A Place of Her Own

by Deborah O'Brien

  Angie had pondered her approach to being an innkeeper. She and Phil had stayed in B&Bs where the proprietor wouldn’t give them a moment to themselves. There was nothing worse than a hovering host, except perhaps one who ignored you once they had given you a key and shown you how to work the television. Angie aspired to be warm and helpful, yet not overweening and full of chatter.

  The Melbournians, Joan and Brian, seemed like a nice couple. Angie explained she only did breakfast, plus a lunchtime picnic hamper if desired. There was a range of local cafés and restaurants to meet every need, she said, indicating the menus tucked inside the black folders she had compiled for the guest bedrooms.

  ‘We might try the Indian place,’ said Brian.

  ‘It’s BYO,’ replied Angie. ‘You can pick up a bottle of wine at the pub. It’s the orange building with the big verandahs.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Joan. ‘We’ll have a quick shower and walk downtown.’

  Angie smiled to herself at the use of the term ‘downtown’, which denoted a metropolis rather than a little town with a single street of shops. As for showering, she was relieved that the water was back on. Imagine if a guest was scalded. Could you sue the council or were they immune from prosecution, like foreign diplomats? Maybe that was why they behaved in such a cavalier manner.

  Not long after Joan and Brian left for the Indian restaurant, a blue sedan pulled up in the drive. The woman from the coast. She was around Angie’s age, well-dressed and thin. On the point of being too thin, but not quite. She had expensive gold jewellery and long acrylic nails like Vicky’s. You would never survive in the country with nails like that. Imagine trying to pull out weeds or remove burrs from an alpaca’s fleece. But what Angie noticed most was that her new guest didn’t have a single line on her face. How could you live half a century and not have a wrinkle? Then it struck her there must have been some cosmetic intervention of the chemical or surgical variety.

  The woman’s name was Diana Goodmann. Angie showed her to the third bedroom. In the hallway, Mrs Goodmann commented on the collection of photos.

  ‘Your family?’

  Angie nodded.

  ‘Your sons look like their father, don’t they?’

  Angie knew she would have to explain about Phil. After all, Mrs Goodmann had booked in for six days. In that time she would no doubt wonder about the missing husband.

  ‘My husband died two years ago.’

  Mrs Goodmann put her hand to her face. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Wallace. I’ve upset you.’

  ‘No, what you said is true. The boys do look like their dad. In fact, it’s a great comfort to me.’

  After an awkward silence, the woman said: ‘Actually, Mrs Wallace, we have something in common – I’m a widow too. My husband passed away six months ago.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’

  ‘We’d just returned from a cruise and he had a coronary.’

  ‘My Phil died from a heart attack too. The suddenness makes it so much harder to cope with.’

  ‘You’re so right, Mrs Wallace.’

  ‘Please call me Angie.’

  ‘And I’m Diana.’

  ‘Well, Diana, I do hope you have a restful stay here in Millbrooke.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s been a long time since I last visited, but if your lovely home is anything to go by, the town has acquired some style.’

  ‘I’m delighted you think so, Diana. You’ll find some stylish shops too. And gourmet restaurants.’

  ‘I thought I might do a little sightseeing tomorrow. Is there anything you recommend?’

  ‘The wineries, of course. Or you could drive to the waterfall. The museum is interesting. And there are some historic houses you can visit.’

  ‘I read about a place called Millerbrooke House. Is it open to the public?’

  ‘The second Saturday of the month – actually, that’s next Saturday. They’ll have the details at the tourist information office next to the bank.’

  ‘I love old houses. But I was intending to leave on Friday. Could I possibly extend my visit until Sunday?’

  ‘You certainly can,’ said Angie. ‘That will give you time to visit the out-of-the-way places most tourists miss.’

  Diana Goodmann had her dinner at the Indian restaurant recommended by her hostess, who seemed a pleasant enough woman. Obviously an arty type, as indicated by the paintings around the house with the signature ‘Angie’ written boldly in the bottom corner.

  The information about the open day at Millerbrooke was helpful too. If Diana didn’t ‘run into him’ in town before Saturday, the open day would be her fallback plan. In fact, it might be the ideal way to meet him again. Accidentally on purpose. And, in the meantime, this B&B woman might know something about him. Diana would ask some questions during the week. Carefully, so as not to arouse her curiosity.

  It was only eight o’clock when she finished dinner, but the main street was in darkness, except for the pub at the end of town. She drove back to the B&B and unpacked the rest of her clothes. Then she placed a small framed photograph on the bedside table. It was her daughter, Elizabeth, aged six, with long dark hair and eyes the colour of amethysts. It reminded Diana of a time when Elizabeth considered her the best mother in the world.

  On Sunday morning Angie felt like sleeping in, but she had to cook breakfast for her three paying guests, not to mention her two boys, who had spent the night in their sleeping bags inside the barn. This morning they were heading back to Sydney because Tim had an exam that week. Meanwhile, Vicky and Chrissie wanted to leave early to avoid the afternoon traffic jam on the approach to Sydney.

  Although they’d eaten dinner together at the Manse the previous evening, there hadn’t been much opportunity to discuss Vicky’s current state of mind. She was going through a particularly nasty divorce. After thirty years of marriage, Paul had had an affair with a thirty-eight-year-old he’d met when they were both walking their dogs. At first it seemed as though Vicky and Paul might patch it up, but then he’d moved in with the woman who had become known among Vicky’s friends as ‘the Floozy’. Recently she and Paul had negotiated a financial settlement that included a portion of his super and custody of Alfie, the dog.

  Once her guests, paying and otherwise, had departed for the day, Angie put their towels in the washing machine and cleaned the bedrooms. By the time she’d hung the washing on the line, cleaned the alpacas’ feed trough and topped up their water, it was almost lunchtime. She was considering whether to have an early lunch, when none other than Richard Scott appeared in his ute.

  ‘I noticed the alpacas needed shearing when I was here yesterday. Do you want me to line up someone to do it for you?’

  ‘I guess so. It’s not something I can do myself, is it?’

  ‘No, Ange. You can’t even clip their nails, so how could you shear a fleece?’

  He was right. She’d never been able to cut her sons’ nails when they were babies – Phil had always done it for her. ‘Could you have a look at Snow White while you’re here?’

  The white alpaca was expecting a baby – a cria – early in the new year.

  ‘Any specific problems?’

  ‘Just that she’s been spitting off at both the boys. She’s never done it to Tutankhamun before.’

  The ‘boys’ were the two male alpacas. Tutankhamun was a brown wether and Jet was the glossy black father of Snow White’s unborn baby.

  After Richard checked Snow White, he said: ‘I can’t find anything wrong. I think it’s normal, Ange. She doesn’t want them trying anything while she’s pregnant.’

  ‘But she’s always liked Tutankhamun. I think it’s his Egyptian eyes.’ He had a circle of black around each eye like kohl pencil. ‘And he would never hurt her.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re aware of that.’

  Richard always turned conversations about al
pacas into something else altogether.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, thanks. But there’s something I want to do first.’

  He took hold of her wrist and swung her towards him. She had no idea Richard Scott was so strong. Then, before she had time to think about the absurdity of being so close to him, he had bent over, put the other arm around her and was kissing her on the mouth. She was about to pull away when she realised she was enjoying it. In fact, she was kissing him as passionately as he was kissing her. Right in the middle of the alpaca paddock. Just as he was running his hand through her hair, they heard a vehicle coming up the road. It was a four-wheel drive.

  ‘It must be Joan and Brian,’ said Angie, detaching herself as if nothing had happened.

  ‘I’ll see myself out then,’ said Richard in a similarly matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘You’re not coming inside for a cuppa?’

  ‘Better not.’ With that, he headed back to the ute.

  As she walked into the house, Angie’s legs were shaking. What the hell had just happened?

  Driving back to Millerbrooke, Richard’s mind was full of Angie: the taste of her lips, the softness of her body pressed against his, the warm tones of her voice. He remembered a Sunday morning eighteen months ago, when Doug Morrison had rung to say there was someone interested in the Old Manse – a widow from Sydney. It turned out that Doug couldn’t make it to the meeting because of a family lunch, so it was just Angie and Richard. Instead of the grey-haired old lady he’d been expecting to meet, there was a tallish woman with glossy shoulder-length hair and limpid dark eyes brimming with tears which she would blink away, thinking he hadn’t noticed. It was the eyes that bewitched him.

  ‘I’m in no position to buy the Manse,’ she’d said. ‘But I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with it.’

  So he offered to rent her the house instead. A twelve-month lease with an option to buy and a discounted selling price, should she choose to purchase it later. It had only taken him a few minutes to decide he would negotiate any deal to have her stay in Millbrooke. When he suggested a rent of four hundred dollars a month, she had looked askance, so he had lowered it to three-sixty. He wasn’t going to tell her that the last tenants had paid twice that amount.

  After he told Doug Morrison about the meeting, Doug said, ‘She’ll pull out of it, mate. That house is a mess and there’s a big yard to look after.’

  ‘I promised to mow the grass and do some odd jobs.’

  ‘You mark my words. There’ll be a phone call saying she’s changed her mind.’

  But Angie didn’t change her mind and soon she was ensconced in the Manse, building a new life. Richard, meanwhile, maintained a low profile in his dealings with her. It was the safest way to operate after the failure of his marriage. Most Millbrookers viewed him as as a crusty old bachelor. No doubt they’d be surprised to know he had once been married – a long time ago. When it ended, it was as if she had died. But she hadn’t. She’d gone off with someone else. Afterwards there had been no contact, not even a phone call. The legacy of their relationship haunted him. And ever since he’d been wary of embarking on another romance. By adopting the camouflage outfit – the woollen beanie, the old checked flannelette shirt and the stubble – he could move around Millbrooke unnoticed. Women never gave him a second look. If they did, they assumed he was the town drunk – which he had been for a while, before he stopped drinking altogether.

  If he was invisible, nothing could hurt him. Most of the time, like the rest of Millbrooke, Angie treated him as though he wasn’t there. But occasionally she would give him an odd look, as if to say, what’s going on under that ridiculous hat? She smiled in an exasperated way at his puns and understood his word play. When she chided him over something and he replied that he wasn’t the village idiot, he knew she didn’t think he was. It was just a game between them.

  The first time Richard ever heard her laugh – not just a polite chuckle or a girlish giggle but a real laugh – was at the Songbird information night, after he’d called Jack Parker as flash as a rat with a gold tooth. It would have almost been worth Angie discovering Jack to hear that laugh. Richard had never liked the super-charming mining engineer, and when Jack insinuated himself into Angie’s house as her lodger, his dislike had quickly turned to ­something much stronger.

  Richard even knew the exact night that Angie and Jack became lovers, not because Angie had told him, but because she couldn’t meet his eyes when he’d seen her in the supermarket the next morning. It hurt that he’d been secretly wooing Angie Wallace, hoping she would see the man beneath the shabby exterior. And then Jack Parker had won her with his superficial charm and cowboy ways.

  The days and weeks that followed were hell. One evening Richard had turned up at the Manse with a book about alpacas, though it wasn’t really ‘turning up’ – he had arranged it in advance. In the heat of her newfound passion with Jack, Angie had obviously forgotten about him coming, because when she opened the door, he knew he’d interrupted something. Then she’d invited him inside and for some stupid reason, he’d accepted. There in Richard’s own kitchen was Jack Parker, lounging in a wooden chair with his boot-clad feet resting on the blackbutt table. But not once did Angie give him a disapproving look.

  At the end of the summer Mr Songbird, as Angie liked to call him behind his back, was told by his bosses in the States to pull the plug on the Australian project. And soon after, he flew home to his wife and the little songbirds, before leaving for new goldfields in South America. Good riddance. His sudden departure had solved Millbrooke’s dilemma about an environmentally dubious mine, not to mention Richard’s problem with Jack Parker.

  It was then that Angie seemed to discover the man who had been invisible to her for the past year. After they exchanged contracts on the Manse, he took her to the emporium café, where he produced a yellowing note he’d found in an old chest of drawers that had once belonged to Amy Duncan. It was a love letter written by Charles Chen, the suitor Amy’s father had rejected. Strangely enough, it could equally have expressed Richard’s feelings for Angie. After she read it and looked up at him, he was certain there was something new in her eyes.

  At exactly eight o’clock on Monday morning Angie had breakfast ready for her three guests. She considered serving it in the kitchen or the dining room, but it was such a warm morning that the covered north-facing courtyard seemed like the perfect place. As if to complete the picture, the platypus, which lived in Angie’s stretch of the creek, was making patterns of ripples in the water as he foraged for his breakfast. She produced a pair of binoculars for her guests. None of them had seen a platypus before. Neither had Angie, for that matter, before coming to Millbrooke. Nowadays, the fact that the creature was a daily visitor had made her rather blasé.

  ‘I might walk down to the creek and take a photo,’ said Brian.

  ‘By the time you get there, he’ll be gone. They can travel quite long distances under water. Best to go down there this afternoon around five and wait for him. Don’t count on getting a good photo though. I have hundreds of pictures of his back as he does a duck-dive.’

  Angie packed a picnic hamper for Joan and Brian, who intended to head off along forest trails to the waterfall, while Diana was planning to browse in the shops and visit the museum.

  ‘Do you know anything about the founding fathers of the town?’ she asked Angie.

  ‘It was the Miller family, specifically Captain Alexander Miller, who served as a junior officer with Nelson at Trafalgar. He was rewarded for his service to the Royal Navy with a land grant here in Millbrooke. Then he built Millerbrooke, the place you’re going to visit on Saturday. The house gave its name to the town, but in the middle of the nineteenth century somebody shortened it to Millbrooke.’

  ‘Does the original family still own the house?’

  ‘No, not since the last of the Millers
died in the 1980s. Then it was bought by an architect. Apparently the place was in a bad way, and he spent several years restoring it.’

  ‘I suppose he sold it at a big profit.’

  ‘No, he still lives there.’

  ‘He and his wife must be very proud of the house.’

  ‘Actually he’s there on his own.’

  ‘Does he run the tours himself?’

  ‘Yes, I imagine so. I’ve never done one.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see you later, Angie.’

  ‘Have a great day, Diana. And if I’m out when you get back, just use your front door key. It’s the large brass one.’

  Instead of the Gold Rush Café, Diana Goodmann tried the timber place with chunky pottery lining the shelves. She waited for an hour. Richard had always liked his morning cup of tea. Where was he?

  Diana had been hopeful her hostess might have harboured some gossip concerning the owner of Millerbrooke. But she had just droned on about an old sea captain who used to live there. In fact, she didn’t seem to know much about Richard at all.

  At least Diana knew for certain that he was living alone. Perhaps he’d even been carrying a torch for his runaway wife over all these years. Anyway, the most important thing was that he didn’t have a woman in his life. A rival could be a serious problem.

  Although it was only her second morning of running a B&B, Angie was already establishing a routine. It was not yet nine and she’d cleaned the rooms and replaced the flowers on the bedside tables. Then she debated whether to wash the towels or just give them an airing on the clothes line. You didn’t need to replace a guest’s towels every day, did you? Before she could make a decision, there was a knock at the door.

  When she opened it, Richard was standing there, a side of lamb wrapped in hessian in his arms. She hoped the hessian was clean.

  ‘Hi, Ange.’