A song found its way into Alice’s addled brain, a Nancy favourite from years ago. As she hummed the tune, ‘On The Street Where You Live’, she wondered how she was supposed to know anything at all. She’d criticised Paige for not asking enough questions while Nancy was alive, now Alice was questioning herself. She thought she’d known enough about her partner. She could name any number of things about Nancy: her favourite place (the beach), her favourite colours (pink and blue), favourite food (cake) and favourite song (‘I Could Have Danced All Night’). Nancy had loved to dance, despite Alice having two left feet. They’d been young then, young enough to act up on a dance floor, fooling onlookers in nightclubs in the process—just two vibrant young women having a fun night out and putting on a show. On the dance floor was the only time they got away with holding hands in public and their shenanigans brought a sense of smugness, making them crow the next day about what they’d got away with and how they’d duped everyone.
Towards the end of Nancy’s life, when regret and hurt had twisted tight enough to strangle the life out of those precious moments—like dancing—there had been less laughter, fewer words, and total avoidance of trips down memory lane. Sometimes it seemed to Alice that she’d only ever known a sick Nancy, someone waiting for remission to ease her pain, then waiting again for the remission to end. When the cancer’s effect on Nancy’s brain reduced her recollections to the odd rambling reference, they were usually delivered during short-lived bursts of lucidity and always tangled with tears.
Around that time, desperate for a miracle, Alice had started going to church. As she looked around the little cottage now, with the unusual stained glass window featured in one wall, she was reminded of the weird Church of Whatsitsname. She couldn’t recall the real name, just that the obscure religion had set up in an industrial area not far from where she was living with Nancy at the time. Alice doubted it was even a proper religion. She only knew they’d been flying rainbow flags outside when she was driving home from a night shift in the early hours one Sunday morning; she’d taken a liking to the place there and then.
Alice checked her watch, aware of the fading light. It wasn’t the late hour prompting the check, but the gathering of storm clouds that darkened the sky. Matilda and Liam had switched colouring-in books for a DVD on the portable player, their occasional giggles letting Alice know all was in order. She wished Paige would hurry back.
Stiff with the early onset of arthritis, her knobbly knuckles battled with the handle on the delicate china teacup. Alice blew gently over the liquid’s surface, wondering what made people wait until a person was gone to realise how little they knew about them, or how little tangible evidence remained of their existence. Nancy had refused to let Alice keep anything that allowed the past to catch up—a past the innocent, impetuous and trusting young mother had run away from without thought, lured by the thrill of a new life.
Alice’s recollections of conversations shared with the woman she’d loved were also disappearing, slipping through the cracks in her memory. Was there any use holding onto such things? She shrugged the thought away as a sigh shuddered in her chest. Did death not render the details of another’s life obsolete once that person was gone? Such was Nancy’s view the night she’d demanded photos and other links to her past be buried, even before she was, and in spite of Alice’s insistence to the contrary.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to keep them?’ Alice asked for the third time. ‘There’ll be no going back once they’re gone. If you’re worried about Paige finding them we could—’
‘Do what? Lock them away? What’s the point, sweet Alice? Besides, why would I want them? Why would I want to go back even in my mind? I wouldn’t. I can’t. You know that. Never in real life and never in my head.’ There was sereneness in Nancy’s words and in her beautiful smile that said she’d accepted life as it was and come to terms with her fate. She urged Alice to do the same. ‘What possible reason would I have for keeping all this? Why did I even take them with me? What was I going to do with them?’
‘You must’ve had a reason. That’s why you need to think some more about all this.’ Alice waved her hand over the pile of photos and the scattering of other bits and pieces.
‘Sweet Alice.’ Nancy wiped away the fresh tear from Alice’s cheek. ‘I’ve spent years trying not to think about all this.’
Exasperation thrummed against Alice’s throat. ‘But why? Of all the times to let the truth come out it has to be now, before it’s . . .’ Alice struggled to say the words. She was a nurse, she dealt with death every day, but this was different. This was her Nancy. ‘Nancy, my love, there’s no one in your life who would blame you for grabbing happiness the way you did—the way we have. You always said it was for the best, that you and he would’ve made each other miserable. Letting go and walking away is hard, but better that you—’
‘Sneak out in the middle of the night and leave him to face a small town’s small-mindedness? I deserved his anger. That’s why the thought of him finding me and Paige in those early days frightened me so much. I didn’t deserve happiness.’
‘That was years ago. Is it not possible he’s moved on? Times have changed. Perceptions have changed. People have changed. Maybe he has, too. Maybe when he finds out how sick you are now. The world is a different place, Nancy. There’s more tolerance, more acknowledgement, more understanding. Things are better for couples like us. We’re able to breathe a little more, to share our lives, our happiness, our grief, to move on as a family. Together, you and me and Paige—’
‘Enough!’ An angry swipe at the stack of photos sent them, and any sense of serenity, flying across the room. Like confetti the pictures rained down, a predictable silence ensuing. ‘Stop talking about what was. That part of my life is over. It can’t exist—ever. If it did, I’d be forced to accept what happened was real and I can’t bring myself to think about that night as anything other than a bad dream. You know I’d be crazy by now if I thought it was real—crazy with grief and worry and wondering about that baby . . . About him. Please Alice, you know I can’t regret the choice I made back then.’
‘You didn’t do the choosing, Nancy.’
‘Yes. I did.’ Nancy stalled, her shoulders sagging, the fight short-lived. ‘And I chose to forget afterwards. I chose to let threats stop me and I’ve lived with that decision ever since. And now . . . Now I’m going to die, only not before my brain fails me and I disremember everything, whether I wanted to forget or not.’ She gave a sad little snort. ‘Sometimes, sweet Alice, we have to let go and walk away.’
‘Don’t you ever wonder?’
‘The only thing I let myself wonder is what my life would be without you—if I’d never met you. I can’t imagine being happy with anyone else, plus we have our little Paige. You’ve become a wonderful mother. You will be a wonderful mother—always.’
‘You know I’ll be here for her in every way. But Nancy, if not for Paige, then surely you need to find out for yourself. There has to be some way we can find out. Surely we can—’
‘I’m so sorry, Alice, I’m not prepared to expose my only child to the truth when we can’t guarantee the outcome.’
‘Paige is not your only child, Nancy. She has a twin.’
‘Alice . . .’ Nancy warned. The conversation was taking its toll, the sharp and rapid rise and fall of Nancy’s bony chest more than telling.
‘How many times have you made us move to ensure your husband never tracks us down and snatches Paige back? Do you really think he might, even now? It’s been nearly nine years.’
‘I won’t risk it and I can’t tell Paige the truth. She’s not ten yet. Too young. Besides, I don’t have to. We are Paige’s family. You can’t ever tell her about him—about either of them, or what happened. Promise me, Alice. You have to promise. What would she think of a mother who hid such a truth? Is it not bad enough we’ve let her believe she comes from a sperm donor? I can’t bear the thought of her remembering me as a liar. You know as wel
l as I do that the truth might mean losing Paige—if not to her father, then to the authorities. Do you want that to happen?’
‘No.’
‘My final wishes will mean nothing. Changing our name to yours has never been made official. Do you want to lose me, only to have some do-gooders take Paige back after I’m gone?’ Despair pushed Nancy’s voice up an octave, the desperation on her face demanding Alice agree, if only to calm her.
‘Okay, okay.’ Alice picked up her partner’s hand, slowly unfurling clenched fingers to place two small pink pills on her palm. ‘Here, take your tablets.’
The mood swings were new, but expected, since learning about the secondary cancer aggressively attacking Nancy’s brain. Her sudden switches from serene to angry still took Alice by surprise until she remembered; Nancy had not always been a fun loving, free spirit. There was another Nancy, the neurotic Nancy, the Nancy she’d first met that day in May. A young woman so disillusioned with her world she was ready to leave it any way she could, only she had a daughter to protect. Paige, Alice found out eventually, had been the only reason Nancy didn’t find a way out by her own hand after that Machiavellian, Teresa, had abandoned her within months of them arriving in Sydney.
With fear and hopelessness fusing together in the latter stages of her condition, with the metastases in her brain rendering Nancy rational one minute and utterly illogical the next, Alice—the protector—could only love her with every fibre of her being and go along with everything, even when she didn’t agree.
With albums stripped bare, every photo ripped in two—the ripping occasioning considerable sanative benefit, according to a now subdued Nancy—the paltry pile of pictures had, in the end, hardly warranted the giant green garbage bag. Nancy poured a glass of what she called ceremonial red—a cheap cleanskin from the local bottle shop, rather than cask wine—and carted the bag outside to where Alice had made a wood fire in the brick barbeque.
‘If you’re absolutely sure,’ Alice asked, at which Nancy guzzled half the glass of wine, flinging the remaining alcohol on the fire.
A whoosh of flame decimated the plastic bag in seconds, snapshots of Nancy’s past shrivelling before their eyes. Only later that night, turning off the living room lights after tucking Nancy into bed and poking her head in to check Paige was still asleep, did Alice notice a sole survivor sticking out from behind the television.
Her decision to keep that one remaining photograph, secreting it away in her own box of memorabilia, now had the power to put the people she loved terrifyingly close to the forty-year-old truth—a truth that could mean uncovering Nancy’s past and exposing Alice’s lie.
Had Alice known back then that iPads, scanners and photo-shopping programs would one day be part of every home office, and that the word ‘cropping’ would no longer be something one did on a farm, she would never, ever, have kept that one faded black and white photograph of a vibrant and youthful Nancy, the nursing mother astride a magnificent specimen of a horse—and not any horse either, but a Melbourne Cup winner only two years earlier. No longer was that picture simply the sole survivor of Nancy’s illogical fear and bitterness, a symbol of her former life. That picture might mean Alice could lose everything important to her, just as Nancy had forewarned.
A rainbow of stained glass stretched over the floorboards and bare walls of the cottage, divine sunrays heralding the late hour. Both the time and the symbolism of stained glass unsettled Alice. Such ornate features erred a little too close to religion, but she had to admit the window treatment was especially beautiful with the afternoon sun streaming through. She finished her second cup of tea, slipped the cup back on its saucer and massaged the arthritic ache from her knuckles, scanning the quaint rural scene stretched beyond the front door.
Here was Alice on the outskirts of Coolabah Tree Gully with no connection to this obscure country town, only snippets of Nancy’s heartbreaking story, of a lonely life led and tragic choices made—choices Nancy had claimed she couldn’t regret if the end result had meant never meeting Alice.
‘Enough, you silly woman,’ Alice muttered to herself, pushing the cup and saucer to one side of the table. This was no time to get morbid. No sense dwelling over what had been left behind or wallowing over long-ago choices. Make a decision and move on was Alice’s mantra these days, which is why people thought her quite dogmatic. She made no apology for that, or for her lack of genuine faith. Cynicism was inevitable after everything she’d experienced, first in her Catholic upbringing, and later as nurse and carer.
Alice had forgotten much of what Nancy had said about the place she’d briefly called home—the details anyway. And try as she did on the drive out from The Billabong Hotel, it was simply not possible to tell one gravel road from another, one red brick or rotting weatherboard abode from the next. Every second farmhouse had looked the same: a small, shapeless dwelling, framed by a full and shady veranda and further dwarfed by enormous hay bales. Amid hues of brown and green languished the odd, predictable piece of rusted machinery long since abandoned and now overgrown with weeds. There was always a remote mailbox, usually constructed from a recycled something-or-other. With street names non-existent Google was unlikely to help Alice identify where this estate might be in proximity to where Nancy had spent her early married life.
Prior to her marriage, Nancy—an only child—had lived a solitary existence on a remote cattle property out Moree way. Her father, a third generation grazier, was the only sibling to marry and the only one to live past forty. By his fifties, depression seemed inevitable and when his wife died from breast cancer he sold the parcel for a pittance and walked away from the property lock, stock and barrel. The man then drank himself to death. Nancy had been introduced by this time to her husband-to-be at a B&S Ball. After a short engagement, she married and moved into the husband’s family home, located somewhere in the hills overlooking the small township of Coolabah Tree Gully.
Alice recalled the husband’s business had been horse-related—a stud, she’d always presumed—with the property handed over as a kind of living inheritance to allow his parents to retire to a smaller house closer to town. But such information seemed hardly useful to Alice at this point, as there’d been evidence of multiple stud farms in varying degrees of deterioration on the drive out of town. Some entranceways en route had been quite grand, one with acres of white post-and-rail fencing.
‘Who on earth paints all that?’ she’d mused aloud.
Young Liam had promptly told her the fencing was ‘special for horses’. Plastic apparently. No painting required. And worth a pretty penny, no doubt.
From the tidbits Nancy dropped every now and then, Alice had gathered that the in-law’s house had been a showpiece, with Nancy under pressure to keep it just right. Perhaps that had explained her messy habits around the home later in life. Alice had noticed most of the big properties hung fancy names at their entrances, some carved into timber, one magnificent sign wrought from a combination of horseshoes. She’d scoured each signboard as they’d driven by, but none of the names sounded familiar and Alice supposed property names changed over time anyway. Or was a name change for a farm considered bad luck, much like a ship? She’d make a note to ask the young Mr Know-It-All-Liam about that.
From what she could see, this rundown property fit the real estate catchphrase: worst house in the best street. There’d been no signage at the property’s overgrown entrance, nothing other than the matted mess of purple flowers with big heart-shaped green leaves. So great was the weight of the plant that the fence underneath was struggling to stay upright, dragged over some forty-five degrees. Still, there was a certain charm about the unkempt paddocks speckled with . . .
Wildflowers!
Alice smiled at the array of colours, such a palette she’d never seen surviving in the suburbs. Not even the yellow dandelion flower with its fragile gossamer ball survived the weekly Roundup weed spray at Robert’s mini-Versailles.
‘Got ’em all,’ he would boast to his
family, as if he’d singlehandedly wiped out a Trojan invasion in the backyard. ‘Nothing survives this stuff.’
On those occasions, Alice would take Matilda into her house and shut the doors and windows. Paige would laugh. She’d call Alice Fussy Boombah and say, ‘The vapours from Robert’s cricket gear after a week in the laundry basket will kill us before weed spray does.’ But Alice’s job was to protect. It’s what she did, would always do. She’d promised Nancy.
The drive from the Coolabah pub today had been nearly a straight line from town, until the car started winding its way up a narrow mountain road, passing several properties before the landscape flattened out a little. It was more than possible they’d driven past Nancy’s house—the place that had wielded such sadness over the woman who, for the five years Alice had known her, woke up crying practically every night.
Alice sighed, deep and despairingly. Seriously, she thought again, what was the chance of finding herself within cooee of the place Nancy had run away from all those years before?
Probably the same chance of the drought breaking with unprecedented rainfall, surviving a nine-hour road trip with a six-year-old, and hitting a road detour that landed us all in the last place on earth I want to be—Coolabah Tree Gully.
‘Here you go.’ Sharni had dropped in on Alice a couple of times. This time she brought a chunky barrel lock key, sliding it across the table. ‘Sorry about the dust. I haven’t been in here for a while and I wasn’t exactly expecting guests. If you want I can get the vacuum from the main house.’
‘No, thank you, dear, you’ve done enough by providing us with a place to stay. I can manage a duster and a broom.’
‘If you’re sure. Please, yell if you need anything. And if Liam becomes a bother feel free to eject him in the direction of home,’ Sharni called back, already halfway up the small rise on which the main house sat, some fifty metres away.
Season of Shadow and Light Page 11
