Silver Lining

by Diana Simmonds

  Minutes later Clancy eased up on the gas pedal and turned at a faded white wooden sign that read “Two Moon Farm & Dairy since 1947.” They passed through a gateway whose peeling white-painted and moss-streaked five-bar gates stood open and guarded by a cattle grid. The Subaru rattled across it and into a tussocky graveled avenue of sinuously curving and massively overhanging trees whose dappled shade was instantly cooling. Around a curve and over a rise in the lane the trees gave way to scrubbier trees, green fields and another startling glimpse of the Pacific. Nestled in a dip in the land and behind protective shrubs and trees and a rough dry-stone wall was a low, rambling, brick-built house, surrounded by wide verandas.

  Clancy turned to Amanda and smiled. “Welcome to Two Moon Farm.”

  The warmth that rushed into the air-conditioned interior of the car as Amanda pushed open the door almost took her breath away; it was thickly laden with new scents. One she recognized as eucalyptus, beneath it the salty pungency of the ocean and wafting through was a sweeter scent that drifted from cascades of tiny white jasmine flowers whose dark green tendrils curled up and around the veranda rails and pillars. She took a deep breath and got out of the car just as a madly excited golden Labrador came skittering around the corner, claws clattering on the veranda timbers, barks rising to howls of delight as she flung herself at Clancy then, with overwhelming joy, at Malcolm. Behind her, stalking along with a studied display of dignity and disinterest, came a large black Burmese cat. His tail stood erect and cocked at the tip in the shape of a question mark, his amber eyes skewered Amanda with an imperiousness that she found irresistible. He leapt from the top step to land beside her and rubbed his head against her leg.

  “Oh lord, will you look at that,” said Malcolm to his sister. “That big flirt has cottoned on to Amanda already.” He batted aside the still leaping golden Labrador and scuffled his fingers between the dog’s ears. “Meet another Thomas Cat, usually known as Tommo, although he doesn’t have his equipment anymore.”

  The cat reached out and clawed at Malcolm’s leg and he drew back, laughing. “I’ve let out his secret and he doesn’t like it. But he doesn’t let it stop him any. You’ll have to lock him out of your room, if you want any peace.”

  Amanda reached down and gently stroked the glossy black head. The cat purred like a buzz saw and rubbed his face and whiskers against Amanda’s leg again. Amanda scratched him under his velvet chin and felt the rumbling of his purr against her fingers.

  “He’s gorgeous,” she said, thrilled beyond reason that he obviously liked her. “Tommo,” she whispered. “Will you be my friend? I’ll tell you all about my Thomas Cat in America, if you like.” The cat answered with an elegant, loose-limbed figure of eight turn between her legs. Then he reached out for a quick swat and spit at the dog, as a wildly wagging plume of tail whacked him up the tail. The Lab barked at the cat and grinned and leapt about to avoid his amiable efforts to get her across the nose.

  “Leave Tom alone, Jessie,” said Malcolm, tugging fondly on the dog’s tail. “You shouldn’t tease him, bad girl.”

  Jessie paid no attention but crouched at Tom’s feet, her tongue lolling, her front paws reaching toward him in supplication. The cat licked Jessie’s face and she rolled over on her back, her eyes closed and her paws waving in the air.

  “As you can see, Jess and Tom are inseparable,” said Malcolm to Amanda. “The silly mutt adores him.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Amanda. “He’s sort of like George Clooney.”

  Malcolm laughed, “Hear that, Clancy?” Clancy’s neat rear end was protruding from the rear of the wagon. “She dotes on that cat,” Malcolm remarked and went to help his sister and grabbed their bags. “C’mon, Amanda let’s get inside. Do you want a shower and change before we eat and do the grand tour?”

  Amanda considered the sticky grubbiness of her hands and back of her neck. The flight had been endless and they had been on the move for what now felt like weeks. She was suddenly enamored of the idea of running water and fresh clothes.

  “Where’ve you put her, Clancy? She on the courtyard or what?”

  Clancy emerged from the rear of the car with a cardboard box of groceries. “Yes, it’ll be quieter and she can settle in and sleep better, I thought.” She looked at Amanda and seemed distant once more. “You can find your way to the kitchen, can’t you?”

  Amanda was disconcerted by the change to sharpness, and simply nodded. Clancy stomped off along the veranda and disappeared around the corner, followed by Jessie. In the humming silence that fell about them Amanda stepped up into the shade of the veranda and looked around.

  “This is lovely, Mal,” she said, enjoying the deep green cool thrown by a luxuriant wisteria vine. Its gnarled trunk was thicker than her thigh and coiled inextricably around one post. Just below the roofline it divided so that its creeping growth spread the length of the veranda on either side of the steps. “It must look fantastic when the wisteria is in bloom.”

  “Yeah, it does, my gran planted it when she was a young woman and this was a new house.”

  “She gone now?”

  “Died about ten years ago, after Mum died. She couldn’t handle that. That’s when my aunt and uncle took over.”

  “And your grandfather?”

  Malcolm snorted, “You’ll appreciate this. He buggered off years ago. Gran ran the place, raised Mum and her brothers. Clancy’s like her—tough as boots but heart of butter.”

  “Really?” At that moment, given Clancy’s sudden switch of mood, Amanda couldn’t quite picture the butter center, although the toughness was evident. Maybe she’d have to look harder.

  “Well, let’s go inside anyway.” Malcolm reached up under the veranda eave and felt for a key. “We never had to do this when I was a kid,” he remarked as he showed her the door key. “But town is a bit more modern these days and druggies and kids have changed all that.”

  “It must be the same everywhere,” Amanda said, sighing. “Eleanor never used to lock up at night—the guests came and went as they pleased, it was almost like family. They loved it. No more, though.” She perched her carry-on on top of the wheelie and balanced it against the stow-away handgrip. “Okay, where am I going?”

  “Follow me.”

  Amanda did as she was told and they met Clancy coming toward them in the hallway. “You’re in your old room, little bro,” she said to Malcolm. “Get yourself settled and I’ll show Amanda where she is.”

  The two siblings shared another hug, and then Clancy reached for Amanda’s soft bag.

  “I can manage,” Amanda said hurriedly, trying to grab it back. Clancy’s eyebrow cocked and her grin was sardonic.

  “Sure you can,” she said. “Wouldn’t want you to break a nail though.” And she strode off with the bag over her shoulder.

  As Amanda followed Clancy into the cool interior of the house she wondered whether she was being oversensitive. She made a huge effort to resist punching Clancy in the head and instead looked about with interest at the house’s interior.

  Clancy led her along a long, wide passageway where dark, polished floorboards were bare but for a long Persian runner. On either side, doors opened into what Amanda glimpsed as a spacious living room and dining room to the left and an office and another bedroom on the right. The mingled scent of beeswax and jasmine was pleasant to her nose, and the air, shifted by slowly turning ceiling fans, was cool.

  “Lovely house,” she remarked to Clancy’s back.

  “Yes, it’s one of the oldest in these parts. Not that it means all that much, but you know what Aussies are like.”

  “No, I don’t, what do you mean?” They had stopped at the end of the passageway where glass-paned double doors opened out to another expanse of veranda and beyond that again, a grass and flower-filled courtyard surrounded by more verandas onto which doors opened on each side.

  “White Australia began just a couple of hundred years ago. That’s old to us.”

  “And black people?�
�� Amanda felt uneasy about where they might be going and uncertain how she should address the subject.

  “Aborigines have been around this area for millennia. Now that’s old!” She grinned at Amanda. “And here we are, this is your room.” She pushed open a door that opened to the right of the double doors and stepped back so Amanda could enter first, then she followed and stowed Amanda’s bag on a polished wooden bench at the foot of the bed. “Bathroom’s through there. I imagine you’ll want to shower, so I’ll leave you be.”

  “Fantastic, thanks Clancy. I’d love to talk, when you have time, I have a lot to learn,” Amanda said. She extended her hand yet again and Clancy took it, but instead of a formal handshake, she stepped close and lightly kissed Amanda on each cheek. Then she was gone. And once again Amanda was unsettled by the mixed messages of sweet and sour that Clancy seemed so able and willing to dish out.

  * * *

  Amanda’s first shower at Two Moon Bay was, she decided, probably the best she had ever experienced in her life. It was not so much about soap and water, but about the glorious feel of the cooling of her sweaty and travel-sticky skin. It was the sensation of the warm water raining down from a dinner plate-size, verdigris-stained brass showerhead on her upturned face and hair.

  The bathroom was separated from her bedroom by a louvered wooden door. Like the rest of the house, it was cool and dimly lit by a long narrow window onto the veranda of the courtyard. A dark green, thickly woven cotton rug kept her bare feet from the chill flagstone floor. A large wall mirror over an even larger old white porcelain basin reflected her body back to her tired eyes. It was a good body—she knew that—and uniformly pale skinned; something she was more aware of since being met at the airport several centuries ago by the muscular, golden Clancy.

  Suddenly she recalled Natalie’s aversion to the sun and anything that suggested the outdoors.

  “You cannot be serious,” Natalie had virtually snorted when Amanda suggested a game of tennis on one of the early—and rare—occasions she had been cajoled out of New York City and to Heron Creek for a weekend. “You’re such a bourgeois at heart, aren’t you?”

  Amanda was becoming accustomed to Natalie’s favorite insult and merely said, “I am, actually, yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Natalie had lain back on the bed, her ripped jeans and chain-decorated boots a curious and careless contrast to the pale green French floral print comforter, and grinned indulgently at Amanda.

  “Nuh. It’s kinda sweet. I’m thinking of making you the subject of my next project. Just don’t expect me to whack balls around though. Okay? I think I’ll take a nap then maybe we can have a cocktail. What do you say?”

  Amanda had swallowed her disappointment and irritation and retreated to the kitchen to find her mother and help out with whatever dinner extravaganza she was concocting.

  I should have realized then, she told herself as she stood in the bathroom at Two Moon Farm. We had absolutely nothing in common and opposites so do not attract. At that thought an image of Clancy’s shrewd gray eyes and mocking eyebrow floated in front of her and she paused to consider the picture. As the vision clarified she watched her own reflection as she cupped her breasts and hefted their weight in her hands. She rubbed her thumbs hard over the dark nipples and saw them spring to life even as she felt the rush. She let one hand drop to the glinting curls at the base of her belly and watched as her fingers closed over herself. The sensation of warmth and racing blood caused her to gasp aloud and her breasts began to rise and fall with the faster rhythm of her breathing. Scrolling through her mind, like a film clip, she saw Clancy’s strong, long-fingered hands and the ripple of muscles beneath the freckled skin of her forearms. Amanda sluiced her fingers in her own wetness and moaned at the thought of those hands. After a nerve-tingling minute of sliding fingers she swayed, faint with ripples of desire, and leaned onto the edge of the washbasin. The chill of the white porcelain on her bare thighs was enough to bring her out of the daydream and her eyes widened as she saw herself in the mirror, an expression of total abandon hazing her eyes. She turned away, dismay extinguishing the throbbing want that had come out of nowhere to overtake her.

  “Shit,” she said aloud. “You are out of your mind. It must be jetlag.” She stepped back into the shower stall and turned the cold full on to shock herself into something like sense; then she wrapped her body in the rough white bath sheet and toweled vigorously. It was punishing and she managed to nearly banish the remnant languor of almost-orgasm from her limbs, and the face of her hostess from her mind.

  Amanda wondered what to wear. She unzipped her bag and took out all her carefully tissue-rolled clothes, shook each garment and laid them on the bed. Tailored creamy linen Bermudas seemed the best bet, with a pale pink V-neck tee and flat strappy sandals. She hung everything else in the old-fashioned polished timber closet, used one drawer for underwear and the other two for the tank tops, fine knit cotton sweaters and two spare black tees. She placed her shoes on the floor of the closet and that was that. Having your entire wardrobe destroyed made for an interesting experience in deciding what really had to be replaced and what could be done without, Amanda thought as she slid the empty bag beneath the bed and looked around the room. It was simply furnished and decorated. As well as the Edwardian closet there was a Persian rug of dark blues and reds beside the bed, which was covered with a lightweight patchwork comforter in shades and patterns of pink. A pretty wing chair upholstered in dark rose velvet stood beside a pair of French doors that gave her an outlook to the veranda and into the inner courtyard. On either side of the doors hung long drapes of the same fabric as the comforter, caught back with rose pink ropes. Between the open Venetian doors, screen doors were latched with a small brass hook. On the opposite side of the doors from the wing chair was a small, elegant antique writing desk and tucked beneath it, a matching chair. Probably early Georgian, Amanda thought and ran an approving hand over its rich patina and wondered whether she was right.

  Chapter Ten

  Amanda’s first few days at Two Moon Farm passed in a blur that included wondering whether she was right about all kinds of things. It was partly jetlag, partly the new faces, new sights and sounds, new smells and new experiences. She gradually found her way around the rambling house, then to the dairy and to the beginning of an acquaintance with the good-natured, brown-eyed cows that came to its doors twice each day and the equally good-natured Bernie, the ranch hand who took care of them. Trying to be less of a passenger, she volunteered to help in the kitchen but was banished instead to feeding the chickens. Clearly she would have to work on Clancy to rise anywhere in the pecking order of Two Moon Farm. And in between times she managed to limit the number of times she obsessively checked her iPhone for the financial news and the New York Stock Exchange to no more than three…or four…or more times in twenty-four hours.

  Now, lying awake in the small hours, while her body clock still struggled to adjust, she listened to the night and marveled at it. A fan, suspended from the high ceiling, swirled air around the room and left her cool enough to pull the comforter up and over the white sheet that enveloped her in sun-scented softness. The fan blades’ muted whirr and occasional feeble squeak were the only sounds in the shadowy darkness; and Tom, curled at her feet was so deeply asleep that he’d long ago stopped purring. For someone accustomed to the all-night clatter and chatter of Lexington Avenue, the absence of man-made noise of any kind was fascinating. She listened to her own heartbeat and waited for a night bird to hoot or cry. Beyond that was the muted boom-whoosh rhythm of distant breakers and on the fourth night of restlessness, it was the sound of the ocean that eventually slipped her into deep and dreamless sleep. Hours later, she awoke with a start when a cockerel crowed with great vigor right outside her bedroom doors.

  Amanda sat straight up and peered about, wondering for a moment where she was; then the events of the past few days tumbled into the vacuum that had been her sleeping mind and she murmured out loud,
“Ah, Two Moon Bay. Australia. I’m here.”

  Tom jumped down from the bed, stretched his length and shook himself awake. Amanda followed him and pulled back the drapes. Strutting around the courtyard, pecking, scratching at the herbaceous border, was a handsome bird with a bright red comb and wattles, beady black eyes and yellow beak. Gleaming chestnut feathers fluffed out his chest and balanced a luxuriant tail of glistening chestnut with flashes of emerald green that matched his neck.

  Amanda found yesterday’s shorts, ransacked the pockets to find what she was looking for, then slipped the hook on the screen doors and gently pushed them open. The cockerel caught sight of the movement and Tom and shrieked. Amanda stepped out onto the veranda and he ran around in circles, flapping his wings and cackling hysterically.

  “Stop it, you silly bird,” she said softly. “Here, come and get this treat. You know you want it.” She held out her hand to him. On her palm lay the dried corn left over from the previous day’s sucking up to the hens. She clucked her tongue in a chicken-like fashion and he paused in his panic and put his head on one side to better take a look at her. She clucked again, it was a soothing, definitely hen-like sound. The cockerel fluffed his feathers and took a step toward her; she clucked again and murmured sweet nothings low in her throat. He cocked his head to the left and peered at her curiously, then took another step toward her. Amanda advanced carefully, bent low, her free hand tucked behind her back, crooning softly like a sleepy hen. And so it went for a few minutes and circling moves around the grass. As if hypnotized, the cockerel continued taking one careful step at a time in her direction, placing his yellow-clawed feet as delicately as if he were walking through a minefield.

  “C’mon chooky chooky chook,” Amanda coaxed and rubbed her thumb enticingly through the corn treat. “C’mon, you know you want some, c’mon, there’s a good bird…” She crooned her invitation in a soft, reassuring voice and within a minute the cockerel was within inches of her outstretched hand. Almost imperceptibly, she drew her hand back toward her body while her thumb rustled the corn as it lay in her palm; then, as he took the last fatal step toward her, she lunged and grabbed him by the legs and swung him up into the air.