone over, navigating through the streets by pure luck it sometimes seems. The town is pitch black at that hour, not a streetlamp lit, no glimmer from a single window. Motorcars are forbidden after dark unless the headlights are blinkered by a restrictive blackout device, and though occasionally I hear one in the distance, I never see more than a faint wash of light on the road. Who’d have thought that all the way out here in Magpie Creek we’d be worried about getting bombed? It’s true though, Samuel, ever since Darwin none of us feel safe anymore.

  On the way back from town on Wednesday we heard that a Red Cross hospital ship, the Centaur, was torpedoed off the coast near Stradbroke Island. They say more than 250 soldiers and nurses were killed or drowned. We can scarcely believe it, all those lives lost, all those families stricken by the cruellest of blows. I swear the entire country has gone into shock.