‘Do you remember Mum ever mentioning relatives in Germany?’
There was another pause as he appeared to be considering the question. ‘No. No, I don’t think so. I’m sure I’d remember something like that. Why?’
‘It’s a bit weird, but I’ve had an email from a guy in Stuttgart who thinks we could be related.’
‘How strange. What did he say?’
‘Not a lot. Just that he had done some research and had documents he wanted to show me. He’s coming out to Australia in June and we’re going to meet up.’
Tom put on his concerned-older-brother voice. ‘Hey, be careful, sis. It could be one of those internet fishing expeditions . . .’
Lisa smiled. While he had been a moody bugger most of her childhood, she still cherished the times when Tom had stood up for her – mostly to their mother.
‘Thanks for caring, but I think I’m smart enough not to fall for that. He’s not from Nigeria or Ukraine, you know. Anyway, I’ll make sure Luke comes with me.’
She realised she had dropped some bait in the water with that slip. Tom and Natalie were tirelessly inquisitive about the status of Lisa’s love life – out of loyalty and concern, of course – and always sensitive to the merest hints in that direction.
‘Who’s Luke?’ said Tom, trying to sound neutral.
‘He’s a historian who’s researching the Palace. He showed me around last week. It’s a terrible mess but the new owners are going to spend a bundle fixing it up – properly this time.’
‘What’s this all about, Lisa?’ Tom sounded worried. ‘Are you okay?’
Lisa hesitated. The simple answer was ‘no’. But then what? ‘Mum’s losing all her memories. And the thing is . . . I want to know more about my past, Tom, to find out where I come from – before it’s too late.’
There was a short silence on the other end, broken by high-pitched squealing from another room and Natalie calling, ‘Tom!’
‘When are you coming to Canberra again, sis? It’s been at least eight months. The kids miss their aunty. You know you’re always welcome here.’
‘Thanks. I know. You’d better go. Give me a call when you get a minute.’
‘Okay, will do. Take care of yourself. Talk soon. Bye.’
Lisa hung up. She had told Ulrich that she was doing her own research. And she had just confessed to her brother that she was in a race against time to find out about her past. So why had she not lifted a finger in the last week to look in her mother’s basement as she had promised Luke? What was she afraid of?
When she’d moved Monika into the nursing home two years earlier, Lisa had been stumped about what to do with the bungalow. For the longest time, she resisted the idea of moving in despite the fact it was much more spacious than her own cramped flat in Sydney. It seemed like an admission of defeat to come back to the maternal home in Katoomba after all these years, a pathetic retreat from her independent life in the city. Even though she flatly rejected the notion of ghosts, she knew the house would be filled with bittersweet memories. And some plain bitter.
During a long professional dry patch last year when she’d struggled to pay the bills and had even taken on commissions for weddings – oh, the teeth-gritting required to get through those extravagant displays of so-called love – Lisa had finally surrendered to her fate and moved into her mother’s empty house.
Before Monika’s mind began to fail, she had been approached quite a few times by a researcher at the University of Western Sydney to sort out her archives. The woman harboured the secret hope that she might be the one to curate a major retrospective exhibition or, even better, establish a permanent Monika Fox collection at the university. Monika had not been cooperative, however, refusing to become ‘a living corpse whose tomb is raided before I am even in my shroud’.
None of this was an excuse, however, to avoid looking in the basement. So Lisa put on some old track pants and a grungy top and found the key to the blue door at the rear of the house. It was sticky but opened after a determined tug. She was relieved to find the electric light on the stairs had not blown and she did not have to descend in the dark or go back to the kitchen for a torch.
Given Monika’s seeming indifference to her standing with posterity, Lisa was amused to discover that, once she pushed past the jumbled barrier of broken furniture and old newspapers, the basement was surprisingly well-ordered. The ‘living corpse’ had made quite a fist of preparing her tomb for the grave robbers to plunder. Archive boxes of draft manuscripts and official paperwork were clearly labelled and stacked on shelves. Photo albums were sealed in bubble wrap and posters furled inside cardboard tubes. Kitty Koala dolls and soft toys of all sizes sat arm in arm, their beady glass eyes staring into the dark, waiting to be reborn as museum artefacts.
Lisa turned on the naked bulb overhead and sat on an old trunk in its bright circle of light for hours, opening boxes and leafing through papers. Most of it was related to her mother’s professional writing life, of course: proofs from her publisher, contracts, letters and receipts from her agent, sketches and letters from her illustrator, Eric, albums of photos from launches and festivals and visits to schools and libraries. Thousands of beaming faces, adoring eyes and eager hands thrusting forward copies of Monika’s books for her to autograph.
Not a single photo of Michael, Lisa and Tom.
Lisa’s eyes had begun to water from the dust and electric glare of the bulb. She was about to retire upstairs when she looked down and noticed that the trunk she was sitting on was secured with a brass padlock not much smaller than her fist.
Why on earth had her mother padlocked this trunk? Everything else in the room was easy to access. It did not make any sense except to suggest that Monika had something to hide.
Lisa recognised that what she was about to do was a kind of theft. As long as she could remember, Monika had been reluctant to talk about her past other than to drop hints that it was a place of pain and disappointment she had no wish to revisit. For many years Michael had tried to persuade her to show the kids around the family’s famous hotel but Monika refused even to do that. Lisa’s visit as a six-year-old guest of Uncle Alan’s had been a singular exception to celebrate her birthday. Her mother had not joined them on that occasion.
Monika had firmly shut the lid on that part of her life and no one could ever persuade her to lift it. But Lisa was convinced that no writer could completely abandon their past. There had to be traces of her mother’s childhood buried here somewhere, she was sure of it. What girl of that generation, who would later grow up to become a writer, had not kept a diary, for example?
All Lisa had to do was justify the act of theft she was about to commit. How could it harm Monika now, she told herself, for her daughter to know the truth of her past? In fact, it could give Lisa some insight into Monika’s experiences as a child. How could this be a bad thing?
The hunt for the key took several more hours and tested Lisa’s resolve to its limits. It was close to midnight before she stumbled on a set of small keys on a ring in among dusty jars of nails and boxes of brass garden-hose attachments in the garage. Exhausted but excited, Lisa sat on the floor of the basement trying key after key, her hands dirty and sweaty with the effort of searching the house.
What if none of these fitted and the key was missing? What if, in one of her early Alzheimer episodes of forgetfulness, Monika had thrown it away? She had done equally neglectful things, misplacing bills, letting pots boil dry and the bath overflow. Lisa tried to remember if there were any tools in the garage that would help her break this padlock if she had to, but nothing came to mind.
The more she fumbled unsuccessfully, the more anxious she became that her search would be fruitless. Or worse still, a voice inside her head warned, it would reveal a family secret that rewrote the past and changed everything she understood about her mother, her life and herself. Lisa put the last key in the lock and hesitated: maybe it would be better if she stopped now, walked away.
The key turned and she heard the padlock click open. She grabbed the handle and pulled back the heavy lid. A stale, musty odour rose from the depths of the paper-lined trunk and she saw a nest of silverfish scatter in the sudden light.
There was no going back now.
She pulled out a black plastic bag and untied the knot. Inside were two photo albums, bound in Moroccan leather, their black pages separated by sheets of tissue-thin paper chewed into delicate filmy lace.
Lisa sat on the floor, her back against the wall, and began turning the pages. Photos hung precariously from corners whose gummed backs had long since lost their stickiness. Spidery handwriting captioned each photo: Christmas 1936. Frankie, Joan, Adam and Laura play doubles. Lotz, Monz and baby Alan have tea. Monz with Captain Pogo.
Lisa gasped and tears sprang into her eyes. The little girl in the sunhat, standing on one leg next to a black cocker spaniel, was her mother. Monz. The girl squinted into the sunshine with a cheeky grin. Lisa kept turning the pages. She did not recognise the house. It was a two-storey mansion with deep verandas top and bottom, Victorian-era ironwork and high arched windows looking out over a tennis court and tree-bordered lawn, rolled to perfection. It must be the Jersey Avenue house in Leura, she thought. There were lots of photos of children’s tea parties on the lawn and verandas with dolls and bears, dressings-up in Laura’s old shoes and hats, chasing Captain Pogo with a bow and arrow, the usual childhood games and antics.
Lisa smiled at a photo of her grandfather, a fit, stylish man in his forties, wearing a neat rabbit-fur trilby and a dark pinstriped suit, and posing proudly in front of a shiny new white whale of a car in the driveway of the Palace. Adam Fox’s love of cars was legendary; some said he even learned to drive behind the wheel of the first car imported into the country. According to Grandma Laura, Adam’s craving for speed and the freedom of the open road never left him. Even in his late sixties, Adam enjoyed nothing more than hurtling down the Victoria Pass and roaring westwards along the highway to Bathurst. ‘That’s where poor Alan got the speed bug,’ Laura said, shaking her head.
Lisa studied the photo. She knew very little about vintage cars but loved this one’s low sleek profile with its extravagant curving mudguards, long running boards, thrusting rocket-nosed radiator grille and fat, white-walled tyres. It was helpfully captioned: Foxy and the Hudson 8.
There was no doubt about her grandad’s good looks. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of the hat’s brim but Lisa could see his broad face with its sharp chin and well-defined jaw, his sun-bronzed cheeks and that compelling grin, as if he had just thought of an excellent joke. He stood with his arms loosely folded and feet planted wide, the stance of a man who faced the world with a brazen, undented confidence, fearing nothing and prepared to take on anything. Lisa wished she had met him.
She looked more closely at the photos of her grandmother, of which there were only a few. Even so, there was no doubt that Laura was the society queen, the focal point of those handful of snapshots, laughing or smiling, arms outspread, enclosing her male and female friends in her generous embrace. She wore extravagant evening gowns with mink fur wraps and diamond brooches. Even in these small faded pictures it was easy to tell she was exceptionally beautiful: jet-black, glossy hair framing an aristocratic face with heavy-lidded eyes.
In one particular photo which caught Laura in a more unguarded, pensive mood, Lisa was struck by how much her grandmother resembled Garbo: that same intense, smouldering gaze and air of enigmatic melancholy. The family story was that Laura had once had ambitions to be a movie actress and even had a small part in a film by the famous Australian director Raymond Longford before she met Adam and settled for the life of wife, mother and high society beauty.
And Monika?
‘Monz’ seemed happy enough, all copper curls and pigtails, wonky teeth and freckles, rambling through a privileged childhood of handcrafted doll’s houses, cowboys and Indians on the lawn, pushing Captain Pogo dressed as a pirate down the hill in a wicker pram, hugging her older sister, Lottie, on a tartan picnic rug, crowning baby brother Alan with a coronet of daisy chains. There were a handful of photos of the whole family together in front of the Palace or panoramas of lighthouses and churches; not surprisingly, adults and children seemed to lead largely separate lives.
Lisa continued to flick through the album: tennis matches, croquet tournaments, Christmas parties, birthday parties, fancy-dress parties, expeditions in the Hudson to beaches and parks and lookouts around Sydney and down the south coast. All this was what Lisa had expected of a wealthy Australian family’s life between the wars. What was unexpected was how good the photos were: nicely composed, well-lit and in focus, capturing people in a natural, spontaneous way rather than as if they were facing a firing squad.
And then there were the photos of things that Lisa had not anticipated. A photo of her mother, aged five, with her sister, Lottie, both in full riding outfits, looking very comfortable astride two pretty chestnut ponies: Jimmy and Bob, Megalong Farm, 1935. The three children cavorting demonically around an Empire Night bonfire piled high with broken packing cases and old car tyres. Grandma Laura, in a fur-lined hood, squinting into a beautiful silver and black camera as she photographed the sheer face of a glacier in Canada. Mount Edith Cavell, June 1936.
Lisa looked more closely. Amazing. The camera she was holding was a brand-new Kine Exacta, the world’s first 35mm film SLR manufactured in Dresden, the capital of camera engineering. It was a sure bet that Adam Fox had purchased this state-of-the-art German camera for his wife on one of his overseas trips. Flipping back through the album, it dawned on Lisa that the reason there were so few photos of Laura was obvious. She was the family photographer. And a good one to boot. Lisa felt a strange mix of elation and sadness at this discovery – too late – that she shared a passion for photography with her own grandmother.
The most startling photo of all was one of her mother as a small girl with a gun. She was taking aim at the sky, the stock of the rifle expertly tucked against her shoulder with her head cocked and one eye squinting, while, out of focus in the background, a clay-pigeon trap flung its saucer-shaped target into the air. Her mother with a gun? Lisa was flabbergasted. She had never imagined such a thing. With a sharp pang of remorse, she realised she knew next to nothing about her mother’s past.
Lisa took a deep breath, stood up and stretched.
My God, what time was it? The light through the small window behind her head had paled to a pre-dawn blue-grey. She had been sitting here, lost in these albums and her mother’s childhood, for hours.
As if to cover up her theft, Lisa decided to put the albums back in the trunk and close the lid, though no one had access to this basement apart from herself. As she did so, her eye was caught by the corner of something brightly coloured tucked away at the bottom of the trunk: a bundle of notebooks with red, marbled covers, bound together with string. Each one was labelled with stickers on which appeared neatly hand-printed dates: January–June 1940.
This, she knew immediately, was the prize.
She leaned down and scooped out the diaries carefully, almost tenderly, hoping they had survived the ravages of silverfish and time. Her hands began to shake. Was she sure this was what she wanted? Who knew what they would reveal? Secrets were as explosive as the undetonated hand grenades one heard about, hidden for decades under a hedge in an English country lane, waiting for some curious schoolboy to poke them with a stick.
Lisa decided it was a risk she was willing to take.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
Angie
Meadow Springs, December 1915–June 1916
The day before Christmas, Auntie Eveline and her husband, John, arrived, staying at an inn just up the road in Blackheath. In what had been a gloomy year, it was a rare patch of sunlight. Angie noticed how much Freya’s mood lightened in the presence of her sister; she seemed younger, sunnier, more carefree. They sat on the cottage veranda with their mugs of tea, laughing a
t shared memories of their parents, singing snatches of lullabies and songs from their childhoods, telling stories of the grand balls and parties before their mother died. It had been a long time since Angie had seen her mother smile. Her father also seemed happier, less agitated, partly because he, too, could see the change in Freya.
On Christmas Eve, after a light dinner of bockwurst and roast potatoes, Aunty Eveline treated everyone to a concert in the cottage garden. Freddie had hung paper lanterns in the trees and they rocked gently on the breeze. Eveline possessed a bright lyrical soprano voice and delighted her small audience of John, Freya, Freddie and Angie with traditional German carols followed by airs from Mozart’s Magic Flute and Lehar’s Merry Widow.
‘I wonder what the neighbours will think?’ mused Freddie at this unapologetic performance of songs by German and Austro-Hungarian composers whose music, in more civilised days, had been recognised as a gift to the whole world.
‘Tonight, my dear Frederick, I don’t care what anyone thinks!’ laughed Freya, dancing around her husband and kissing him repeatedly.
John and Eveline had come bearing extraordinary news. Eveline was pregnant with their first child. And John was enlisting for the Fifth Division, AIF, which was being formed in Egypt in February next year. Freya’s joy at hearing about her sister’s pregnancy was quickly overshadowed by the shock of learning that John was going away. Freya struggled to hide these mixed feelings but Angie saw the clashing emotions in her mother. Angie also noticed how conscientiously Eveline tried to reassure her sister that she had plenty of support from friends in Sydney. ‘If you visited whenever you could, I would be grateful,’ she told Freya. The sisters hugged, and cried with happiness, and hugged again.
The following day the family enjoyed a Christmas dinner of roast goose, red cabbage and more roast potatoes, followed by wedges of Dresdner Stollen. This fruitcake had been made for them by Chef Muntz from his hometown’s historic recipe as a discreet gesture of solidarity with his German colleague. They all sat out on the cottage veranda afterwards, digesting. The women sipped cherry brandy while the men downed brown bottles of Resch’s from the crate Mr Fox had given Freddie as a gift.
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