Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  Breathing the fresher air, I tried to clear the greenhouse scent from my lungs but the earthy, vaguely mouldy odour of peatmoss and damp soil made me think of the settlers’ hut, of the closed confinement of the crowded little room, and the secrets it protected.

  Again my imagination ran riot.

  Now I was inside the musty tallboy, surrounded by chipped, grubby porcelain faces whose eyes fixed on me in the gloom. My one consolation, my letters, were gone. And nearby, very near in the dark hanging compartment, the greasy, blackened axe handle propped in the shadows . . .

  ‘Mum?’

  I wrenched around, blinking to clear my eyes. Bronwyn stood at the threshold of Luella’s greenhouse, worry etched on her face.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Sure. But I could really use a cup of tea.’

  Luella bustled us across the grass, back up the steps and onto the verandah, settling us into chairs around the old cedar table. Yet even after tea was poured, even as I praised Luella’s chocolate tarts, even as my daughter prattled excitedly about the wondrous garden of carnivores we’d just seen . . . my thoughts kept returning to the settlers’ hut.

  Had the squatter discovered the photo of Aylish tucked in among the letters and taken a liking to it? Or had he known Aylish, had she meant something to him? All the people Aylish had mentioned in her letters – Samuel, her Poppa Jacob, Klaus and Ellen Jarman, and Cleve – they were all gone. Only one person was still alive, Luella; and either she’d lied about not leaving the flowers on her mother’s grave . . . or someone else had left them there.

  And that someone else, I felt certain, was the man I’d seen at the settlers’ hut.

  22

  Aylish, March 1946

  We hurried along in the darkness, me stumbling in my good shoes, Lulu skipping ahead. She was singing happily to herself, a half made-up version of a scripture song Poppa had taught her. Though it was late for her to be out – judging by the height of the moon, it must be nearly nine o’clock – she was chirpy as a bird, excited by our mysterious night-time expedition.

  ‘Don’t stray off the track,’ I called.

  ‘I won’t, Mumma.’

  She was a pretty child, good-natured and gentle, but with an occasional shrill temper that rivalled my own. Like me, she had inherited my mother’s thick brown hair and my father’s tendency to freckle – but she wasn’t delicate-boned, the way we were. She had the skinny legs of my mother’s people, but her frame was tall and robust, her features broad, her eyes wide-spaced and green like those of her own father.

  My pace picked up.

  Samuel, you’ll see . . . All will be well between us again.

  Tall trees loomed around us, their shadows carving the moonlight. Black ironbarks, red gums swallowed by strangling vines; lillypilly and wild jasmine drenching the night in scent, banksias shivering in the wind, and blackthorn boughs reaching their spines to snare us as we passed.

  I cursed my shoes, wishing I was less vain, more prone to being sensible. I’d pulled my old patents out of the box they’d languished in most of the war. They were scuffed and thin-soled, so I’d buffed them to a molasses-shine, but now their glassy surface was dimmed by layers of dust. The heels wobbled over stones, threatening to overturn me with every step. To make matters worse I was running late. I’d got it into my head that if I kept him waiting a few moments then he’d be all the keener to see me, all the happier when I finally arrived. After all, we had already waited nearly five years – what were an additional five minutes?

  Stupid, stupid.

  Five minutes had somehow turned to twenty.

  Slipping off my shoes, I started running barefoot, eager to close the gap between me and the small figure that trundled ahead. Eager to reach the gully where Samuel would be waiting. Lulu heard me and whipped around, startled. Then she grinned.

  ‘Mumma? Are we playing a game?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I told her. ‘Do you think you can keep up?’

  She beamed and dashed ahead. I trotted behind, my feet bruised by the stones, my ankles wobbling nearly as much as they’d done in shoes. I’d grown up barefoot. At the mission, dirt tracks were all I’d known. When I was ten and my mum died and we came to live at Magpie Creek, Poppa insisted I start dressing properly. Frocks with petticoats, gloves. A hat, too. Always a hat. Not that I minded. It was the shoes I hated. No matter how hard I complained, Poppa persevered and by the time I was fifteen my barefoot days were long gone.

  Looking over my shoulder, I conjured a picture of the little house we shared with my father on Stump Hill Road. Poppa had been sleeping when we left, snoring with the wireless turned up loud, one of his serial plays rattling the roof beams.

  I hated deceiving him, but he’d said things about Samuel I didn’t like . . . things that weren’t true. He said Samuel might not be pleased to see his proud Irish features mirrored in the face of a little half-caste girl, but Poppa was wrong. Samuel would love his daughter the instant he saw her. His eyes would glint and he’d let out his booming laugh. Gathering her up, he’d press his whiskery cheek to her plump face and growl with pleasure . . .

  I stopped running, resting my hands on my knees to catch my breath.

  Lulu scooted ahead.

  ‘Wait,’ I called.

  She pretended not to hear, but I sang out again and she paused at the edge of the track, gazing up at the sky until she heard me puffing behind her. She looked at my bare feet and frowned.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’

  ‘A few minutes more, that’s all.’

  ‘We’re going to that bird place, aren’t we?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘We normally go in the daytime.’

  ‘But this is a special visit. You’ll see.’

  We started off again along the track, following it uphill. The trees grew thicker and the upper boughs joined over our heads. The way narrowed, flanked by boulders and stony outcrops. The gully yawned to our left, its banks becoming steeper as we climbed.

  Lulu tugged my hand. ‘Who are we meeting, Mumma?’

  I laughed, excited and pleased and nervous all at once. ‘Someone very special.’

  ‘Is it another little girl for me to play with?’

  ‘Much better than that.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Will I like them?’

  ‘You will indeed.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘It’s a surprise.’

  ‘I don’t like surprises.’

  ‘You’ll like this one. I promise.’

  She grew bored with my teasing and bounded off again, singing her scripture song. Ahead, she found a branch of gumnuts and skipped along with it, brandishing it over her head like a sword.

  When I was little, my mum had told me stories about spirits who inhabited the night-time bush – Biami the protector, Bunyip the evil-doer, and wise Mirrabooka who watched from the sky. Mum taught me to respect the bush and its dark time, and I’d taught that respect to my own little girl. I’d sung her the spirit-songs and retold my mother’s legends until they’d become a part of Lulu’s being, and – I believed – would somehow keep her safe.

  A twig snapped behind me.

  I looked back, searching the trees. There were no swaying grass or branches, no glint of nocturnal eyes. No wallaby shadows or possums. And yet the hairs stood along my arms. We weren’t alone.

  I made a birdcall and Lulu trotted obediently back along the trail towards me, the question clear on her round face.

  ‘Mumma, what . . . ?’

  Her gaze strayed past me into the darkness. She frowned, and then her eyes went wide. Her lips parted, she gasped. I rushed to her, intending to swoop her into my protective arms, but she was too quick. She slipped through my hands like a lizard and fled along the shadowy track. I went to spring after her, but stopped dead as a hiss of sound came from the bushes.

  A name.

  My name. I whirled around.

  ‘Who’s there?’

 
; No answer.

  ‘Poppa, is that you?’

  Of course not. He’d never creep through the trees. If he’d woken up to discover me and Lulu gone from the house, we’d have heard his irate yelling from here.

  ‘Samuel?’

  Wind rattled the leaves. Branches creaked. My fingers clenched around the ankle straps of my shoes, my nails buried in my palm. It was foolishness. No one had whispered my name. The bush was full of empty noises. Shivering treetops, brush turkeys scratching in the undergrowth, snakes on the prowl for food. Nothing to get weak-legged over.

  I turned back to the track. It was deserted.

  ‘Lulu?’

  When she didn’t reply, I began to run. Whip-birds chirruped and whistled in their nests, distressed by the thump of my passing feet, startling up from between the trees, flapping into the moonlight like feathery ghosts. While I ran, I called my daughter’s name, my throat tight with panic. Where was she?

  The track widened. The clearing was lit by patchy moonlight. In the centre, the tall stone curved its back against the night. A few hundred yards away, the ground plunged straight down into the gorge. The gully walls were steep, nearly vertical; the fall over the edge would be sudden and unexpected. Lulu knew the clearing well, we’d been coming here since she was small. Only, it was dark now, nothing looked familiar, and she’d been so frightened . . .

  Crouching at the lip of the gully, I peered over the edge. Nothing to see, just moonlight on the treetops far below, the faint glimmer of water through the leaves. The sky seemed darker than it had a moment ago. And the night creatures, the whispering leaves, the cool night breeze – all of it suddenly still.

  A murmur.

  I lurched around, searching the trees. A grey cloud of dread folded around me, sharpening my senses but dulling my mind. Where was Samuel? It was well past the time I’d asked him to meet me. Had he stalked back to the homestead in a temper, angry that I’d made him wait? But he must have known by the contents of my letter how urgently I wanted to see him . . .

  I went cold.

  My letter. What if he hadn’t received it?

  Impossible. I’d delivered it to his door with my own hands. Had he decided to ignore it? I shivered, recalling the emptiness in his eyes as we’d stood outside the pharmacy this morning; the way he’d accused me of lying, of deceiving him. The way he’d looked at me, as if sickened by what he saw.

  By God, Aylish, you’ll be sorry . . .

  Something moved at the edge of the clearing.

  ‘Lulu – ?’

  The darkness twitched, broke apart. A shadow-shape broke from between the trees, shuffling to the edge of the glade, dark in the blotchy moonlight. A figure. Not a child, not my little girl. Larger. It drifted closer, entering the clearing. Moonbeams danced over pale features. Features I recognised easily – how could I not? I’d come to know them almost as well as my own.

  His voice cut into the gloom. ‘Hello, Aylish.’

  As if he had all the time in the world, he trod nearer and stood calmly. Watching me, perhaps waiting for me to return his greeting.

  But my gaze had dropped to the object he clutched in his hand, a stick, I thought. Then, understanding dawned. The face of death, that pale grotesque ghost of a face I’d seen in the hut window on my last night with Samuel, had found me.

  ‘What’s the matter, Aylish,’ he said, taking another slow step towards me, ‘cat got your tongue?’

  He came into the moonlight and I saw that the thing in his hand was not a stick after all, but the blackened, headless shaft of an axe.

  23

  Audrey, February 2006

  Muffled thumping woke me. I sat up, blinking. Daylight glowed through my window, and magpies chortled in the trees outside. I thought I could smell toast.

  The thumping came again. Someone was at the back door.

  I looked at the bedside clock, groaned when I saw the time: eight-forty. Bronwyn was going to be late for school. Flying out of bed, I ran along the hall to her room. She wasn’t there. In the kitchen I found a note on the coffeepot.

  ‘Tried to wake you, sleepyhead, got the bus xx’

  My relief – and the twinge of annoyance at myself that accompanied it – was short-lived. Whoever was at the door hammered again. I growled under my breath as I went to answer it, reasoning that if they were fool enough to continue making such a racket then they deserved to encounter me with unbrushed hair and ratty pyjamas.

  ‘Oh. Hi, Hobe.’

  He looked hopefully over my shoulder. ‘G’day, Audrey. Young Bronwyn in?’

  ‘It’s Monday, Hobe. She’s at school.’

  ‘Of course she is, silly old me. I’ve got a little present for her.’ He held up a box gift-wrapped in yellow paper with a card attached. ‘It’s nothing much, just a neighbourly token. All right if I leave it with you?’

  He’d ironed his flannelette shirt again and, absurdly, tucked a flowering gumnut in his buttonhole. My heart sank. Despite our rocky start, Hobe had been perfectly kind since our talk that day looking across the valley. I liked him. And he was a potential source of info about the events I so craved to understand. Yet I couldn’t forget how I’d caught him searching the hollow tree . . . nor could I overlook the tear he’d shed the first time he’d seen Bronwyn.

  ‘Hobe, I have to ask you something.’

  ‘What’s that, lass?’

  ‘A few weeks ago when you cleaned up the garden, I found you up the hill searching the old beechwood tree . . . You weren’t looking for possum damage, were you?’

  Hobe’s cheer withered before my eyes. His face grew slack and his eye clouded over. ‘Well, now . . .’

  ‘And then you got all weird when I asked if you knew the Jarmans and you said you didn’t, when it’s clear you did.’

  He shuffled, his eye riveted unhappily on my face. Then suddenly he was looking everywhere else – his shoes, the decking, a leafy watershoot springing from the overhead grapevine.

  ‘And Hobe, you’ve shown such an interest in Bronwyn, which is really nice . . . but I can’t help wondering if there’s something you’re not telling me.’

  He was staring down at the gift-wrapped box he held, as if willing it to spring open and reveal the answers.

  ‘Oh Audrey,’ he muttered in a strained voice, ‘it’s nothing at all, I assure you, lass, nothing at all . . . that is, I mean to say it’s nothing to trouble yourself over. Stupid of me, I didn’t mean to distress you, or young Bronwyn. I only wanted to . . . Oh, heck, I am dreadfully sorry . . .’ He mumbled something I didn’t catch – it sounded like further apology – then turned and fled.

  I brewed coffee and drank it at the kitchen window, staring along the path where Hobe had vanished into the trees. I poured the dregs into the compost, then went onto the verandah and squinted up at the hillside. I could just make out the bald crest of the hill and, like a frayed yellow ribbon winding through the trees, the hilltop track that connected our two properties.

  Hobe hadn’t given me much of an answer; not with his words, at any rate. But his obvious distress spoke volumes. He was up to something . . . something that he clearly felt as uncomfortable about as I did.

  Turning to go back inside, I saw Hobe’s parcel propped near the stairs. The yellow wrapping paper looked vaguely grubby, the garden twine seemed tacky . . . but he’d gone to some effort – pretty pink butterfly stickers dotted the paper, and the card was hand-cut into the shape of a ladybeetle.

  Kneeling, I read what he’d written inside.

  ‘Every entomologist-to-be should have their own ladybird aquarium. Hope you like it, Bronwyn lass! Kindest regards from Hobart Miller.’

  I tore off the yellow wrapping paper. At first I thought it was a doll’s house. Closer examination revealed it to be a small fish tank with a wooden base and fretworked side panels – the wood had been whitewashed and carved with painstaking detail to resemble the iron lace on Thornwood’s wraparound verandahs. Inside the tank was a tiny table and chair setting,
complete with miniature teacup and saucer. The aquarium floor was strewn with flowers – rosebuds and gumnuts, nasturtiums, many of them blighted with tasty aphids. Swarming in attendance at this lavish feast were scores of scarlet and black-dotted ladybeetles. Hobe had gone to a lot of trouble. The effect was wonderful, Bronwyn would adore it.

  I took the little aquarium into the kitchen, sat it on the counter, then dragged over a chair and peered inside.

  The tea party was in full swing. The ladybirds flitted contentedly, stalking aphids or communing on the rim of their teacup. They seemed so at home, so happily busy and on purpose, that my misgivings about Hobe began to ebb. Had I misjudged him? Perhaps his interest in Bronwyn was easily explained. It was clear he still had feelings for Luella, so being curious about her granddaughter was perfectly reasonable.

  There was still the issue of him searching the beech tree, and his denial about having known her family. I recalled her diary entry recording her terror the day she’d encountered Hobe on the track with his eye bandaged. Wasn’t it possible that she’d also encountered him that rainy night at the hollow tree, while she’d been waiting for Ross? And wasn’t it also possible that Hobe had spooked her again, which would explain her carelessness at the gully?

  I rested my forehead against the aquarium. The quiet flit-flit of the ladybirds soothed me and, crazily, made me envy them. They were so carefree and untroubled. All they had to worry about was where to find the next batch of aphids, and Hobe had pretty much taken care of that. Meanwhile I was caught in the sticky strands of a complex and powerful web. Tony’s family web. Twisting this way and that in an attempt to break free, but only becoming increasingly tangled.

  And yet, my entrapment wasn’t entirely unwilling.

  My family had no web. There was just me and Bronwyn. The two of us, winging through life together . . . but essentially alone. And there were times when it seemed better to become entangled with a family who had problems and conundrums and way too much history – than to have no family at all.