The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie

by Kirsty Murray

  ALSO BY KIRSTY MURRAY

  India Dark

  Vulture’s Gate

  The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong

  A Prayer for Blue Delaney

  Becoming Billy Dare

  Bridie’s Fire

  Walking Home with Marie-Claire

  Market Blues

  Tough Stuff

  Zarconi’s Magic Flying Fish

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © text, Kirsty Murray 2013

  Copyright © illustrations, Florence Boyd 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 702 0

  eISBN 978 1 74343 486 4

  Cover design: Ruth Grüner

  Cover and internal illustrations: Florence Boyd

  This book is dedicated to

  my favourite Lucy of all time,

  my cousin Lucy Boyd.

  And to my magical goddaughter,

  Sabrina Allen.

  For all the memories, landscapes

  and loving moments

  that I’ve shared with each of you.

  Contents

  1 The Road to Broken River

  2 Outside–inside

  3 Wombat Shuffle

  4 Walking Through Walls

  5 Another Avendale

  6 April’s Empire

  7 Water Sprites and Wattle

  8 A Broken Wing

  9 Cooee!

  10 Lady Godivas

  11 River Kids

  12 Black Friday

  13 The More Things Change

  14 The Painted World

  15 Fractured Dreams

  16 Rising Waters

  17 Flood

  18 A Little Night Music

  19 Crossing the River of Time

  20 Breaking Promises

  21 A Wing and a Prayer

  22 Into the Inferno

  23 The Best News

  24 The Truth about Tom

  25 Christmas

  The Road to Broken River

  For the first time in her life, Lucy dreaded Christmas.

  It wasn’t as if being sent away for the holidays was a big deal. She’d been on summer camps before, and often stayed with her friends during the school break. But she had never spent Christmas away from her family. Christmas was special.

  Lucy couldn’t forget the look on her dad’s face as he’d stood in the dark at the top of the stairs, cradling the phone in his hands. Mum had hugged Lucy tightly as she told her the terrible news. Claire, Lucy’s beautiful big sister, had fallen down a flight of stairs at the Cité de la Musique. She was in a hospital in Paris. Mum was flying to France in the morning. Christmas was cancelled.

  It had taken most of the day for Lucy and her dad to reach the town of Broken River. It would take an hour more to reach Aunty Big’s house, deep in its isolated valley. Lucy glanced across at Dad as they drove through the bush. The grey hair at his temples had turned silver. Had that really happened in the three days since the phone call? She thought of her mum, waiting for Claire to wake up in a hospital on the other side of the world. In the whole of Lucy McKenzie’s eleven years, nothing bad had ever happened to her family. Until now.

  Dad and Lucy drove across a wooden bridge and past a waterfall that plummeted in a sparkling silver line through ferns and rocks. When they reached the top of a high cliff, Lucy knew they were close to Avendale. Dad gripped the steering wheel hard. The rough, red-dirt road crumbled at its edges, and rocks tumbled into the ravine as they inched their way down.

  Lucy had only been to Avendale once before, when she was four years old. She could faintly recall the musty, fusty smell of the old place, and the dark bush crowding in on all sides. She had a memory of passionfruit vines scrambling up one side of the house and covering the windows, and a dark hall full of pictures of spooky dead people staring down at her. The idea of spending Christmas there made her shudder.

  ‘This road was much worse when your mother first brought me here,’ said Dad, trying to sound cheerful as they bumped over another rock. ‘It hadn’t been blasted out of the cliffside. It may seem rough now, but back then it was not much more than a goat track. Jack and Claire used to yell all the way down. They thought it was a real roller-coaster ride. If the road was too wet and slippery, we used to park our car up the top and walk into the valley.’

  ‘I think they need to do something about this road again,’ said Lucy, putting her hands against the dashboard to steady herself as the car bounced through another pothole.

  ‘I don’t want to see a single thing about this place changed, not even the road,’ said Dad. ‘There are things around Broken River that are pure magic. When Jack and Claire were little, they reckoned they saw a min min just off the track. We’d come in late at night and they both swore a light followed us through the trees all the way from the waterfall to the valley floor.’

  Lucy looked out the window into the thick green undergrowth. Sunlight dappled the tree ferns and sharp-leaved gum trees, but she couldn’t imagine seeing a min min. Everything interesting in her family had happened before she was born. Sometimes, Lucy felt as if she was floating on the edge of everyone else’s lives.

  Lucy McKenzie was an afterthought. By the time she had arrived in the McKenzie family Jack and Claire were almost grown-up. Jack had moved to New York when Lucy was in kindergarten, and Claire had gone to study music in France when Lucy was only in Grade Two. Lucy liked to brag a little about how Claire was an almost-famous singer studying in Paris, and that Jack worked for a hot-shot publisher in New York City, but she would rather have had them living at home in Sydney. Lucy wrapped one hand around the silver heart-shaped locket that Claire had sent her for her birthday, and fought back tears.

  Dad parked the car outside the old weatherboard farmhouse.

  ‘Can’t you stay, Dad? Just for tonight?’ asked Lucy

  ‘You know I’d love to, Lucy-lu. But I can’t miss another day of work. Don’t worry. You’ll have a lot of fun here, honey. Aunty Big will take good care of you.’

  ‘Last Christmas, I heard you tell Mum that Aunty Big was too old and frail to look after herself, let alone a kid. You said you wouldn’t dream of sending me to stay with her.’

  Dad sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘Big is the only person who could have you at such short notice, Lucy. Jack and Claire used to love staying with her. They’d run wild through the bush, catch fish and trap rabbits. They climbed trees and spent hot afternoons floating in the river. You’ll have a great time, kiddo, just like they did.’

  Lucy couldn’t believe she’d ever love this place. It was different for her. Jack and Claire had always had each other. Lucy would be trapped, alone with scary old Aunty Big. Aunty Big usually came up to their house in Sydney for Ch
ristmas, but she never talked to Lucy, only Claire. Claire was her favourite. Lucy could understand why. Everyone loved Claire.

  Dad rang the bell that hung from a long, worn piece of rope, and Lucy took a deep breath. Slowly, the dark-red door opened. It was so bright outside and so gloomy in the house, that for a moment she couldn’t see anyone. It was as if the door had opened by magic.

  Outside–inside

  Aunty Big stepped into the light. She was tall for an old lady, hardly stooped at all, but her face was long and lined. She wore a faded pair of blue linen pants and a raggedy old moth-eaten jumper with leathery patches sewn onto the elbows. Her silver hair was swept up into a loose bun and tied in place with a green silk scarf.

  ‘Alex,’ she said, putting her arms around Lucy’s dad and giving him a hug.

  It was as if Lucy was invisible. Aunty Big hadn’t even noticed her standing beside Dad, clutching a basket full of presents from Mum.

  Lucy peered around the grown-ups and into the house. There was the long spooky hallway that she remembered, with pictures hanging all the length of it – photos in sepia, black and white, darkly painted portraits, oil paintings and gold-framed watercolours. Opposite the wall of pictures was an ancient hat stand and a hall table cluttered with more framed photographs of members of the family – dozens of faces of people long dead.

  ‘Any news of Claire?’ asked Aunty Big, still ignoring Lucy.

  When Dad shook his head, Aunty Big grimaced and looked down at Lucy at last. ‘Now there’s a familiar face,’ she said, taking Lucy’s chin in her hand and turning it side to side, inspecting her. ‘You’re becoming quite a little button of a girl, aren’t you?’

  No one had ever called Lucy a button before. Did that mean she looked fat? Claire was always so slim and elegant. Lucy looked down at her t-shirt and cargo pants, and wished she had worn something that made her look more sophisticated. She twisted a long hank of her honey-blonde hair around her hand and flung it over her shoulder. Somehow, flicking her ponytail made her feel more confident.

  When she looked up again, Aunty Big was laughing at her.

  ‘You remind me of someone?’

  ‘Claire?’ asked Lucy, hopefully.

  ‘No, definitely not Claire,’ said Aunty Big, in a tone of voice that was so firm Lucy took a step back.

  ‘I brought you some presents from Mum, Aunty Big,’ said Lucy, holding out the basket.

  ‘No need for all that guff. Just call me Big.’

  ‘Just Big?’

  ‘Just Big,’ said the old woman firmly, turning into the darkness of the house and stomping down the long hallway.

  Dad took Lucy’s hand and gave it a little squeeze. ‘Don’t let her gruffness put you off, honey. Big’s got a heart of gold.’

  Lucy imagined a hard lump of metal sitting in the middle of Big’s chest, glowing like an angry fire. It made her shiver.

  Big led them into a bedroom where two narrow single beds with dark wooden headboards lay on either side of the room. One was stripped back to the mattress, and the other had a dusky rose quilted bedspread. It was the sort of coverlet a princess might sleep under, but when Lucy drew close to dump her backpack on the bed, she saw the coverlet was old and threadbare in places. The room was dark and shadowy, and the small window looked out onto a trellis of tangled passionfruit vines. The walls and ceiling were lined with skinny wooden boards, and the floor was covered with ancient seagrass matting. Just looking at it made Lucy want to sneeze.

  ‘Claire and Jack used to sleep in this room,’ said Dad.

  ‘And they used to talk all night!’ said Big. ‘I had to bang on the wall with a big stick to make them shut-up.’

  Dad laughed, but Lucy could hear a warning to Big in his voice when he spoke next. ‘Well, there won’t be any wall-banging while Lucy’s with you, will there, Big?’

  No, thought Lucy. Because I will have no one to talk to and will be as lonely as lonely can be.

  Dad had bought a kilo of prawns from a shop when they crossed over the estuary, and Aunty Big looked pleased when he put the bundle wrapped up in newspaper on the table.

  Big sliced some brown bread and mixed some seafood sauce, squeezing a dollop of mayonnaise and another of tomato sauce into a bowl.

  ‘Here, Lucy,’ she said, handing her a fistful of cutlery and three plates. ‘Make yourself useful.’

  Big had made a pot of soup too. Lucy remembered that Big always made soup when she came to stay with them in Sydney at Christmas. Though Dad offered to help, Big loaded the soup, bread and prawns onto a tray and carried it into the dining room.

  ‘Don’t start getting ideas about me growing old and frail. I can take care of myself and this place, Alex McKenzie. I don’t need your help.’

  Why did Big have to be so prickly, thought Lucy. Dad was only trying to be polite.

  He didn’t look offended. Instead, he glanced around the dining room and laughed. ‘Nothing changes around here does it, Big?’

  ‘Every day I’m a day older than the day before,’ said Aunty Big.

  Dad turned to Lucy. ‘Claire and Jack loved this room when they were kids. Claire used to call it the outside–inside room.’

  Lucy could see why. Each wall of the outside–inside room was painted with a mural of a different season of the year. From floor to ceiling, the walls were covered with images of the world outside, each of the four seasons of the valley perfectly captured in oil paint and thousands of brushstrokes.

  On the wall with the door to the hallway was the valley in autumn. Clouds scudded across a deep cobalt-blue sky and the grass was burnt gold. On the other side of the room, opposite the doorway, a long window looked out onto the real summer valley, but all around the window was a painting of the landscape in spring. Outside, the harsh afternoon sun seared the brown and gold grass, and the valley shimmered in the heat. But inside, the walls around the long window were bright with white and yellow flowers, the grass green, the sky a soft, springtime blue.

  Above and surrounding the fireplace was a winter scene, and opposite it, on the wall that had neither door, nor window, nor chimney to interrupt the image was the valley in summer. The wide river looked as though it was flowing right through the middle of the wall and into the dining room.

  Lucy wanted to like the room, but there was something about it that made her uneasy. Everything about the painted valleys was too much, too extreme. Those big skies stretching up to the ceiling, the painted grasses and flowers leaping out above the skirting boards, and the tops of trees brushing against the cornices made Lucy feel so small. You should feel safe inside a room, she thought to herself, not feel as if there’s no escape from the wild landscape outside.

  Lucy set three places at the table and sat down. The springs in the chair squeaked and sank a little beneath her. The table was too big for the three of them and they sat clustered at one end, Dad at the head of the table and Lucy and Big sitting opposite each other. Lucy peeled a prawn and dipped it into the sauce, trying not to look around her or even listen to the conversation between Big and Dad.

  After dinner, Big walked out to the car with Dad and Lucy but then left them alone to say goodbye in private. Dad picked Lucy up in a giant bear hug.

  ‘Be good,’ he said, kissing her neck.

  ‘I’m always good. I’m never anything but good. You know that.’

  Dad put her down again and patted her cheek. ‘Our good little Lucy. Never any trouble to anyone.’

  ‘But if I’m never any trouble, if I’m so good, why can’t I come with you or Mum?’

  Dad sighed. ‘Lucy, please! You know if my new job wasn’t so remote and so demanding, I’d take you with me. I’ll be flat out visiting mines the whole time. It’s important I win this contract for Claire’s sake. We’ll need the money if Mum is going to stay in France to take care of her. This summer you have to think of someone other than yourself.’

  Lucy nodded, wishing she hadn’t said anything. Dad had enough on his mind without worrying a
bout her as well.

  Lucy watched the silver car grow smaller and smaller as it climbed the road out of the valley. She shoved her hands deep into her pockets and turned back to the house.

  Wombat Shuffle

  Big was in the kitchen, tidying up the remains of dinner.

  ‘Can I help?’ asked Lucy. ‘I’m a good dishwasher.’

  ‘I’ve got a dishwasher,’ said Big, piling the plates and cutlery into a blue bucket. ‘All automated. Takes a lot of the fuss out of clearing up these days.’

  Lucy glanced around the old kitchen. There was no sign of a new appliance.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Big, picking up the blue bucket and swinging the fly-wire door open.

  She led Lucy out to the old vine-covered outside toilet. ‘Look, it’s our new dishwasher!’ Big smiled wickedly and Lucy saw the flicker of her gold tooth. Jack had been right – Big must have been a pirate when she was young – and not a very nice one at that.

  Lucy watched as Big piled all the plates into the toilet. Then Big pulled the chain and the water swooshed over the crockery.

  ‘See?’ said Big, chuckling. ‘Pre-rinsed.’ She pulled the plates out of the toilet bowl, piled them back into the bucket and carried them into the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever eat my dinner off a plate in this house again,’ said Lucy.

  ‘A fussy little princess, are you?’ asked Big, and then she laughed. She looked at Lucy’s pale face and sighed. ‘Oh Lucy, nobody uses the damn toilet. No one has used it in years. Everyone uses the inside toilet. It’s too cold to go out back in the winter and there are too many spiders in the summer. It’s only water. It’s perfectly hygienic.’

  Big slammed the dishes into the sink and tipped a kettle of boiling hot water over the top of them.

  ‘I think I’ll go to my room, if that’s okay,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m feeling a little tired.’

  Big looked at her carefully, and for a moment Lucy thought Big might actually be worried about her and might say something nice.

  ‘I used to know a girl called Lucy McKenzie. She was a wild little vixen of a girl, not like you. I don’t imagine you’d say boo to a goose.’