Wildflower Hill

by Kimberley Freeman

  “They’re going to build a lean-to down on the southern boundary near the dam. Are you happy for me to send you the contracts?”

  “I’m delighted!”

  Their bungalow in Edgecliff was getting too small for them, so they put the windfall toward a purchase they’d been wary about making so far: a ramshackle but sunlight-filled house at Point Piper.

  They had been there nearly a year when Tilly Harrow phoned her. The nanny, a Yugoslavian immigrant named Ivona, was playing a rowdy game of horsies with the children in the living room. Beattie was in her office, under the window with the view over the harbor, trying to catch up on some long-neglected correspondence. The phone rang, and she was tempted not to pick it up, but Ray was away, and she didn’t want to miss him.

  “Hello?”

  “Beattie Blaxland?”

  Wary now. “Yes.”

  “My name is Tilly Harrow. I don’t know if . . . you remember me?”

  Oh yes, Beattie remembered her. She remembered all of them, the way they had treated her, the stories they’d told about her. They had played their part in her losing Lucy, of that she had no doubt. But she said none of this. “Of course I do, Tilly.”

  A long silence. Beattie wondered if the line had gone dead. Then a long, shuddering breath. Tilly was crying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Can you help me? We’ve been running this farm a year, and it’s not going well for us. We just did a muster, and we’ve somehow lost a thousand sheep. Is that even possible?”

  “Are they dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tilly, I’m very busy.” Beattie tapped her pencil on the desk, wondering how to extricate herself from the conversation. “When I ran the farm, I always had good help. Good advice. Who’s managing the place?”

  “Frank.”

  “But does he have some expert advice? A man who knows the land?”

  Tilly’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He won’t take advice. It hasn’t rained, and the dam’s drying up. The sheep won’t lamb. I don’t know what to do. We can’t make the repayments.”

  Beattie felt a twinge of guilt. She had asked a terribly high price and was living in a house bought partly with those proceeds. “Tilly, I’m sorry you’re in trouble. But you simply must convince him to hire somebody to help. That’s the only suggestion I can give you.”

  Tilly drew a shuddering breath. “I’ll try.”

  Three years of bad rainfall plagued the Harrows. As Leo Sampson told it, every rain cloud skidded past the farm to rain on their neighbors, on the town, everywhere but in their dams and on their fields. In early 1955, Beattie heard that Frank Harrow had hanged himself and Tilly had moved back to South Africa, a broken woman. Beattie found that she couldn’t feel sorry for him or for Tilly.

  Perhaps the land had a way of finding its own justice.

  Still the train hadn’t come. A slow bloom of adrenaline uncurled in her heart. What if it was a sign? What if she shouldn’t go?

  Beattie stood and returned to the ticket counter. The rain had eased, and weak sunshine broke through clouds to gleam in oily puddles. “Any news on the Glasgow train?”

  “Another twenty minutes, at least. Go and have a cup of tea.”

  She walked back out to the street and hesitated outside the entrance to a café. Her reflection looked back at her. She was well dressed, of course, and still slim. But any trace of the old Beattie—break-of-dawn Beattie—was gone. She was a respectable middle-class woman, the head of a fashion empire, the wife of an MP. What on earth was she thinking she would find in Glasgow? Heartache: yes. Public scandal: perhaps. Her daughter’s love returned: probably not. It had been too long. If Ray found out now that she’d kept a secret from him for over twenty years, it would tear them apart.

  Beattie turned away from the station and her silly plan.

  “You’re here?”

  Beattie looked up from the armchair under the hotel window. “Yes.”

  Ray crossed the room and kissed her. “That’s a nice surprise. Shall we go out for dinner?”

  “I think I need to go back home for a while.”

  He looked at her curiously. “We’ll be going home at the end of next week.”

  “I’m sorry. I mean Tasmania. I . . . I want to go back to Wildflower Hill.”

  “You know we can’t move. I represent the people of Mortondale; I can hardly do my job from the back of beyond in Tasmania.”

  She looked at him, and for a moment, he seemed a complete stranger. Had she really been married to him for over twenty years? Shared a bed with him? Had children with him? How could she have shared so much with him and yet never have told him about the twin losses she had endured—first her daughter, then her soul mate? Then he seemed familiar again: her Ray, the man who had been so good to her for so long.

  “I think I need to get away by myself,” she said quietly.

  “Without us?”

  “You go away all the time.”

  “For work.”

  “I’ll do some work. The children are big enough, not so hard to take care of.” She hated herself for the pain in his face. “I’m sorry, Ray, but it will be good for us, I know it.”

  “Are you thinking of leaving me?”

  “No,” she said quickly, and it was true. “But I need some time and space to think, to be by myself.” To put some memories to rest at last.

  “If that’s what you need, of course. Of course.” He touched her hair tenderly. “I do love you, Beattie. So very much. I’m glad you’re here and not in Glasgow.”

  Beattie didn’t trust herself to speak without crying, so she said nothing.

  THIRTY

  Wildflower Hill was both terribly familiar and not quite as she remembered. It seemed bigger. The trees were much taller, the cottage was farther away from the house. But the way the light changed across the fields, the way the leaves on the gums rattled, the way the starlings and sparrows chattered and sang at the twilit ends of the day was exactly the same.

  The poor house was dim and neglected. The old fridge had given up long ago, and the laundry was still home to a boiler and wringer; she was used to the ease of her Rolls Razor twin-tub machine. For the first two days Beattie managed with the inconveniences but then told herself she was being foolish: she was a wealthy woman. She made two phone calls to Hobart for some appliances to be delivered. Then she got busy cleaning up the place, sewing new curtains, taking care of small repairs.

  The misgivings were enormous. On the one hand, she was fixing up Wildflower Hill because it had once meant a lot to her and it deserved to be taken care of well. On the other hand, she was making herself comfortable here . . . just in case. After years of hard work—running a business, raising children, being the perfect politician’s wife—Beattie was grateful to have a break from it all and be herself. She felt she grew younger in the first few weeks she was there. Was she thinking about leaving Ray?

  Well, perhaps she was.

  She spoke to him every night on the phone, her voice smooth and calm over her tumultuous feelings. Her children clamored to speak to her. Mikey was jovial and full of sunshine, as he always was. Louise was more circumspect, with dark irony underlying her words. They knew. They knew she was away to consider her future. And they weren’t happy.

  The guilt burned most intensely at night, when she had time in the dark to think about all her children. Not just Michael and Louise but also Lucy. Sometimes she entertained fantasies of a reunion, but then she told herself not to be a fool. She wasn’t the first woman in the world with a secret illegitimate child, and she would hardly be the last. Nevertheless, her thoughts turned more and more to her own mortality, to the fortune she would leave behind. How could it be fair to leave it to Michael and Louise and not to Lucy? What would they all make of such unfairness? How dimly must Beattie be remembered in Lucy’s mind? Most nights she fell asleep pondering these questions, questions that were too hard for her to answer.

  Right o
utside her bedroom window was Charlie. He was the first thing she saw every morning when she opened the curtains, the last thing she saw in the evening when she drew them again. Really, there was only a tree. But he was there nonetheless. She could feel him, see him as though he were right in front of her. He hadn’t changed at all. His hair was still thick and black, his body still lean and strong. If she closed her eyes at those moments, she could smell him, too, and she experienced a longing so intense—a longing to be young again, to be in the time before it had all gone bad, to be in love and to have her little girl with her—that it caused shooting pains throughout her body. How unfair that she should have to grow old! She cared nothing for her business, for her wealth, for the mansion they had built on the harbor. She would trade it all to be back in 1939: frozen in one moment there, forever.

  One fine morning, Beattie decided to venture into town. She had run out of the groceries she’d brought up with her from Hobart. Even though twenty-five years had passed since she’d been there, she still felt her pulse quicken as she neared Lewinford.

  The town was bigger, the road paved. A lot of the old buildings were still the same. The post office, the general store, the pub. Leo Sampson’s office was now a bric-a-brac shop; he had died in 1959. Beattie took a deep breath and went inside the general store.

  It was like stepping back in time. The wooden shelves, the long glass counter, the sacks of flour stacked up on the floor. But instead of Tilly Harrow and her pursed, disapproving lips behind the counter, there was a middle-aged man with a florid complexion. He smiled at her broadly. “Hello, stranger,” he said.

  She was wary about smiling. As soon as he found out who she was . . . But then she shook her head. A long time had passed. “Hello,” she said. “I’m down from Wildflower Hill.”

  She waited, realized she was tensed against him rejecting her.

  “Wildflower Hill? You’re the new tenant?”

  “The owner, actually,” she said.

  His eyes rounded. “Really? You’re Beattie Blaxland? You . . . Wait here. I have to get my wife.” He dashed to the stairs, called out loudly, “Annie, come down here! You’ll never believe who’s come to town!”

  Beattie flushed with pleasure. Moments later, a tall fair woman had come warily down the stairs.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Look,” the man said, “it’s Beattie Blaxland.”

  Annie smiled, reaching out to take Beattie’s hand. “Why, so it is!”

  “I take it you like my designs?” Beattie said proudly.

  “Your designs? Oh, yes, I like them well enough. But we know of you from before you were famous.”

  “You do?”

  “Come upstairs,” Annie said. “Let’s have tea.”

  Beattie could have laughed. It was so vastly different from the reception she used to receive in town. She followed Annie behind the counter and up the stairs to a cozy, floral sitting room.

  Annie put the kettle on to boil and came to sit with Beattie. “My father . . . I’m sorry, I should say my stepfather. He used to work for you. Mikhail Kirilliv.”

  “Mikhail! He was your stepfather? You’re Catherine’s daughter?”

  “I am. I can’t believe you remember Mum’s name.” She smiled broadly. “They were very happy for many years.”

  “Is he . . . ?” Beattie couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “Dead? Oh yes. Mum died in 1958, and he said that he wanted to come back here. He missed the place so much. By then he was very old and not well, so we brought him down with us. At the same time, the business here was up for lease, and we fell in love with the area. Dad died in 1961, right back there in the bedroom.” She indicated with a wave of her hand. “Went very peacefully. Would you like to see some family photographs?”

  “I would.”

  Annie went to a crowded bookcase and pulled out two photo albums. “Here, you look through these. I’ll go and make the tea.”

  Beattie started with the more recent photographs, turning the pages carefully. Mikhail—stooped and white-haired but unmistakably Mikhail—smiled out from the photographs. Annie and her husband were in many of the photos, and children who grew up from one page to the next. Beattie picked up the other album. The pages were falling to pieces. The photos were held in by white tabs that had long ago lost their stickiness. The photos slid into the cracks between pages.

  She tried to sort them, glancing at them. Was astonished to see one taken in the sitting room at Wildflower Hill.

  It must have been from right before Mikhail left. The Christmas tree was up. She remembered now, Catherine had had a camera and had taken some pictures of the property on his request, so he could remember it after he left. Focusing intensely now, Beattie pulled the photographs out one by one to look at them.

  There he was. There was Charlie. A figure on a horse, his hat obscuring most of his face. Still, Beattie’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Find something you like?” This was Annie, returning with the tea tray.

  She held out the photograph. “It’s Charlie Harris.”

  “Dad spoke about him a lot. They were great friends. Take it if you want. I’ve no use for it.”

  “Really?” Her face felt warm.

  “Of course. Take any of the old ones from Wildflower Hill.”

  “No, no. I’ll leave you with your stepfather’s memories. But I will take this. He was . . . rather special to me.” There: her heart was beating too hard. A few ounces of young blood still ran in her veins.

  Annie poured tea, and Beattie asked her about other residents of town whom she remembered. Annie recognized none of the names. Beattie passed the morning in memories, then decided she had better get her groceries and head home.

  “Annie,” she said, an idea forming. “There will be nobody at Wildflower Hill for a while, but I’m going to send down some boxes to store. If I give you a key, could I ask you to go up there from time to time, check on the place, store the boxes for me if I ship them to you? I’d pay you.”

  “If it’s a paying job, I’ll pass it on to my son,” Annie said. “He’s seventeen and in need of some part-time work. He can keep the dust off and keep the gardens neat for you, too, if you like.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Beattie said. Perhaps next time she came down, the house wouldn’t look so neglected. If she came down again. “What’s his name? I’ll write him some instructions.”

  “Andrew,” she said. “Andrew Taylor. He won’t let you down.”

  When she arrived home, Beattie pinned the photograph of Charlie to the wall next to her bed. For some reason, having the photograph made the visions of him go away. She was sad about that but didn’t take the photo down. Her sorrow was less frightening trapped between the four white borders of the picture.

  Beattie came to understand that she’d come to Wildflower Hill to grieve. Not just for Charlie and Lucy, whom, frankly, she had grieved over a great deal already. She was grieving the loss of her youth, the closing down of possibilities as life became what it was rather than what it might have been. As time passed and the only sounds were her thoughts and the quiet land, she found the grief lessened, that she began to see more clearly how blessed she had been. A loving husband, two spirited children, a chance to pursue her creative dreams. Charlie had stopped appearing below her window, and to her surprise, she began to feel restless for Sydney, for Ray and Mike and Louise. The relief was enormous.

  Then one night, two days before she was due to return home, she had a dream.

  Lucy was in it. She was about eight: liquid eyes, pale freckles on her face, warm sweet breath. The child stood directly in front of Beattie, who was crouched to tie the belt around her waist.

  “My darling,” Beattie said.

  “Who are you?” the child asked.

  “I’m your mother.” The pain of her not knowing this was excruciating.

  “And will you be forever? Until the stars go out and the silence comes?”

 
; “Yes! Yes, I—”

  Beattie woke up before she could say the words. Crying, she got up. The early-morning dark was cold. She pulled on her robe and went down to the study.

  There, she wrote a letter. She poured out her feelings, all the things she wanted to say to the little girl in her dream but could never say to the grown woman Lucy had become, the one who had told Beattie to leave her in peace. As she wrote, she sobbed until her ribs hurt. Finally, she sealed the letter into an envelope. She even addressed it—that unvisitable address forever burned into her mind—though she didn’t intend to send it. Writing it had been enough. She debated what to do with it. It wasn’t right to burn it or to throw it away, so she slid it away carefully with some other mementos that weren’t for Ray’s eyes and prepared to return to her life in Sydney.

  * * *

  On the morning of her departure, she locked up the house and went to stand under the cabbage gum. It had grown beautifully—tall and strong like Charlie—and it made her happy to think that it would be here long after she had gone, watching over Wildflower Hill.

  A taxi turned up the driveway, its horn beeping.

  “Goodbye,” Beattie said. “Goodbye, my love.”

  And left Wildflower Hill forever.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Emma: London, 2009

  The flight was hell. The man in the seat across the aisle snored like a chain saw. I drifted in and out of sleep, and the edges of reality became blurred. I was suspended, literally in the air, between two worlds: my new life in Tasmania, my old life in London. Neither felt quite real.

  At Heathrow, I felt all my nerves start to hum. What if it had been some grand hallucination and Josh wasn’t really coming to meet me? But there he was, waiting outside customs. He ran toward me, and I fell into his arms. Real Josh. Flesh-and-blood Josh. Not the Josh who had inhabited my fantasies the last few months.

  “Em, Em,” he said, mouth against my hair. “God, I’ve missed you.”