She looked at the clock, wondering if it was lunchtime yet. It said five past ten. Must have stopped. She lifted it up, squinted her eyes, and saw that the second-hand was moving. Leaning over to replace it she let it slip – a miscalculation of distance – and heard the sound of breaking glass.
Lochlann came in smelling of health, antiseptic, wood-smoke and sunshine.
“Up you get,” he said. “Doctor’s orders. Mrs Parker has packed us a picnic.” His voice was full of enthusiasm, or at least the pretence of it. He reached down to pick up the clock and didn’t comment on the cracked glass front.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” said Charlotte through the sheet.
“I’m afraid you’ve no choice if you want to celebrate our anniversary with me and who else could you spend it with? I have to make a house call to old Mrs Humphries out Ober way, and there’s a waterfall there the like of which you’ve never seen before.” He bent down, lifted the sheet and kissed the top of her head. “Happy anniversary.”
How could he even say the words? The irony was hard to bear.
“I haven’t the energy,” she said, keeping her eyes closed. “You go. I’ll stay here.”
“It’s such a beautiful day it would be a shame to waste it. Come on. You don’t have to talk, eat or even get out of the car. Just come for the spin to mark the occasion. I can help you dress or get Mrs Parker to if you’d prefer.” He headed towards her wardrobe.
“Don’t touch anything,” she said, then added with weariness, “I’ll come. I’ll dress myself.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She didn’t move.
“I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
He’d rather go on his own, she knew. What would she add to the journey?
Nothing.
She heard the voices of the two talking quietly in the garden, as they often did. “How is she today?” was the opening question – she waited for it – but after that she couldn’t distinguish any words. Invariably they walked towards the bottom of the garden, ostensibly to look at the self-sown potatoes and pumpkins, but really to make sure she couldn’t overhear them.
The flicker of energy she felt when Lochlann came into the room died as soon as he left. He would probably give her ten minutes to dress herself before coming back to check, so there was no need to make any move yet. She didn’t have to go on this outing. No one would think any the worse of her – Lochlann hadn’t run out of patience yet, Mrs Parker thrived on her role of nursemaid, and there wasn’t anyone else who knew about the anniversary.
Except those back home, of course, but they didn’t count. Her mother would be expecting news, now that the day had come. There was a lot to be said for living so far away. If she stayed in bed all day her family wouldn’t be any the wiser. She could write that there had been a party, a dinner or a trip to the coast to celebrate the day, and they would never know the difference.
On second thoughts, she would ask Lochlann to write the letter. He would be better able to explain how the baby had died, seeing as he did the delivery while she was unconscious for the final few minutes. But even he couldn’t answer why, as he didn’t know and if he didn’t know, who would? He could tell them the main facts: the baby was a boy and had lived for ten minutes, during which time Lochlann had baptised and named him Benedict, hoping that the “blessing” in the name might prompt the failing infant to rally, but it hadn’t.
Only the priest, Father Daly, and Lochlann, who carried the white coffin, were present at the burial on top of the windy hill above the church. She remained in hospital for a further week, next door to Mrs Hogan who had given birth to her seventh healthy child, and she would have stayed longer if she didn’t have Mrs Parker to care for her when she returned home.
She rocked to give herself enough momentum to sit up and, with difficulty, swung her legs onto the floor. She felt dizzy, so stayed still until that feeling passed. Taking her time, she stood up and wobbled. Was she losing the use of her legs? She held onto the brass bed end and called for Mrs Parker who came in straight away as if she’d been waiting at the door, and asked if there was anything she could do to help.
“Yes,” said Charlotte. “I’ve decided to go on the picnic with the doctor. If you would be so kind as to get me my French navy maternity dress out of the wardrobe. I think it’s the only thing I have that will fit me.” She sat down heavily on the side of the bed while Mrs Parker collected the clothes and then began to dress her as if it were a great honour. By the time Mrs Parker slipped on the court shoes, Charlotte was exhausted.
“Come on now,” encouraged the housekeeper, taking her arm and guiding her into the kitchen where she passed her over to Lochlann. “A day out in the bush will do you a world of good. You can’t beat a bit of fresh air.”
“There’s plenty of fresh air on the verandah,” said Charlotte. “I don’t need to go elsewhere to find that.”
“A change of scenery, then. Here you are.” She handed Lochlann the basket. “Wait till you see what I’ve prepared for you. There won’t be a skerrick left for the wildlife.”
“By the weight of it, you didn’t skimp on anything. Good. I’m hungry already,” said Lochlann. “Come on, careful now.”
Charlotte slipped on the shiny lino. “Leather soles,” she said to Mrs Parker.
“Do you want me to roughen them for you?” asked Lochlann.
“Hardly worth the bother. I’ll be staying in the car, so there’s really no need. Thank you, Mrs Parker. You’re a treasure. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“You Irish and your blarney,” smiled Mrs Parker. “You’d give me a big head if I believed everything you said.”
“It’s no blarney,” said Lochlann. “If anything we’re holding back. We won’t be late, but still won’t see you until tomorrow. Good luck and thanks again.”
I bet she thinks that he is the one who needs the good luck, thought Charlotte, watching the ground as she tentatively put one foot in front of the other.
“Would you look at that view!” said Lochlann, a few miles into the journey. “Those blue mountains. And that has to be the sea in the distance. Hard to believe. Must be forty miles away.”
Charlotte politely turned her head to the left, trying to concentrate on what he’d said. Yes, the mountains were indeed blue, and that blur in the distance could indeed be the sea. Was there anything else she was supposed to look at? Turning back to stare straight ahead again, she forgot to ask or comment. As usual, her thoughts turned to her mother and how she imagined she’d respond when she received news of baby Benedict’s death.
“Don’t say I’m with you,” said Charlotte, when Lochlann turned into Mrs Humphrey’s driveway, all mud and tussocks. “Park the car behind that tree in case she sees me.”
“I was going to anyway, for the shade.”
Two dogs ran out to dance around Lochlann and bark. Charlotte was relieved when they followed him to the door.
A flock of parrots, so brightly coloured they looked as if they were designed for paradise, squabbled in the trees in front of her. The sky was cerulean blue and the frostbitten grass, yellow ochre. If she decided to paint again, she would have to give up the greys she favoured when she was younger as they would look dead in this luminous brightness. Not that she had any intention of painting while she was suffering from this bone-wearying lassitude – the act of picking up a paintbrush was as alien to her now as the thought of riding to hounds.
She liked this weather – warm days followed by cold nights which were conducive to sleep. It was sleep she craved, both to fill in the time and to lose her conscious self. She wished humans were hibernating animals who could pass months at a stretch in a dark place.
After leaving the main road Lochlann needed to concentrate to avoid the water-filled potholes and the soft mud that might send him into a skid.
“A bit of an obstacle course,” he said. “Not surprising with all that rain last night.”
He followed the trac
k for about a mile before turning the car and parking it on an incline in case the battery or starter gave trouble when they were leaving. It would be unlikely that there would be anyone around to give the car a push if either of those failed – in all the times Lochlann had been coming here he hadn’t run into another human being. Fishermen favoured the pools upstream on the other side of the main road.
“Would you just look at that?” Lochlann breathed in reverence.
Charlotte was already looking.
The shallow trout stream had swollen to a churning brown and white tumult of water, carrying branches with speed along the central flow, which was split at intervals by trees and rocks.
Charlotte remembered with a jolt another flooded river that had broken its banks at the time Victoria disappeared, but quickly pushed the image out of her mind. Today of all days she wouldn’t think about her lost sister. Too many losses to take in at once.
“Damn. I forgot the camera. The falls should be spectacular today.”
“Haven’t you enough photographs of waterfalls? You must have a hundred by now.”
“That’s not many when you consider how many there are around and how different they are from each other and how different they look at different times.”
He threw his door open with an exaggerated flourish. When he came around to her side, she said she wasn’t leaving the car – she had made that clear earlier – and besides, she couldn’t walk in her shoes, and he said “Well, we can’t get any closer than this by car,” and he opened her door and bent down and slipped off her shoes and scored the soles with a sharp stone. She was conscious of his hand on her ankles as he replaced the shoes.
“Come on. You’ll regret it later if you don’t. Here, give me your hand.” He stood, confidently smiling down at her. “No pressure. It’s just that I would hate you to miss one of the wonders of the natural world.”
She pretended reluctance as she gave her hand, and nonchalance as his long fingers closed over hers, but the contact sent a charge through her that she couldn’t disregard or minimise, even if she wanted to. For such a long time now, every touch of his had had a medical intent: taking her pulse, feeling her forehead, listening to her heart with his ear on her chest – joy that he did that instead of using his stethoscope – and leaning over to shine a light in her eye, a position she welcomed as a near embrace.
“Well?” he continued to smile, tightening his hold on her hand.
For her, the anniversary was well celebrated in that moment.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“We could picnic over there by that tree if you like and give the waterfall a miss. How’s that for a compromise?”
She agreed and, holding on tightly, placed both feet on the running board and then stepped down, leaning heavily on him.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”
By the time they reached the tree she, surprised by how strong she felt, agreed to walk the extra four hundred yards following an animal track. She picked her way under a canopy of gum trees, with peels of eucalyptus bark, logs and sticks crunching underfoot, all the time being supported by him, with the roar of water sounding closer with each footstep.
Before they reached the lookout spot, Lochlann put his hands over her eyes and guided her into a clearing. “Look left first,” he said, putting hands on either side of her head to direct her.
The earth fell away so sharply and so deeply she couldn’t see the extent of the drop except in the distance. The mountains were so far away one couldn’t see where the furthest, palest ones merged with the sky.
“How strange,” she said, wanting to fall to her knees in a paganlike worship of the beauty before her, but knowing the ungainliness of her action would cancel out the effect she wished to portray. “The mountains are lower than we are, and yet they look so high.”
Straight ahead, across the deep gorge, trees one hundred feet high appeared to be less than an inch, riding on the top of a cliff that showed its geological history, with rock formations layered from top to bottom, looking like a carelessly assembled cathedral put in place by an unrestrained stonemason.
She could see the white spume of the falls in her peripheral vision, despite Lochlann’s hands on the side of her face acting as blinkers, but when she caught his hand and finally turned to look at the water directly she wasn’t prepared for their magnitude and burst into tears at the impact of their grandeur. She turned to Lochlann and saw that he was pleased by her response. She remembered him saying, “That’s one thing we have in common at least,” while they enjoyed a thunderstorm together, and now here was a second one.
The expression on his face was one she hadn’t seen before and didn’t know what it signified. Their eyes locked for a few seconds before he broke the contact.
“I’m glad I came,” she said, as if no look had passed between them.
They both turned to worship the splendour of the falls, so profligate in their generosity, putting on this show at this moment for just the two of them and, after they left, no one, and to think it had done this for millions of years, perhaps unseen even by the aborigines who might never have stood on this exact spot when they wandered free across the land during all that time before the white man came and dispossessed them.
One could see by the rock formation that the falls were formed on two levels, but such was the volume of water after the rain, the drop of hundreds of feet looked like one solid mass. Charlotte would love to be able to stand closer, to feel the spray on her face. Having no fear of heights, she made to step forward but Lochlann held her back.
“Don’t go too near the edge,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the din.
He was being over-cautious, she thought. They were at least ten feet from the edge, but he had his reasons. Earlier, he had told her about a boy walking his dog along the cliffs near Tramore in Co Waterford, wanting to see the Metal Man up close, who fell to his death when the ground gave way. The sea had worn away the base of the cliff so the ground he stood on, so solid-looking to the eye, was only six inches deep and couldn’t take his weight.
“Sit over there in the sun,” said Lochlann, “and I’ll go back for the basket. You must be exhausted.”
“Surprisingly enough I’m not. Just pleasantly tired,” she answered, but when he pulled over a large branch she was glad to sink down and rest her back against the warm bark of the tree.
“Shouldn’t be long,” said Lochlann, heading back the way they had come. She tried to follow his progress, but he was soon lost in the trees. When she leaned to the right she could see the sun reflecting off the emblem on the bonnet of the car but couldn’t see him anywhere near it.
Becoming conscious that it was time Lochlann returned, Charlotte leaned over as far as she could in either direction but couldn’t locate him. Putting her arms on the tree behind her, she was able to push herself into a standing position, then move closer to the edge where there were fewer trees and the view opened up. She saw him, surrounded by rocks, standing on the lip of the gorge right beside the waterfall where the river first fell away from the land. He looked into the wall of the water, then looked back to where she was, but when she waved he didn’t wave back and she realised he wasn’t looking at her but the cliff beneath her. He crouched, then leaned, then edged his way further out, and for some reason she stepped back so that he wouldn’t see her if his gaze shifted. The rim of the gorge between them was in the shape of an arc, so that he would be able to see if the drop beside her was straight, or curving inwards, or sloping outwards, just as she would be able to see how his cliff was formed if she went far enough out to look over the scrubby growth that blocked her view from where she stood.
Lochlann moved forward, stopping and checking every few yards. Even from this distance she could see the concentration in the tilt of his head and the stillness of his contemplation.
Distracted for a minute, she turned to watch an eagle riding the thermals over the gorge, an
d felt her spirit lift and join in union with it. She felt that something was about to happen. The stupor of the last five months (five years?) was over, to be replaced by she knew not what. A resolution? Confrontation? Reality?
Would her wronged husband finally bring her to account in this isolated, beautiful, frightening place? Is that why he had brought her here?
Lochlann was back in the position she first saw him, staring at the wall of water at his feet.
She heard the spluttering of an engine. Lochlann was either too lost in thought or too close to the thunder of the water to hear it. After an interval the driver of the car came up behind the doctor and waited at a distance, obviously not wishing to startle a person so close to the drop. Lochlann finally turned and saw him, registered surprise then walked towards him. They moved away, talking, out of Charlotte’s view.
She didn’t realise how expectant she had been until she felt the disappointment of an action deferred with the arrival of the man. When she sat back down on the branch and leaned against the warm trunk she felt as if she’d walked a mile, rather than just standing up and sitting down again.
Fifteen minutes later Lochlann returned with the basket and a square of tarpaulin. She searched his face for clues but he was his usual unreadable self.
“Just ran into Wombat Churchill. He came to look at the falls from the bottom up. Going to climb down.”
“How could he tell you all that when he can’t speak?”
“Easily enough.” Lochlann acted out the words in exaggerated sign language that would have made her laugh if she hadn’t been feeling so overwrought.
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous? After all that rain? On his own? What if he falls and breaks a leg down there? No one would ever know. Except you, but it’s only pure chance that you are here.”
“No. He told them at the pub where he was going. They would send out a search party for him if he didn’t return. Funny man. Pity you took against him.”
Tyringham Park Page 28
