‘Big!’ cried Lucy.
Big lay on her side, scowling. ‘My ankle. I’ve twisted my ankle.’
‘You don’t think anything’s broken?’ asked Lucy. She knew that some old people broke bones even in small falls.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Here, put your arm around my shoulders,’ said Lucy, sounding much braver and more confident than she really felt.
Lucy helped Big into the bow of the boat and draped a damp blanket around her body. Then she sat down on the slat seat in the middle and took hold of the oars. When they were away from the shore and in deeper water, she pulled the oars in neatly and spun about to sit in the stern, next to the little outboard motor. Big had shown her how to start the motor on the way back from their painting expedition.
She made sure the shift lever was straight up in the neutral position. Then she pulled the choke out a little bit.
‘I can’t remember how to do this,’ said Lucy.
‘Yes you can, Lucy. Arrow, rope,’ said Big.
Lucy nodded and turned the handgrip until the arrow aligned with the start position and then she pulled the starter rope slowly. Nothing happened. The second time, she pulled it more forcefully. The engine sputtered and coughed and kicked into action.
Big sat slumped in the front of the boat, her face turned towards Avendale. Lucy guided the small boat down the centre of the black river. When she glanced over her shoulder, she could see red embers landing in the river behind them and disappearing, like fiery butterflies. She pulled one of the damp towels over her head and kept her gaze fixed straight ahead.
Lucy thought that sunrise wasn’t far away, but no birds sang. Then she realised it wasn’t dawn light at all but the glow from the fires on the eastern side of the river. They turned a wide bend to find the air full of the roar of the fire. A wind swept down the river, ruffling the surface of the water, making embers and ash rain down around them. More than anything, Lucy wanted the night to be over, to be somewhere safe watching the day grow bright. Fire leapt over the hill. Flames raced over the escarpment and down towards the river, closer and closer to the water’s edge.
Embers sizzled in the bottom of the boat and Lucy felt her heart pounding. How much further could it be? They turned another bend in the river and finally, the bush gave way to open fields. The wind began to drop. Lucy felt a sob of relief well up in her chest at the sight of houses and roads and fences. By the time she guided the boat under the town bridge and to the first jetty she could see, it felt as though they had travelled from the underworld back into a quiet, peaceful reality.
Lucy managed to bring the boat alongside the steps of the jetty.
‘Take the rope and tie her fast,’ said Big. It was the first time she’d spoken since Lucy had started the outboard motor.
Slowly, painfully, Big climbed up the ladder and onto the dock.
‘Are you all right, Big?’ asked Lucy. ‘Are you going to be okay to walk into town? You could sit here and I’ll run and find someone to help us.’
Big cupped Lucy’s chin in her hand and stared into her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Lucy,’ she said. ‘I’ve let you down. I was meant to be taking care of you. And you’ve saved me. Again.’ And then she smiled.
Lucy put her arms around her great-aunt, and for the very first time, she hugged her. ‘I love you, Aunty Big,’ said Lucy. ‘I loved you when you were a kid and I love you now too.’
Big held her tight, stroking her hair, and somehow Lucy knew they both felt stronger. ‘I’m fine to walk into town,’ said Big. ‘If you’re by my side, I think I could walk all the way to Sydney. You give me strength, Lucy McKenzie. You always have; you always will.’
Together they climbed the stairs that led up from the river and walked slowly into town.
The Best News
Lucy kept one arm around Big so Big could take the weight off her sore ankle. Big pointed out where the community centre was, beside the library. The building was alive with lights, and the street was filled with the cars of people who had evacuated their properties.
Inside the hall, grown-ups and children were standing and sitting, asleep in chairs or busy chatting. A long trestle table had been set up with an urn on one end. Mrs MacMahon was serving cups of tea, and a fire warden was writing down the names of everyone who came into the hall, ticking them off against a list of properties. People had made up beds all over the floor, and three small children were curled up together like kittens on a mattress in a corner.
Lucy led Big over to a bench and then hurried over to Mrs MacMahon. ‘My aunt has hurt her ankle,’ said Lucy. ‘I think she needs an ice pack and a cup of tea.’
‘I’ll send Sarah Timmins over to have a look, love,’ said Mrs MacMahon. ‘She’s our local nurse. But how did you two manage to get into town if Big couldn’t use her ankle? We were very worried about you getting out of Avendale. Bob Timmins said he tried phoning but couldn’t get an answer. The fire was in a ring right around your valley.’
‘We came up the river,’ said Lucy.
‘Up the river? Straight through the heart of the fire? My goodness, oh my goodness. Let’s hope and pray that everyone else arrives safely and that all our homes survive.’
Lucy nodded and took the cup of warm tea that Mrs MacMahon was offering. She couldn’t speak at the thought that something might happen to Avendale.
While Lucy and Big sat sipping cups of tea and hot chocolate, the nurse came and looked at Big’s ankle. She held an ice pack on it for a little while and then bound it with some elastic bandages.
‘You’re very lucky, Miss Showers,’ said the nurse. ‘You must have strong bones. There’s a little bit of swelling but nothing seems to be broken.’
For a long time, Lucy and Big sat quietly, as if all their thoughts were pouring out of them and down the river to Avendale. Lucy tried to hold a picture of the old house in her mind, and prayed that the fires wouldn’t destroy it.
When Mrs MacMahon had finished her shift, she came over to Big and Lucy and asked them back to her home.
‘The fires are under control now, but you may have to stay in town for a day or two until the CFA has given the all-clear that it’s safe for you to go back to Avendale.’
‘We must call your mother,’ said Big. ‘Let her know you’re safe.’
‘Do you have a Skype account?’ said Mrs MacMahon. ‘You could use my computer if you do.’
‘Millicent MacMahon, don’t tell me even you have one!’ said Big.
‘Of course I do. And I run courses for old fogeys like you, April Showers, to try and bring them into the twenty-first century.’
Back at Mrs MacMahon’s house, Big and Lucy sent texts to Lucy’s mother and father, and to Jack to let them know that they were safe. Mum texted straight back to ask if they could Skype.
When Mum’s face appeared on the screen, Lucy wanted to reach out and touch it. Mum was wearing a cobalt-blue jumper and a soft mauve scarf. Behind her the stone wall of the Paris apartment looked as though it belonged in a castle, a place so far away that Lucy could hardly imagine it.
‘I saw the news on the internet, about the fires,’ said Mum. ‘I was so worried.’
‘You have enough to worry about, Mum,’ said Lucy. ‘Big and I are fine. We’re at Mrs MacMahon’s house until they give us the all-clear that we can go home.’
Mum smiled and Big looked at Lucy. Home. She’d called Avendale ‘home’.
‘Home is where the heart is,’ said Big. ‘And our hearts are with you, all the way over in Paris. How’s Claire?’
Mum smiled again and it looked as if her eyes were tearing up.
‘I tried to call you this morning. There’s such lovely news. Claire has come back to us. Last night, I was sitting in her room watching the news about the fires on my laptop and she woke up. She turned to me and said, “Mum, it’s almost Christmas, isn’t it? Are we going to Avendale?” It was like a miracle.’
‘Is she going to be okay?’ asked Lu
cy.
‘The doctors say she’s going to be fine. She has to spend a few more days here at the hospital for observation, but I’ll be able to bring her back to the apartment for Christmas!’
Christmas. Lucy bit her lip. If Avendale burnt to the ground where would she and Big spend Christmas?
‘But she wanted to come to Avendale,’ said Lucy. ‘That means she wants to come home to Australia.’
‘Claire won’t be up to such a long flight so soon. Though she said a very strange thing this morning. She said that when she was in the coma she dreamt of Granny Lucy and Grandpa Jim. She said in her dream they were sitting on a rock at Avendale and calling her to come home.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Home is where the heart is,’ she repeated, taking Big’s hand in her own and giving it a little squeeze.
‘Darling girl,’ said her mother. She leaned closer into the camera again. ‘I have some other news too. Good news from your father. He’s got the contract with that big company up in North Queensland. Everything has turned out so well. He’s going to come and get you, Lucy, and bring you to Paris for Christmas!’
‘Paris for Christmas!’ echoed Lucy. Not in her wildest dreams had she imagined that her whole world could turn upside down in one single night. ‘But Mum! What about Big?’
Big interrupted. ‘Don’t you worry about me. It won’t be the first Christmas that I’ve spent with the wombats. I like my wombat Christmases just fine.’
Hanging unspoken in the air between them was the thought that maybe Avendale and the wombats wouldn’t be there any more.
Lucy looked from Big to her mum. ‘I don’t think I can come to Paris without Big,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to come without her.’
For a moment, there was stunned silence. Then Mum leaned forward, until her face filled the screen.
‘I don’t think you should come without her. I think Big should definitely come too.’
Big opened her mouth to argue, but Mum was too quick for her. ‘Don’t say a word until you’ve thought about it, Big. Alex and I will buy your ticket as a Christmas present. There’s more than enough room here in the apartment for you too. And it would make Claire so happy to see you.’
‘I’m too old to travel all the way around the world,’ said Big.
‘No you’re not,’ said Lucy. ‘If you can travel up a river in a bushfire, then you can get on a plane and fly to Paris. When you were little, you always said how your big dream was to go to Paris. You have to come with me. Tell her she has to come, Mum.’
Mum was smiling at them both, a little amused by this new, bossy Lucy.
‘I think you two are rubbing off on each other,’ she said.
The Truth about Tom
All morning, clouds of mauve-and-white smoke billowed over the hills. The air was acrid and sharp and it made Lucy’s nose and throat sting. Lucy sat on Mrs MacMahon’s verandah and watched a helicopter hover over the river. It scooped up river water in a barrel suspended from a long rope and then flew off to bomb the flames.
In the late afternoon, the sky grew dark and the horizon turned a coppery orange. When the sun sank behind the hills it looked like an angry burning orb, gold against the orange-and-black sky.
Lucy and Big slept the night in Mrs MacMahon’s spare room in narrow single beds. Lucy woke before dawn to the sound of rain falling gently on the corrugated tin roof. She sighed with relief, rolled over and fell back into a deep and peaceful sleep.
The next morning, Bob Timmins from the CFA picked them up and drove them to Avendale through charred and blackened landscapes.
Lucy sat in the back but leaned forward to listen to the grown-ups’ conversation.
‘We were lucky,’ said Bob. ‘If it had happened in February, we would have been in big trouble, but the bush hadn’t dried out so much and we managed to contain the fire. Won’t be too much risk of another big fire this year now that the scrub’s burnt back. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that flames didn’t jump those breaks you put in around the house and valley.’
Driving through the burnt-out bush was like travelling across a moonscape. Charred trees stuck up like spiky poles, black against the blue morning sky. Someone had left a pile of bread and fruit on the side of the road and a lone kangaroo was sniffing it.
‘I hope Wally the Wombat’s all right,’ said Lucy, swallowing hard. It was tricky talking when you were trying not to cry. To see so much of the beautiful landscape blackened and bare made her insides hurt. The road wound up the hillside, and Lucy braced herself for what was to come when they reached the crest and started the drive down into the valley.
Lucy leaned forward in her seat so she could see what lay ahead through the windscreen. As they crested the hill and drove past the wide brown-and-yellow firebreak, the valley lay beneath them with the old homestead nestled firmly in its heart.
Avendale had survived.
There were stray patches of black and brown where spot fires had broken out, but the centre of the valley was gold and green and the fruit trees on the hill above the river, the vegetable garden, and the house lay untouched, beautiful as ever. Lucy wanted to shout with happiness.
Then they were driving across the creek and up to the house. There was the jeep, sitting down near the jetty; the chickens were in the veggie patch, happily pecking away at Big’s lettuces.
Lucy started to cry. She couldn’t help it. The tears spurted from her eyes, and when she jumped out of the car she ran onto the verandah and kissed the front door of Avendale. She heard a scuffle beneath the threshold, as if Wally the Wombat was welcoming them home.
Bob Timmins jogged down to the river and drove the jeep up to the house. Big invited him in for a cup of iced tea, but he said he had other properties to check on. When Bob had left, Lucy poured two long glasses of ice-cold tea and put them on a tray with a plate of Big’s homemade Anzac biscuits. She carried them out onto the verandah and leaned over to nip two sprigs of mint from the plant by the front steps. Big smiled as Lucy added two leaves to each glass.
Lucy sipped her iced tea and gazed out over the valley. The river that had nearly taken April and Jimmy was the same river that two nights ago had saved them – their pathway to safety. It made Lucy think of that other river, the deep, dark river of time that connected the past with the present.
‘Lucy,’ said Big. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’
‘Before you say anything, there’s something I have to tell you. I broke my promise. I promised you I wouldn’t go back into the paintings again, but I did. I crossed over into winter. I didn’t see you. I saw Jimmy and Lulu and Tom, but you were away at boarding school. I’m really sorry. It didn’t make any difference. Tom wouldn’t listen to me. I couldn’t stop him from going to New Guinea. I couldn’t stop him from dying there.’
Big sighed. ‘That was the thing I wanted to talk to you about. Tom didn’t die in New Guinea, though in a very real way, the war took him from us.’
‘What do you mean? You said he died in New Guinea!’
‘No, I said his plane went down there. He survived the crash, but he was very badly wounded. They sent him home to us and he died here at Avendale two years after the war was over. It’s why I painted the four seasons on the walls of his room. I painted the valley for Tom so he could feel he was in the valley even though he couldn’t leave his bed.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘Lucy, I couldn’t tell you the whole truth about Tom. Not while Claire’s life was hanging by a thread. I kept thinking, what if history repeats itself? What if our Claire never recovers? I didn’t want to burden you with that worry.’
A fat tear rolled down Lucy’s cheek and plopped into her iced tea.
‘But you lost Tom and now I feel like I’ve lost him too.’
‘No one is ever lost as long as we remember them, but you can’t live in the past.’
‘That’s what Tom said,’ sniffed Lucy. ‘But then I lost the one thing he gave me. A bl
uebird brooch. He pinned it on my chest and then I lost it up at Pulpit Rock on the same day.’
‘A bluebird?’ said Big.
Suddenly, Lucy remembered. She reached for her silver heart locket and opened it. Inside was the tiny blue-and-silver wing that she had found wedged in a crevice on Pulpit Rock. She laid it on the palm of her hand and stared at it.
Big reached across and carefully picked up the broken wing. Then, without speaking, she drew a gold locket from the folds of her cardigan. On the front of the locket was a tiny enamel bluebird.
‘Tom sent me this the week before his accident. I keep a photo of him inside it.’
‘I keep a picture of Claire inside mine!’
‘Well, it’s not only the photo that I want to show you,’ said Big. She undid the chain from around her neck and put the locket in Lucy’s hand.
‘Open it,’ she said.
Inside lay the photo of Tom and opposite it, wedged into the oval hollow of the locket, was a one-winged bluebird.
‘Take it, Lucy,’ said Big. ‘It belongs to you.’
Lucy took the broken brooch and fitted the tiny wing to it. They were a perfect match, though the wing was more faded and tarnished than the bird.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucy.
‘One day, not long after Tom died, I was climbing Pulpit Rock and a glimmer of silver caught my eye. Wedged deep inside a crevice was this bluebird brooch. When I tried to pry it out a piece broke off. I searched and searched for the missing wing but it had disappeared deep into the rock. I suppose this bird was never going to fly until its true owner returned to Avendale.’
That night, after Big had gone to bed, Lucy slipped into the outside–inside room. The paintings were more beautiful than ever now that Lucy knew them so well. But they lay still in the moonlight. Somehow, deep inside, Lucy knew that they would never open to her again.
The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie Page 12
