Sunset Ridge

by Nicole Alexander

  They still should have been running on adrenalin after the discovery of the sketch; instead, they were driving around the property as Madeleine tried to understand why neither Jude nor George had told her about her father’s alcoholism.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to hear all that, Maddy. Talk about a gossip.’

  She looked at him. ‘Was Dad really an alcoholic?’

  George turned down the radio. He had been fiddling with it for the past few minutes. ‘I don’t know when it started. He never drank that much in the homestead as far as I know. Sure, he had a rum-and-water before dinner, but that’s about as much as I remember, unless he got stuck into the grog after we went to bed.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. All these years I thought he had a mental-health problem not an addiction.’

  ‘Can’t they be one and the same?’ George replied.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Madeleine answered irritably. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me and how did it become common knowledge?’

  George changed down gears as they drove over a stock grid. ‘I guess one of the station hands knew, probably by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s how I found out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was riding past the cattle yards one day – I think you and Mum were in Banyan shopping for groceries – and I heard this noise, and there’s Dad sitting cross-legged by the cattle crush. I knew he was drunk as soon as I saw him. He was singing and laughing and there were two empty rum bottles on the ground beside him. He didn’t see me, so I backed off and left him alone.’ He turned to her. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I was eleven at the time. Three years later he was dead.’

  For a moment Madeleine was too surprised to speak. ‘Oh, George. I’m so sorry, I had no idea.’

  ‘He probably had stashes of rum around the property. He wasn’t the first grazier to fall foul of the bottle, Maddy. There are many stories about bushmen, isolation and grog. I remember asking him for a drink out of his waterbag once and he said it was empty. I think it was probably filled with rum.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Mum?’

  ‘What would have been the point? You adored him, Maddy.’

  ‘I had a right to know.’

  ‘Mum didn’t want either of us to know. When I told her about what I’d seen at the cattle yards she said that Dad was just going through a rough patch. She made me promise not to tell you. It was important to her that you were protected. I’m pretty sure that she intended to tell you at some stage in the future, but let’s face it, Maddy, after he shot himself would you really have wanted to hear that he was a drunk?’

  ‘So, his mood swings were caused by his drinking?’

  ‘I don’t know, but they certainly got worse as we got older.’

  ‘I thought his suicide was the reason Jude didn’t want to talk about Dad, and I always thought her attitude was selfish. Maybe I’ve been too hard on her. It must have been so tough for her, so stressful, with a property to run and two young kids to look after.’

  ‘How Mum and Dad ever thought they would make a go of the property still amazes me. It was already an albatross by the time Mum had inherited it. It still is, I guess.’ George changed gears and reached for the packet of jubes he kept on the dash. Even as a child he had liked them warm and squishy. He sighed as he chewed. ‘Sunset Ridge should have made a motza out of the wool boom during the fifties, like everybody else in the business did.’

  ‘But it didn’t; that was plain in the ledgers you showed me.’

  ‘Exactly. The property was riding a pretty thin line, and when it was left to Mum she had to make a decision: sell it or try to get it back on its feet. I’ve often wondered if it was a conscious decision to have us both later in life or whether it was something that just happened naturally.’

  ‘I know the rest, George,’ Madeleine responded sharply. ‘She sold Grandfather’s legacy to keep this lump of dirt. Why, I will never know.’

  ‘Why? Because Mum couldn’t support herself with her painting, Maddy, and the man she adored was an unemployed charmer – her words, not mine.’

  Madeleine’s bottom lip dropped.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t know if she had an inkling into Dad’s character then, but in the end she chose security, her childhood home, deciding it was better to sell the paintings and use the proceeds to get the property back on track. At least then they would have a roof over their heads and the property to manage.’

  ‘They could have sold the property and kept the paintings.’

  ‘Jude was an only child. To her, Sunset Ridge was the only security she had left. I understand her thinking, Maddy. Here she had a home and a ready-made job for her husband.’

  Madeleine slumped back in the seat. ‘I can’t believe that Jude never told me any of this.’

  ‘Mum said when we were still both under five Dad became obsessed with winning the Champion Fleece competition at the Banyan Show. She guessed he wanted to please her, to do something to repay the Harrows for what he couldn’t provide himself. So, they spent a fortune on stud rams, and the flock did improve substantially. When they finally bred a showable fleece, Dad said it wasn’t good enough to be entered in the competition, and no amount of argument would sway him. Mum thought he was afraid of opening himself up to public scrutiny. After that episode he began to lose interest in Sunset Ridge, and a year later she began to notice subtle changes. He wanted to sell out and move back to the city. Dad couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just live off the sale proceeds. Soon after, the mood swings and drinking began.’

  They drove on in silence as the sun sank and a slight breeze stirred the trees as they passed. ‘So considering everything Mum has done to retain the property why doesn’t she come back to visit, George?’

  ‘Because even though she loves Sunset Ridge, the memories will always be too raw.’

  It was past seven o’clock, and while neither mentioned it, they both knew that Rachael would be annoyed by their late return. Madeleine watched the evening star emerge from a darkening sky as the faintest smudge of crimson fell away over the horizon. A pool of sadness had gathered in the pit of her stomach as she thought of Jude and of her flawed yet beloved father and the all-too-few years they shared.

  ‘So, Maddy,’ George said with forced brightness, ‘any other news from the village?’

  She wiped her nose. ‘Well, the gossip at the museum said that Corally Shaw was admired by all the local boys, and that Grand­father liked Germans.’

  Switching on the headlights, George slowed as two kangaroos crossed the road in the halo of light. ‘Not exactly a popular sentiment, I would have thought, after the dreadful casualties the Allies suffered during the war.’

  ‘Are there any German families around here, George?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Well, Grandfather must have said or done something at the time for the subject to still be considered gossip.’ Madeleine hesitated. ‘There is one more thing that the woman at the museum mentioned.’

  George turned to her, watching her for a moment before asking, ‘What?’

  ‘She said there was a murder out here.’

  ‘A murder?’ George repeated incredulously. ‘When?’

  Madeleine shrugged. ‘I didn’t get specifics.’

  George laughed. ‘Next thing you’ll be telling me that there’s a ghost on the place.’

  Madeleine punched him lightly on the arm.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you hear, Maddy.’ As they neared the homestead George shifted through the gears, finally parking outside the house. ‘So, do you feel more confident about an exhibition now?’

  Madeleine thought of the three Australian War Memorial portraits, the two river drawings hanging in Jude’s apartment and the drawings discovered in the ceiling of her grandfather’s bedroom. Most of all, she thought of
her mother and the legacy Jude had lost in her attempt to provide for her family. ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I do.’

  After another late dinner, Madeleine sat down at the roll-top desk in her room and began to craft a letter to the director at the Stepworth Gallery. Every few sentences she paused and a doodle would form in a corner of the page, then she would lift the pencil and resume, noting the reasons why the retrospective should be held. With the addition of the work from the Australian War Memorial and the Cubist examples, the argument for an exhibition was now far more compelling. There was also Jude’s original 1950s sale catalogue, Sonia’s newspaper clippings and the photograph of the three Harrow brothers in their First World War uniforms.

  Madeleine coupled the facts with an outline of her grand­father’s life, reminding the gallery director that the landscape works only surfaced after his death. No one could doubt his ability as an artist, for David Harrow’s landscapes, some in watercolour, others oil, drew favourable comparison to the early Impressionists. She re-read the draft letter. It was newsworthy stuff, but would the director think David Harrow had the pulling power to ensure both sponsorship and crowds? Typing up the letter on her laptop, Madeleine connected the telephone line and then hit the send button on the email. Hanging on the wall above was the picture of the three Harrow boys. It seemed to Madeleine that they looked at her with pride.

  Chessy farmhouse, ten miles from Saint-Omer, northern France

  November 1916

  The cleaver sliced neatly through the rabbit. Wiping the blade on a towel, Madame Chessy turned to the stove and shook the large pan. The frying bacon sizzled and spat, greasing the pan with fat and sending an enticing aroma through the kitchen.

  ‘Do you think more soldiers will come today, Madame?’

  The older woman turned to Lisette and shrugged. ‘I hope not.’ The rabbit lying quartered on the table had spent the last week indoors scurrying safely around the farmhouse and out of the hungry reach of billeted troops. It was not that she was averse to sharing food – she hoped some kindly woman was doing the same for her own sons – yet nor did she intend for her and Lisette to starve. This rabbit would last them for four or five meals and the leftover juices would form the basis for a rich potato soup laced with cream if the milking cow obliged. ‘That British officer thought we would continue to see more soldiers until Christmas,’ she reminded Lisette. The last troops had left the relative warmth of the barn only days previously. They were heading back to the muddy freeze of the Somme, grumbling about luckier soldiers from other battalions who would probably be granted furlough in London now the festive season was less than six weeks away.

  Lisette’s fingers nimbly tied string around the bouquet garni of dried thyme, parsley and bay leaves and presented it for inspection.

  ‘Very good,’ Madame Chessy praised, before scraping the cooked bacon out onto a plate and dropping the rabbit into the pan to brown in the leftover fat. Lisette began to chop onions into wedges. ‘Good, if it is too fine the onion will melt away while cooking.’ She observed the girl with motherly pride as Lisette flattened two cloves of garlic with the blade of a knife. The girl was proving to be a good companion and, more importantly, had been excited by the opportunity to be taught to read and write. Lisette soaked up their evening lessons gratefully, although she was easily distracted. Every time even a small improvement revealed itself in a thoughtfully read paragraph or a questioning gaze of approval, there would be a knock at the door and Lisette’s dreamy gaze would follow a young soldier’s meanderings outdoors.

  The older woman knew she should not be ungrateful for the men’s presence, but they did intrude. One British soldier, who introduced himself as his officer’s assistant, requested a visit to the cellar in order to peruse the available contents; Madame Chessy was quick to chase him from the door with a broom. And she was still uncomfortable with the British habit of writing in chalk on the barn door the number of men that the barn would accommodate. It was bad enough to have the Germans edging their way onto French soil – she didn’t need the British to exert ownership tendencies as well.

  With the rabbit browned, she added a cup of wine and two spoonfuls of flour, followed by the remaining ingredients. The bouquet garni was poked into the liquid and the lid placed on firmly before the pan was slid into the oven.

  Lisette’s nose twitched. ‘It smells very good.’

  Madame Chessy wiped down the table with a dishcloth and washed her hands in a ceramic basin. ‘Two hours and it will be cooked perfectly, I think.’

  Outside, the afternoon shadows were creeping across the countryside. Normally the curtains would already be drawn against the cold, but a vision of the twins returning from over the fields haunted her daily and hope kept the curtains open and the view unrestricted. Angling a chair towards the window, she pushed the cork back into the neck of the wine bottle. It was her last. Lisette’s father, Monsieur Crotet, had promised to buy wine on her behalf when he next took her produce to the village market. Until then she would measure out the meagre supply by adding a little water to her nightly indulgence.

  ‘It’s a long time since I have eaten rabbit,’ Lisette said in her quiet voice. ‘Papa prefers fish and pork.’

  The girl no longer retreated to the corner but sat instead in Marcel’s chair, winding skeins of wool from a fleece grown by her family. The fleece had been washed and dried in the sun before being combed out, and every Monday morning for the past few weeks Lisette had arrived at the farmhouse with a basket of spun wool under one arm and explicit instructions as to the lengths of wool to be included in each ball. Madame Crotet knitted outerwear, and there was talk that her warm clothing was popular on the black market. Madame Chessy was less concerned with the extra francs her neighbour may make over the winter months than the thought of a cut of the tasty meat hanging in the Crotets’ cellar. Yet despite the many kindnesses she had shown towards their daughter, she was yet to benefit in this regard.

  ‘You are fortunate, Lisette. No doubt you have enjoyed lamb these past weeks on your visits home.’

  Lisette nodded. ‘Some,’ she admitted. ‘But I like pork.’ The rhythm of her fingers barely changed as she looked quickly but shyly at Madame. ‘All my family like pork.’

  Alerted by a distraught sow grunting in alarm, Madame Chessy had foiled pilfering soldiers with a piglet under an arm on a number of occasions. Despite her vigilance all but the sow and one, the runt of the litter, were taken. With the distinct possibility of awakening one morning to an empty pigsty, she had slaughtered the remaining piglet last month. Cut and cured, it hung from the wooden beams in the chill of the cellar.

  ‘Really?’ Madame Chessy replied eventually to Lisette’s statement. She calculated the cost of obliging such an obvious request. There were six people under the Crotet farmhouse roof and two beneath hers, besides which she was already feeding Lisette. She could do without lamb, she supposed. Besides, Marcel’s remaining sow was living on borrowed time; her safety could not be guaranteed and she too would have to be killed and cured before winter’s end. Some of the meat could be bartered for produce in the village and would keep well in the cellar for a number of months.

  Lisette rolled the wool precisely, her right hand looping the growing ball as the home-spun yarn continued to rise from the basket at her feet. She sat skew-whiff in the chair, one side of her face yellow in the dwindling light, her fingers deftly plying the natural fibre. She had talked recently of joining one of the many textiles factories, as if immersion in such a trade would offer a better life away from the drudgery of farm work. ‘After the war,’ Madame Chessy had cautioned, ‘wait until after the war.’ Last week’s paper talked of strikes in some of the factories, with workers complaining of poor wages and the loss of jobs as owners sought more efficient production through the increased use of machinery.

  ‘Finished.’ Lisette dropped the last ball of wool into the basket and, flicking irritably at a
strand of dark hair, rested her leg over the arm of the chair.

  Madame Chessy opened her mouth to protest and then thought better of making a comment. Initially she had been perturbed to see the casual way in which Lisette took ownership of her husband’s chair. Now she welcomed it. Exhausted by the day’s end, Lisette often fell asleep after their evening meal and lesson, her lips slightly apart, softly snoring. Such a scene of youthful domesticity would have pleased Marcel.

  ‘Madame?’

  ‘Yes?’ Madame Chessy replied.

  ‘You will write again?’ Lisette asked.

  The black-and-white photograph of her uniformed sons sat in a wooden frame on top of the dresser. Antoine and Francois appeared suitably serious in the studied pose, and more than once she had caught Lisette running her finger across their faces. The picture had arrived during October and was accompanied by a brief note from Francois. She had been thrilled to have evidence of their good health. Since then, she had been in receipt of only four letters from her boys. Three were heavily censored and, judging by the postmarks, were mailed at village post offices; the fourth, penned en route to Verdun and mailed through the Red Cross, miraculously escaped the censor’s pen.

  ‘Madame?’ Lisette queried.

  Outside the land darkened. The willow trees began to lose their form as night bore down on the farmhouse. ‘Tomorrow. I shall write again tomorrow.’ She shared a smile with Lisette, conscious of a previous sharp edge to her tone. There was no point in burdening the girl with fears that were as yet unfounded.

  Lisette hovered her palm above the stove.

  ‘Yes, another piece of wood, I think,’ Madame Chessy agreed. The kitchen was not the warm fug of earlier, and the rabbit required constant heat. Selecting a length of timber from the neatly stacked pile on the floor, Lisette poked it into the firebox. The wood crackled and fizzed and when Lisette took possession of Marcel’s chair again Madame could feel the girl’s eyes on her. Madame Chessy knew that Lisette wanted to talk about the twins, but she could not bear to. Her previous letters had gone unanswered. Optimism rallied her spirits during the day and chores kept them both busy, but at night it was becoming increasingly difficult not to believe the worst.