Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  I followed the path up the hill, through the grove of pomegranates, past the hollowed out beechwood tree, and along a trail that led to the hill’s bald crest. There were no trees at the crest, just boulders and grassland dotted with fiery red and gold wildflowers.

  I stopped walking, lingering in the shade of an ironbark tree to mop my streaming face. The Miller track lay on the other side of the crest. As I approached, I saw a familiar lanky figure half hidden in the shadows of a rocky outcrop. His attention was fixed on the valley.

  I followed his gaze. Below us to the north, thick bushland stretched nearly to the horizon, broken only by occasional patches of emerald pasture. A gravel road curved eastwards to join the broader black line of the highway. Nearby was the bare expanse of the airfield.

  Hobe was looking west, which could only mean that the object of his attention was the solitary house perched along a lonely strip of unsealed road. It was a white house, surrounded by cleared land and adjoining a paddock of regimented fruit trees. I couldn’t see the roses from where I stood, but the large bunya pine casting its shadow over the house was unmistakable.

  I hadn’t realised Luella’s house was visible from here.

  I started walking towards the boulder outcrop where Hobe stood. He must have heard my approach because he startled and his head snapped around. His leathery cheeks were wet with tears. Tugging a hanky from his pocket, he gave his face a wipe and blew his nose, then turned and slipped behind a crop of tall boulders. Seconds later he reappeared further down the slope, making haste along the narrow track in the direction of his home.

  I called out, but when he made no reply I hurried after him.

  The way was steep, overgrown with vines and brambles and littered with stones, some dangerously loose, others emerging half-buried from the soil. It wasn’t until the track evened out and we were midway along the spine of a second, smaller hill, that I finally caught up.

  ‘Hobe . . . ?’

  He paused, pulling out his hanky again to polish his glasses and mop his eye, then prodding the limp rag back into the pocket of his workpants.

  ‘Hobe, are you all right?’

  He hung his head, but nodded, struggling his glasses back on. Only when they were in place did he look at me. He attempted a smile, but it was waterlogged and half-hearted.

  ‘I’ve made an arse of myself, lass, and I’m very sorry. I’ll just get along home now, be right as rain directly.’

  I sighed. ‘No, you haven’t, Hobe. But I get the feeling that something’s going on, something that involves my daughter. And I want to know what it is.’

  Hobe considered me for a long while before speaking. ‘You’d best come down to the house, then. You’ve every right to know the truth. I should’ve told you before, but . . . well, come on, lass – best get it done with.’ Without further explanation, he loped off along the trail, the single lens of his glasses flaring in the sun, and his shoulders hunched as if the day’s brilliance was suddenly too heavy to bear.

  Hobe’s old bungalow was just as ramshackle as I remembered. Paint peeled from the weatherboards, the corrugated roof was buckled and patched with oddments of iron, and the garden looked like a neatly arrayed junkyard. The vegie patch was a haven for weeds, but in among them I glimpsed neat rows of carrots and parsnips, with huge yellow pumpkins bulging out the sides.

  As we went along the narrow back verandah, a clutch of tan kelpie pups spilled through the back door, nipping at Hobe’s heels and trying to scramble up my legs.

  Hobe hooked up one of the little wrigglers and tucked it under his arm, ushering me into the house ahead of him.

  The kitchen was stiflingly hot, and obsessively clean despite the decrepitude of the decor. The plank floors were swept, the copper taps over the sink shone like burnished gold, the rustic timber bench tops were scoured and crumb-free. Hobe’s brother Gurney crouched before an old wood-fired stove, stoking the flames. A frypan sizzled on the hob – bread and bacon and a tasty-looking scramble of eggs. Gurney took one look at Hobe’s tear-stained face and started fussing.

  ‘G’day Audrey . . . Hobe, can I get you something, old mate? A nice cuppa tea? The bacon’s good’n fresh, are you hungry?’

  Hobe waved his brother away. After a moment of pained indecision, Gurney seemed relieved to slink through the back door with his breakfast and disappear into the shed.

  Hobe dragged a chair out from the table and gestured for me to sit. Slumping opposite, he tried to untangle the wriggling puppy from his shirt. I expected him to speak, but the silence stretched. There was just the sputter of the empty frypan, the puppy’s eager snuffling, and a kookaburra’s insane laughter somewhere outside.

  Hobe tugged the puppy’s ears, which made it squirm dementedly and try to clamp its pin-like teeth onto his fingers.

  ‘I’ll need to find homes for the little beggars soon,’ he commented, still not looking at me. ‘Alma’s a fine mother, it seems a shame to take her pups away – but there’re laws against keeping too many dogs about the place these days.’ He sighed, placed the pup on the floor and sent it on its way with a gentle nudge. ‘Seems there’s a law for most things, and not many make all that much sense.’

  Impatient with Hobe’s nervous waffling, I jumped in. ‘That day at the hollow tree, you weren’t looking for possum damage, were you, Hobe?’

  ‘No, lass.’

  ‘And you did know the Jarmans.’

  He sighed. ‘Yeah. I knew ’em.’

  Pushing to his feet, he opened the screen door and toed the puppy outside, where it scampered off with its littermates in a chorus of yips and yelps. Hobe came back to the table and sat heavily.

  ‘Tony and Glenda used to come here when they were kids. Most Sundays they’d show up with something their mother had sent over. Fruitcake, or a jar of corn relish – the worst damn relish this side of the black stump, but the gesture meant everything to me. You see, Luella and I . . . I mean to say . . . Oh heck.’

  He stood, went to the stove and rattled the frypan, peered into its greasy depths. Grabbing a leaf of newspaper from under the sink, he scrunched it around the inside of the pan.

  ‘You loved her,’ I said.

  ‘That I did, Audrey. From the very first moment I saw her, I said to myself, “That girl is one in a million . . . and I’m going to marry her.” I loved her madly. And after a while I learnt that she loved me, too. We were the same age, fifteen . . . just kids, I s’pose. But there was something good between us, a kind of belonging. Little did we know it then, but our young romance was doomed from the start.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Hobe tossed the newspaper in the bin and hung the frypan on a hook. ‘We wanted to get married, but decided to do the decent thing and wait ’til after Luella turned twenty-one. Y’see, during the war Aylish and Luella had stayed with the Jarmans for a spell, and Ellen Jarman, Cleve’s mum, had taken a real shine to little Luella. When Aylish died, Luella came to see Ellen as a sort of second mum, and so wanted her blessing to marry.’

  Hobe wrestled the lid off a biscuit tin, and brooded over its contents. ‘Anyway, when Luella was sixteen, Jacob died. She was all alone. Of course Ellen was keen for Luella to return to the Jarman household, but Luella refused. The house at Stump Hill Road held too many memories for her. It was her home, and she hated the idea of leaving it.

  ‘But her being all alone in that remote little house set the stage for Samuel’s entrance into her life. He was her only remaining blood-family, but he’d had nothing much to do with her until then. Luella always said he blamed her for her mother’s death, that he never loved her – which was poppycock in my view, because how could anyone not love her?

  ‘Anyway, Samuel sent her off to a fancy ladies’ college in Brisbane, bought her posh clothes and lavished her with presents. She flourished, eager to please Samuel. He was her link to her mother, and she wanted him to love her. By the time she turned twenty-one, she was quite the young Miss . . . and Samuel considered her a signific
ant cut above the likes of me.’

  ‘He stopped you getting married?’

  ‘No, lass. Oh no. I bungled that one all by myself.’

  With a pair of oversized tongs, he tweezered half a dozen homemade Anzac biscuits from the cake tin onto a plate, then chose a pair of floral teacups.

  ‘But you still loved her,’ I said.

  ‘Too right, I did. But the year Luella turned twenty-one was the same year the Yanks cracked down on Vietnam. Damn fool conflict, I was dead against that war from the start. Australia got dragged into it, and next thing I know Samuel had cornered me down at the Swan one night. He shouted me beer after beer, then explained how he’d be happy for me and Luella to get married . . . on one condition. He said to me, “Son, if you can prove yourself to be a brave and worthy man, then I’ll not only give you my blessing, but sign over twenty acres of good land and a house so that you and Luella can kick start your life together.” That’s all he said, and like a trout snapping at a tasty fly, I went for it.’

  ‘You joined up?’

  Hobe’s expression darkened. ‘For Luella’s sake, I wanted Samuel’s approval. I knew how much it meant to Luella to have him on-side. So I rushed headlong into that god-awful war without a second thought, despite my pacifist leanings. Marched off to be a hero, just like old Samuel had done in the forties . . . damn near got my fool head blown off into the bargain, and I did some things I’ve never – ’ He cut off. For a time he stood silently, pondering the kettle. When he resumed, his voice was low, almost a whisper.

  ‘The minute I arrived home I got stuck into the bottle. Made a real arse of myself. My plans for proving my worth to Samuel couldn’t have gone more wrong. I knew I’d blown it, so I went even further off the rails. Grog and pills, I didn’t sleep for two years, didn’t dare – just stalked around in the bush yelling at the top of my lungs and carrying on like a bloody lunatic. If it hadn’t been for poor old Gurney, I’d probably have starved to death . . . or died of horror and shame, if such a thing exists.’ Hobe smoothed a palm over his lips. ‘Worst of all, I pushed Luella away. She wanted to help, but I couldn’t bear for her to see me so weak, so untogether. I told her the wedding was off. Broke her poor heart, so I did.’

  ‘And she married Cleve.’

  Hobe’s gaze went to the window. ‘He was like a brother to her. I suppose she felt safe with him. He was a real charmer. Funny, had a knack for winning people over. Got himself a university degree, too. Geology or history, I forget which. When Klaus died in 1960, Cleve took over at the post office, so he had everything to offer Luella – money, security, a stable future. Samuel couldn’t sign over his twenty acres fast enough.’

  ‘But she never loved him, did she?’

  Hobe looked defeated. ‘In her way, I think she did. She was very kind-hearted. Once, she told me that Cleve’s mother had wanted a daughter and so had never taken much of a liking to her son. Cleve had a need to be loved, she said . . . a need the size of a black hole. She thought that by being kind, she could help fill that hole. Poppycock, if you ask me – staying with someone because of what they need. In my view, Luella deserved better.’

  ‘You never married, did you, Hobe?’

  He shook his head. ‘How could I even look at another woman, after knowing Luella? She was one in a million. Still is, I expect. She was so beautiful. Inside and out. Never bothered with makeup, wore her hair unfashionably long. Dressed plain. But to see her smile, to stand near her and bask in the warmth that just seemed to radiate off her . . . you’d feel good inside, a better man somehow, a more improved version of yourself.’

  ‘That’s why you kept seeing her . . . after she married Cleve, I mean.’

  Hobe’s face was raw. ‘How could I not, lass? She was my life. It took me three years to straighten myself out. I went to Luella and apologised for what’d happened. She admitted things weren’t great with Cleve. He was a good husband, she said . . . but she still loved me.’

  Hobe took down a jar labelled ‘TEA’, unscrewed the lid, and scrutinised the grassy chaff inside. ‘So we hatched a plan,’ he went on. ‘Luella said she could weather her marriage to Cleve for another year – just until we saved enough money to escape to the city. Adelaide, Melbourne, maybe even Perth. I hated the idea of losing her to Cleve, couldn’t stand the thought of him touching her, claiming from her what she wanted to give freely to me. I hated seeing the pain in her eyes . . . I can’t count the number of times I loaded up the Winchester, started out along the track to William Road.’

  He glanced over at me and frowned. ‘Don’t look at me like that, lass – I’d never have acted on those darker impulses. I was a man possessed by jealousy, hatred. By fear. In the war I killed, but it pained me something shocking to do it. I’m no cold-blooded killer. Even if I was, I’d never have subjected Luella to more heartache. I’d already hurt her enough.’

  As each part of the Hobe puzzle fell into place, Luella’s story began to flesh out too. Yet rather than satisfy me, Hobe’s revelations only made me more curious. As the complexities unspooled, I could feel myself becoming more entangled . . . and it was a feeling I liked. ‘What happened to your plan?’

  Hobe rubbed his scalp. ‘I had a nice little nest egg saved. We were going to make it large in the city, set up an enterprise selling home-made chutneys and the like.’ He shook his head, smiled. ‘Luella never was much of a one for cooking in the early days, she could burn water. But what she lacked in skill she made up for in gumption.

  ‘That year, she did a fancy cooking course in Brisbane. She used to dream about one day having her own little bakehouse, you should’ve seen the light in her eyes when she talked about it . . . but it wasn’t to be. The kids came along, and we decided to wait until they were older. Cleve started getting suspicious, and with him being the way he was – I suppose in the end Luella thought it safer for the three of them to stay.’

  ‘Safer?’

  Hobe dragged the kettle off the stove and flooded the teapot. ‘According to Luella, Cleve was normally a placid man. But he couldn’t cope with stress of any kind. If he felt threatened or humiliated, or even left out . . . he’d lose it. Big time. Lash out, then regret it later.’

  As Hobe had found out the hard way – although I doubted that Cleve had been regretful after what he’d done to Hobe. I recalled Aylish’s letters to Samuel. Over time she’d grown to dislike the young Cleve, maybe even fear him a little as events unravelled. The glass in Lulu’s cot, the sulking and getting under her feet. The spiteful things he’d said when he learned she was leaving. And then the theft in the woodshed. It struck me that these were the actions of someone who, rather than lashing out in uncontrolled anger, had thought long and hard about what it was they planned to do.

  Hobe seemed preoccupied with arranging the Anzac biscuits. He peered under the lid of the teapot then filled our cups with strong greenish liquid. ‘Lemongrass tea all right, lass?’

  I nodded, distracted. ‘After Cleve disappeared, why didn’t you and Luella reconnect?’

  Hobe slumped. ‘I tried, lord knows. After Cleve got suspicious, me and Luella had to stop our trysts. So we started writing letters. We used the big white beech tree at Thornwood as a letter exchange, midways between our two properties. It was kind of romantic, a secret place. It was also what started the whole mess. Cleve must have been snooping, because he discovered one of our notes.

  ‘Later, after he went missing, there was no more need for secrecy. I went to see Luella but she wouldn’t open the door. I hand-delivered dozens of letters, but she never responded. I figured her heart was all broke up after losing Glenda. I was mad with grief myself – but I had to respect Luella’s wishes. It was clear she didn’t want to see me. In the end I gave up trying.’

  He attempted a smile. ‘So when you and young Bronwyn showed up, I thought it might be good for Luella. I started checking the tree every few days, convinced it was only a matter of time before I’d reach in and find her letter.’

  The real
isation hit me hard. I saw how wrong I’d been about Hobe, how I’d twisted the facts out of proportion and let myself think the worst. ‘That day you were searching the hollow tree . . . you were looking for a letter from Luella?’

  He nodded. ‘Nothing there, of course. I suppose now I’ve got to accept that she doesn’t want to know about me.’

  I warmed my palms on the brittle old teacup, recalling Luella’s fears that Hobe still held a grudge for Cleve’s attack on him.

  ‘Don’t give up, Hobe,’ I told him. ‘I’ll have a whisper in Bronwyn’s ear and get her to put in a good word for you. She and Luella idolise each other.’

  Hobe brightened. ‘You’d do that, lass? Would you really?’

  ‘Consider it done.’

  ‘Well, now . . .’ He grinned into his cup, the steam rising from the tea fogging his glasses.

  We sat in the quiet of our thoughts, listening to currawongs warbling outside. I stole a peek through my lashes at Hobe and saw that his smile had turned sorrowful. All those lost years, and the guilt and grief of a life that had somehow rattled off in the wrong direction. It was as though Aylish’s death was a stone cast into some dark pond, and the ripples were still creeping outwards.

  ‘Tony never spoke about his family,’ I found myself thinking aloud. ‘I’m only just beginning to understand why.’

  Hobe’s smile faded. He looked at me and nodded. ‘His sister’s death shook him badly, poor kid. He was only fourteen, hardly surprising that it unhinged him the way it did.’

  ‘Unhinged?’

  ‘Yep . . . poor little bloke went clean off his head.’ Hobe dug under his glasses, massaged the empty socket. ‘Y’see, the night before they found Glenda’s body, Tony turned up here, must’ve been around ten o’clock. Poor little fella was covered in blood. Wild-eyed, as if he’d seen a ghost. He kept saying that his sister was at the edge of their grandfather’s garden, lying under the old beech tree – the same damned tree Luella and I had been using as a post-box. Tony didn’t know what had happened, only that Glenda was bleeding and hurt, barely conscious.