The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie

by Kirsty Murray

  ‘Why didn’t you go and live in Paris?’

  Big sighed. ‘It was a different world, back then, Lucy. After my mother died, your great-grandfather needed someone to come home and help him. He was a great painter, and now everyone wants his pictures, but back then it was a struggle to make ends meet. Without our mother to take care of him, my father couldn’t cope. I used to stretch all his canvases and make myself useful, as well as try to do my own work too.

  ‘But I mustn’t make it sound tragic. My dream was to paint and draw and I’ve had a lifetime of doing what I love. My brother, Tom, wanted to fly – and he did exactly that. My sister, your grandmother, who you’re named after, she wanted to sing and she was very successful. She made us proud. Some dreams do come true, Lucy.’

  ‘But now you must miss all your family, your mum and dad and your brother and sister,’ said Lucy.

  ‘I do miss them. But then, I feel they’re in my heart too, each of them. And I miss your grandfather; Jimmy Tiger was a good friend to me.’

  ‘Jimmy Tiger!’ said Lucy. ‘But my grandfather was called Jim Stripes, wasn’t he? Not Jimmy Tiger!’

  Big laughed. ‘Stripes, Tiger, it was all the same thing. When he was a little boy, we used to call him Jimmy Tiger because of his red hair. He was a terror, that boy, but he grew into a good man. I couldn’t have been happier than when he married your grandmother.’

  ‘But didn’t you love him too?’ asked Lucy, and then immediately regretted what she’d said.

  ‘Why would you think that, Lucy?’ asked Big. She turned to look at Lucy, studying her closely in the fading light.

  ‘No reason.’ Lucy looked out over the dark river, wondering if she should tell Big everything.

  ‘Do you remember your grandparents, Lucy?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Lucy. ‘I was only three when they died. But what happened to your brother? Does he still come and visit you? Where does he live now? Why haven’t I met him?’

  Big looked at Lucy with sad, dark eyes. She suddenly looked ancient, not the tough and sparky aunt of the morning who had rowed down the river and skinny-dipped in the cold water. ‘Tom died when he was a young man. Too young.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it now, Lucy. Another time. It makes me too sad.’

  Lucy couldn’t make sense of it all. Tom had died. Somehow, the wild, stubborn April had turned into Big. Jimmy Tiger was her grandfather.

  Big stared into the darkening landscape. ‘Please don’t ask me any questions, Lucy. Perhaps it’s time you went to bed.’

  Lucy walked into the house and down the long hallway, studying the photos that were scattered across the narrow sideboard and all over the walls

  There weren’t any photos that looked exactly like Big. There was one of a tall, scowling blonde girl with her hair brushed smooth and curling around her shoulders. Beside her was a smaller girl with curly blonde hair and a wide smile. Lucy picked up the photo and studied it. It was April and the other Lucy. As Lucy studied the framed pictures she realised there were dozens of her grandmother. Lulu laughing in the sunshine, Lulu with her fair hair and sparkling eyes. And then she saw it, Lulu smiling into the eyes of a curly-haired man. The photo was in black and white, but Lucy knew that the man’s hair was red and that he was Jimmy Tiger.

  There was one photo in an old wooden frame that made her heart leap. It was of a young man. He was laughing. Lucy picked it up and peered into the glass. She gasped. She knew that face. She took the photograph and stood under a light, examining it more closely. Tom. He looked exactly as he had done when he’d found her and April in the creek. The same smooth jaw, the thick dark hair, the glint in his eyes that made you want to know exactly what he was thinking.

  She searched the shelves and walls for another photo of Tom, any image that showed him as an older man, as someone other than the teenage boy she’d known on the other side of time. But though there were several of him as a little boy and as the young man she knew, there were none of him grown older.

  After she got into bed, she propped Tom’s photo up on her bedside table and stared at it. What if Tom hadn’t survived the fire? What if he had died on that terrible Black Friday in 1939? What if his death was all her fault?

  Rising Waters

  Lucy cried herself to sleep. Twice, after Big had gone to bed, Lucy went into the dining room to see if any of the paintings were alive, hoping to cross over, but though the paintings were beautiful in the moonlight, none of them contained movement or the magic she needed to allow her to enter them.

  Some time after midnight, a sound woke her. It was the sound of music wafting through the still night air. Lucy sat bolt upright and listened. Someone was playing the piano. Lucy knew the old piano in the front room was horribly out of tune and some of the keys were broken. Yet the strains of music were clear and in tune.

  Lucy climbed out of bed and walked into the hall. As she’d suspected, the music wasn’t coming from the front room but from across the hall – from the outside–inside room. Quickly, she dressed and strapped on her sandals.

  It wasn’t until she’d entered the outside–inside room and shut the door behind her that she saw that the painting of autumn was alive with colour. Spread either side of the doorway were fields of brown and gold. Swelling clouds in a pale blue sky pressed against the ceiling. The river was fuller, darker and more mysterious than ever, and fog lay across its surface. Down the hillside, where the orchard grew, the leaves of the trees had turned to brown and were scattered in the long, dry grass. Where the cool air met the warm ground, mist rose from the dales. A scattering of golden leaves and the last petals of the drooping wisteria lay in a patchwork across the lawn in front of the house.

  From somewhere deep inside the painting, music came floating over the landscape like the mist. Lucy took a deep breath and stepped through the wall.

  She found herself standing outside the house. The clouds that had looked so full and majestic in the painting were darker now, settling low over the river. Beyond the grey mists she could see a hazy smudge of charcoal where it was raining upriver. She turned back to the house and crossed the front lawn, the damp autumn leaves squelching beneath her feet.

  Lucy didn’t bother to knock. She had to talk to April. Urgently. She had to find out about Tom, and warn her that her dreams of Paris and adventure wouldn’t happen unless she could change the future.

  The music drew her to the front room, but it wasn’t April at the piano; it was Jimmy Tiger, his hands racing up and down the keys. He didn’t hear Lucy come in. It wasn’t until she was standing right next to the piano that he looked up. That was the moment Lucy recognised him. Something about watching his hands at the piano brought a flash of memory to her of someone else. Someone she had only met a few times when she was very small. An old man whose hands flew like wings across a keyboard, even though his body was hunched and his hair thin and shining white. Lucy knew that Jimmy Tiger wasn’t an ordinary boy. Jimmy Tiger was going to grow up to be her grandfather.

  ‘Why, it’s April’s twin, the other Lucy,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time. You haven’t changed a bit.’

  When Jimmy stood up, Lucy realised he had grown.

  ‘I’m looking for April,’ she said. ‘I have to talk to her.’

  ‘You’re not the only one. I came up here to see her too, but she’s nowhere to be found. I’ve spent half the morning scouting around for her. I’m starting to feel worried.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘The rain. Rain upriver. There’s talk of flooding. Mr and Mrs Showers and Tom and Lulu are in town.’

  ‘Tom! He’s in town!’ said Lucy, her heart singing with relief.

  Jimmy raised his eyebrows. ‘Where else would he be? They can’t come back because the road’s washed out. April doesn’t know. I rowed across the river to tell her but I can’t find her.’

  They walked out onto the verandah and Jimmy pointed to the smudgy grey rain clouds. T
he river looked fat and swollen, slowly rising above its banks, washing around the trunks of the rivergums.

  ‘But surely the water can’t get up this high. It won’t reach the house.’

  ‘I hope not. But who knows how long it will be before the road’s clear again? April could be stuck out here for days. Where could that girl be?’ he said. ‘We haven’t got much time left. Once that rain reaches here and the water comes washing down from upstream, we’ll never get out. I should go but I don’t want to leave without April. You need to get out of here too, Lucy. How did you get here, anyway? Have you moored your boat somewhere safe?’

  ‘I didn’t come by boat. I sort of walked here. But I think I know where April will be,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Where?

  ‘Her Empire.’

  ‘Her what?’

  ‘There’s a place, up on the hillside, a secret place where April goes to think.’

  ‘That girl does too much thinking,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘It takes about half an hour to walk there. Or we could ride there in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘That’s another half hour…’ said Jimmy, biting his lip.

  ‘C’mon, let’s be quick about it.’

  The two children ran to the stables.

  ‘Can you help me saddle Banjo?’ asked Lucy.

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘Old Banjo is too slow. We’ll take Midnight. We’ll be there faster.’

  They galloped up the track as heavy clouds descended over the valley. Mist swirled in the hollows, and Lucy felt a flicker of alarm course through Midnight as they charged through a thick bank of it. Then they were moving up the winding path through the bush. Lucy held onto Jimmy with one arm and pointed the way to April’s Empire with the other.

  They arrived in the grove in a swirl of leaves and bark, and slid from Midnight’s back. Everything was different. The bark hut had been replaced by a rough lean-to of branches and the grove was edged with blackened trunks.

  April stepped out of the shadow of Pulpit Rock, her face a mixture of fury and amazement. Like Jimmy, she’d changed. Her hair was even longer and she had grown taller than Lucy.

  ‘I thought it was Jimmy and Lulu. But it’s you! We haven’t seen you for more than a year! Tom said you’d probably gone back to Sydney forever.’

  Then her eyes narrowed. ‘How could you! You’ve brought Jimmy Tiger to my secret place. I told you, the very first time I brought you here two years ago that no one was allowed here. Especially not a boy. Especially not Jimmy Tiger. I swore you to secrecy.’

  ‘Don’t yell at the nipper!’ shouted Jimmy. ‘I’ve been looking for you for hours. The river’s about to break its banks. Your folks are stranded in town. I came to help you.’

  ‘I don’t want your help. You think I’m stupid? I saw the river rising this morning. That’s why I came up here. I’ve got things here that I have to save from the rain. I lost everything in last year’s fires. I’m not going to lose another year of paintings. I’ve been packing.’

  ‘You and your stupid pictures,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘You and your stupid music,’ April spat back.

  ‘Whoa!’ said Lucy. ‘Stop it, you two. April, we’ve come to help. Sometimes you have to let people help you. You can’t spend your whole life pushing away people who love you.’

  April glared at her. ‘My whole life? I’m thirteen! And Jimmy Tiger doesn’t love me!’

  Jimmy blushed, scarlet right to the roots of his fiery red hair.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Lucy said. She stomped into the lean-to and saw that April had piled her precious art materials and some rolled-up drawings into an old potato sack. April followed her.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said April, snatching up the sack.

  Flood

  Jimmy Tiger took the sack and balanced it in front of him on Midnight, while Lucy and April rode double on Blue. When they reached the road to Avendale they discovered that the creek was swelling over the boards of the bridge. If they hadn’t been on horseback, they would have had to wade through thigh-deep water.

  By the time they reached the house the rain had arrived and all three children were drenched. They stood on the front verandah watching the river swell, a swirling muddy brown that pushed against the granite and gum trees.

  ‘We should go before the waters rise any higher,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘I don’t think we should go anywhere,’ said April.

  ‘Look, I rowed up here to rescue you,’ said Jimmy. ‘If we go right now, we’ll be able to reach town and you can be with your family.’

  ‘The floods have never reached the house before.’

  ‘Tom told me they washed against the verandah and came down the hallway when he was little.’

  ‘That was a fluke,’ said April. ‘If we sit tight, the waters will recede eventually.’

  ‘Eventually! If we stay, we could be stranded here for days. Or even longer if the roads wash out completely.’

  ‘Well, that’s enough to make me want to leave. Three days stranded with you!’

  Lucy wanted to tell April to stop being mean to Jimmy. Something had happened between them since she’d last visited. Something she couldn’t fathom.

  Lucy knew she shouldn’t leave the house, shouldn’t risk travelling too far away from the outside–inside room in case she was trapped in the past forever. But the thought of seeing Tom again, of seeing him and making sure he was safe, of being able to talk to him and perhaps warn him to be careful, was irresistible.

  April gave Lucy an oilskin coat to wear and a battered old sou’-wester to cover her hair. It wasn’t particularly cold, and by the time they got down the hill to where Jimmy had moored his boat, Lucy was hot and clammy inside the weathered coat.

  The old dock was already partly underwater, but Jimmy had tied his rowboat to a high branch. They sloshed through ankle-deep water and climbed into the boat. There was a puddle of water in the bottom.

  The river seemed like a different animal today, not the still and friendly summer river that they had swum in with such pleasure. It throbbed against the banks as if it were taking hungry mouthfuls of the bush. As the little rowboat sped down the current, they saw whole fields underwater, only the tops of fence posts jutting out. They watched in silent horror as the body of a cow swept past them. Jimmy sat grimly at the rudder, trying to guide the little boat through the swirling flood.

  ‘I need you to row,’ he shouted at the girls over the rain.

  ‘Row? What for? We’re travelling too fast as it is!’ yelled April.

  ‘That’s why you have to row. I need you to help keep the boat steady with the oars or we’re going to get swept into one of those eddies!’

  In a flash of clarity, Lucy realised that leaving Avendale had been a terrible mistake. The river had changed from their friend into a monster. Even if they reached town, Lucy couldn’t see how Jimmy was going to guide the boat safely to shore.

  Lucy and April grabbed the oars and dipped them into the water.

  ‘We have to try and get to the south bank,’ said Jimmy. ‘April, you put your oar in, Lucy, keep yours clear.’

  Lucy was glad she’d been rowing with Big that afternoon. At least it meant she knew how to grip the oar. When Jimmy shouted for her to use her oar as a paddle the river tugged and pulled at it, trying to steal it away from her. Even April was struggling to keep her oar steady in the heaving river. Jimmy Tiger’s face was pale beneath the hood of his oilskin coat.

  April let out a shout as the floodwaters ripped the oar from her hands. It went shooting down the river, tossed like a feather on the wild, surging rapids.

  ‘We need to reach the bank,’ shouted Jimmy, leaning hard into the rudder. April grabbed Lucy’s oar and got to her feet. She tried to use the oar to push against the current but lost her balance and was swept over the side and into the flood.

  ‘April!’ Jimmy and Lucy shouted, leaping to the side of the boat and reaching their hands out to her. Next thing Lucy knew, she was in the ri
ver a few metres from April.

  Lucy managed to grab the collar of April’s coat and pull her over to the capsized boat, which was plunging along in the current. The boat was slippery and hard to hang on to, like trying to put your arm around a slimy tortoise.

  ‘We have to get our coats off. They’ll weigh us down,’ said Lucy, shrugging off her oilskin.

  ‘Where’s Jimmy?’ spluttered April, sliding out of her coat and looking around as she gripped the edge of the upturned boat.

  ‘He was right here beside me,’ shouted Lucy.

  Lucy frantically scanned the churning river. Five metres away, Jimmy’s head was bobbing in the current. ‘There he is!’ she cried.

  April spun around. Before Lucy could stop her, April let go of the boat and began thrashing through the water towards him. As Lucy watched, she realised that neither Jimmy nor April were strong swimmers. They knew how to dive and splash but when it came to using a strong, smooth stroke or saving their energy, she could tell they were both hopeless.

  Every day when they were in Sydney, Lucy and her dad went down to Coogee beach to swim in the early morning. Two weeks before coming to Broken River, she’d won her Surf Rescue Certificate on a surprisingly cold and blustery November morning.

  Lucy knew what she had to do.

  She let go of the edge of the boat and plunged into the swollen current, freestyling her way smoothly towards Jimmy and April. They were clinging together but only succeeding in drawing each other deeper into the river. Their heads rose above the water for an instant and then disappeared again beneath the surface.

  As soon as Lucy came within reach of them, April grabbed her, dragging Lucy underwater too. April was panicking. She hung onto Jimmy with her other arm but he floated limply beside her in the swirling water. Lucy stayed calm, put her hands straight up to wriggle free of April’s grip and dived deep. She knew April wouldn’t follow her down into the brown water. She kicked her way to the surface again and scanned the river desperately. As if her will had drawn it to her, a thick dead branch that had snapped from a river gum came floating past. Lucy grabbed it and swam back to April, pushing the branch ahead of her. As soon as April bobbed up again, she shouted at her.