Currawong Manor

by Josephine Pennicott

  Nick had been blown away by The Flesh Bridge? Elizabeth fought to control her pleasure that Nick had seen the show. Why hadn’t he ever mentioned it?

  ‘You were in one of my son’s favourite movies,’ Fleur said to Elsa.

  ‘It has to be My Teacher the Dragon.’ Elsa smiled. ‘None of my other movies would be suitable for a young boy!’

  ‘You know young boys,’ Fleur said. ‘I actually think it was Terror on Bear Island.’

  ‘Shark Island,’ Elsa corrected her. ‘Oh, my God, how embarrassing! That film was a piece of trash!’

  ‘My son wouldn’t agree with you,’ Fleur said. ‘Young boys love nudity.’

  ‘Mum! You’re disgusting.’ Louis, who had been hovering, vanished around a pinewood dresser to photograph Elsa on the sly.

  ‘He should love my forthcoming project then,’ Elsa boasted. ‘Did you hear Nick is going to put me forward to play Wanda in the film adaptation of Flowers of the Ruins?’

  ‘No!’ Elizabeth glanced at Nick. ‘What film? That’s news to me. We might have discussed a film, but I’d no idea anything definite had gone ahead.’

  ‘Elsa,’ Nick stepped in with an irritable expression. ‘I only said if there was a film. I still have to write the book.’

  ‘You’ve been going on for ages about how I’d be perfect for Wanda! Are you trying to make out I’m making things up?’

  ‘If you’ll excuse us.’ Nick grabbed her arm and they walked away to the counter, still squabbling. The doorbell tinkled as Elsa stormed off in a perfumed exit. Nick hurried after her.

  Fleur and Elizabeth burst out laughing. ‘I almost feel sorry for him.’ Elizabeth grinned. ‘Did you see his face when she let the cat out of the bag? I can’t wait for Ginger to hear about Nick’s grand schemes.’

  ‘Come on, Louis. It’s safe to come out!’ Fleur called. ‘I suppose you expect me to get those photos printed so you can brag to everyone you know?’

  ‘Too right,’ Louis said. ‘Mum, you’re a total dork telling her I loved that crap movie. I only watched it for the breasts.’

  ‘I know that, darling,’ Fleur said fondly. Louis punched his mother playfully in the arm and Elizabeth, feeling a familiar sadness, quickly turned away.

  ‘Where’s Sugar?’ Fleur said suddenly. The three surveyed the bustling shop. Sugar was nowhere to be seen. ‘Sugar?’ Fleur called.

  ‘Stay here, I’ll look upstairs,’ Elizabeth offered, quickly ascending the wooden staircase to check out the next floor, which was filled with vintage clothes and larger furniture items. The child was nowhere to be seen. With growing unease, Elizabeth headed downstairs.

  ‘She’s going to be so dead when Mum finds her,’ Louis announced, popping his headphones back on.

  Fleur was looking panicked. ‘Do you think she’s wandered very far?’ she said. ‘I asked the staff at the desk, but they were too busy serving to notice where she went.’

  Growing increasingly more frantic, Fleur ran around the store calling for her daughter. Several customers looked around in sympathy. ‘I did see a little girl leaving with some lady,’ offered a teenage girl with red curly hair looking up from a stack of old Misty annuals. ‘It was about fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘What did she look like? Can you remember what she was wearing?’ Fleur asked, on the verge of tears now.

  ‘A pretty girl with long fairish hair to here.’ The teenager indicated with her hands to her mid-back. ‘I think she had purple on.’ She screwed up her face, trying to remember. ‘Maybe she had purple stockings and a dress with flowers or stars or spots . . . some sort of beret. Sorry, that’s not much help. I didn’t take a lot of notice.’

  ‘That’s her,’ Fleur said. She ran out the door with Elizabeth and Louis close behind her. Outside, she looked up and down the street, which was packed with locals and visitors. ‘She’s been snatched!’

  Louis took off his Walkman. ‘Who’d want her?’ he said. ‘Anyway, they’ll soon return her when she starts moaning for a milkshake. And it’s the Blue Mountains, Mum, not New York. She’s not likely to be murdered in a sleepy little village, surely?’

  ‘Shut up, Louis!’ Fleur shouted. ‘If anything happens to her, I’ll hold you responsible for not keeping more of an eye on her. You were too busy ogling that actress.’

  ‘I’m only a kid, remember?’ Louis defended himself. ‘You were the one gasbagging to Elsa Varino when Sugar got away, so don’t blame me for your negligence. The injustice of it all, to try to blame your own son. Wait until I tell Dad on you. That’s seriously not cool, Mum.’

  ‘We have to go to the police, right now,’ Fleur said, ignoring him. ‘Whoever took her has had a headstart.’

  As she looked down the street, Elizabeth noticed the brightly coloured milk bar, its cheery yellow sandwich board – decorated with a drawing of dolls and teddy bears jumping in excitement – proclaiming The Land of Goodies. A few tables waited hopefully outside, but owing to the frigid temperature they remained vacant.

  ‘Wait a minute, I’ll check that shop,’ she said and ran down the street, then peered in through the window.

  As she had hoped, inside was Sugar. To Elizabeth’s complete surprise, though, she was sitting at a table with Dolly Sharp, their heads together like old friends.

  ‘Sugar!’ Elizabeth burst through the plastic strips hanging from the top of the doorframe. ‘What are you doing? We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your mother’s worried sick. What made you leave the shop without telling any of us?’

  Sugar didn’t look the least pleased to see Elizabeth. She sat in front of an empty milkshake glass. Dolly was sipping on a coffee.

  ‘Dolly said she’d buy me a treat,’ the girl said sulkily. ‘I told her I was thirsty so she brought me here. And she gave me a present.’ She waved a stuffed cloth doll with fat blonde plaits and blue button eyes. Elizabeth marvelled that eleven-year-old Sugar had no shame at all in accepting such a childish toy, and from someone she didn’t know.

  ‘You should have known better than to leave without telling us!’ she snapped. ‘You can’t just walk off with a stranger.’

  ‘She’s not a stranger!’ Sugar protested. ‘She knows you and Mama. Anyway, you were all busy talking in the shop, so I left.’

  ‘I found Sugar wandering in the street.’ Dolly stirred several spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee. ‘The mother should have been watching her more closely. Anybody could have run off with her.’ She sucked her spoon, her eyes glinting as she looked at Elizabeth.

  Somebody did run off with her, Elizabeth thought, but resisted the urge to say it out loud. Instead, she asked Dolly what she owed her for the milkshake. When Dolly waved away the offer, Elizabeth told Sugar to get up and come with her. ‘Give Miss Sharp back the doll, Sugar,’ she said.

  ‘I’m taking her back to Sydney,’ Sugar said, getting up but still clutching the doll like a three-year-old.

  ‘Can’t you leave it here?’ Elizabeth felt reluctant to accept any gift from Dolly Sharp. Sugar already had so many possessions and Dolly would have only her pension to survive on.

  ‘I gave it to her,’ Dolly protested. ‘She’s a lovely doll, Sugar. She can be your special friend. Dolls have always been my special friends. You’re never alone with a doll to care for and protect you.’

  ‘Yes, I love her!’ the girl enthused, no doubt on a sugar high. ‘Thank you for giving her to me, Dolly.’

  ‘Goodbye, Sugar,’ said Dolly. ‘Maybe you can visit me another time. I’ve enjoyed our chat. A very long time ago I knew another little girl who had long fair hair like yours. Don’t forget to give your dolly baths in the full moon and tell her all your secrets. Her little stitched mouth will keep them all. That’s the other good thing about dolls. They keep secrets well, and they never forget.’ She gave Sugar a crooked smile and went back to sipping her coffee.

  Elizabeth, struck dumb by the sight of Dolly Sharp actually smiling, dragged Sugar outside and down the street to Fleur, who let out a cry of pure relief
. ‘Oh, thank God! Where were you, darling?’

  ‘With Dolly Sharp,’ Elizabeth said tersely. ‘Enjoying a milkshake and listening to Dolly’s stories. Sugar was acting like a toddler.’

  ‘Oh, Sugar, you scared me so much,’ cried Fleur. ‘How many times have I told you about stranger danger? You never leave with a person you don’t know, and you never accept any food from them! Daddy is going to be furious when he hears how you nearly gave me a heart attack. You will be punished for this!’ She fell on her daughter and began covering her in kisses.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Louis said. ‘Nobody would want her. You apologise, Mum, or I’m calling Dad right now. I’ve got rights, you know. It’s not like when you were growing up in the olden days.’

  As the three Amoses continued to bicker, Elizabeth turned to stare back up the road towards the brightly coloured milk bar, suddenly struck by something. The red-haired teenager had said that a girl fitting Sugar’s description had left Misty Mountain Memories with an old woman, but Dolly claimed she’d found Sugar outside in the street.

  ‘Sugar,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Were you alone or with someone else when you left the antique shop?’

  Sugar shook her new doll. ‘I left with the doll,’ she pouted. ‘The doll became real and wanted me to play with it.’

  ‘Oh, Sugar, you’re so imaginative. Sugar’s going to NIDA classes,’ Fleur said to Elizabeth. ‘They all say she has a real talent.’

  ‘A talent for bullshit,’ Louis muttered.

  No further questioning of Sugar produced a sensible or believable answer. Sugar related several alternate versions of how she came to leave the antiques store – a spaceman had led her into the street to see his spaceship, a witch had stolen her when she was looking at the toy section, and a big wind had sucked her out of the shop. Exhausted, they gave up on questioning the girl, and they headed down to the general store to buy some provisions for their picnic at Mermaid Glen. But nagging away at Elizabeth as they shopped was the puzzle of why the dour Dolly had seemed so happy and content around Sugar and her poignant comment about the other little girl Sugar resembled. What secrets might the child Dolly have whispered to her dolls? Dolly’s odd statement to Sugar continued to puzzle Elizabeth. Was Dolly merely playing a game with Sugar – or confessing to something else? ‘That’s the other good thing about dolls. They keep secrets well, and they never forget.’

  16

  A Visit from Ma

  Ginger’s hands were clammy as she stood in the doorway of her Nest, studying the drystone wall separating the garden from Owlbone Woods. Over breakfast this morning, Holly had mentioned that Elizabeth and her friends were planning on picnicking there today. Despite chiding herself for her anxiety – what happened more than fifty years ago to Shalimar couldn’t possibly happen again – she couldn’t shake her nerves. She knew it was essential she place as little stress on herself as she could. Yes, the cancer was going to kill her eventually – it was too aggressive and advanced to hope for a miracle – but she was determined to hope anyway, even as she followed her medical team’s advice to put her affairs in order as quickly as possible.

  To distract herself, she settled down with her tape recorder and notebook and closed her eyes, visualising herself back at Currawong Manor all those years ago. She had already drafted in her journal the sections of her time at the manor she wanted to cover before her confession. Thinking of herself as a character in a movie helped her dissociate from the pain of reliving that period of her life. She pressed record.

  ***

  Rupert Partridge and I were lovers. I’m running out of time and I want the truth to finally be out there. Time to stop lying, Ginger old girl! Although I wonder if I’m doing anyone any favours by telling the truth, and whether a mystery is better left as a locked door. Especially when you know that unlocking that door could badly hurt certain people.

  People often assume that he was either bedding the three of us Flowers or that it was Wanda or Kitty with him. But I was the only Flower involved with him intimately. I was young and callous, and I didn’t consider Doris. I was in love with her husband, you see. Madly, completely, foolishly in love. I couldn’t have cared less if he really was the devil himself. All I wanted was to be near him, to submerge myself in his being. Rupert knew how to take his time with a woman’s body, inflame you until you could no longer think of anything but that moment. He looked so slight, but it was amazing what he could do with his hands and lips. Some men just know – like playing an instrument.

  In my own twisted, self-centred logic, I told myself that I was doing Doris a favour by sleeping with her husband. Now that Doris had the new baby she had hungered after for all those years, she hardly noticed Rupert. She no longer desired him – they inhabited separate living spaces. She was cold-hearted and had spurned Rupert. And perhaps, for her part, she reasoned that it was far better he bed one of the Flowers under his own roof than frequent the Sydney brothels and bring home some nasty disease.

  As I’ve mentioned, Ma always said that right from when I was a toddler, if I wanted something, I took it. Rupert Partridge was not exempt from my creed. I just wish he had shared my passion. Though perhaps I am underestimating Rupert. He did seem to desire my presence over the others’. He called me to the studio more frequently in my first few months at the manor and we worked together on many evenings, snatching stolen moments. He spoke to me of many things to do with his early childhood, his love of art and nature. But I always felt a large part of Rupert was absent, that his heart belonged to only one woman. And I knew very quickly that I was not the woman who inhabited that piece of his soul.

  I admit, I had begun to hunger for some evidence of his love on canvas. A painting that openly revealed our passion so that Wanda, Kitty and, yes, even Doris, only had to look at it to understand the depth of our love. He had begun working on his Diana folly statue with Dennis in May, and once, after we had made love, he had told me that I was the inspiration for the project. But he had created plenty of naked statues of goddesses around the house and in the woods, so I didn’t see that as anything special.

  I indulged myself in daydreams that Doris disappeared, and I would marry Rupert and become the lady of Currawong Manor. My first act being, of course, to dismiss the other Flowers – then Rupert and I would live happily ever after.

  Miss Sharp never figured in this pleasing fantasy, but although I overlooked her, the dollmaker hadn’t missed a second of what was happening with Rupert. As deeply infatuated as I was, and distracted by our trysts, I failed to register the stern-faced, black-clad brooding figure who glared at me whenever we met.

  Other people sensed that something had changed between us. Wanda, piqued by my more frequent modelling sessions, was even more snippy than usual. Meanwhile, Edgar Cabret, the well-known children’s book illustrator and artist, who had a beautiful art deco home called Mount Olympus at Leura, spent a lot of time hanging around Rupert, which I found difficult to tolerate. I never felt comfortable in his company. He was a bit too much of a toff for me and I found his mannerisms annoying. Like the dollmaker, his sharp eyes rarely missed anything, and I felt his tone was cool with me, as if he knew about our affair and judged me for it. He was very protective towards Rupert and I know he considered himself a friend to Doris.

  The illustrator visited at least once and sometimes several times a week. This drove Rupert mad, but Edgar wasn’t easily intimidated or deterred by Rupert’s moods. The two of them could fight like cats and dogs and in the next second be in one another’s arms laughing and calling each other brother. I resented his every visit, as it meant that I had to share Rupert with him.

  I savoured every moment with Rupert. A glance he gave me over a meal. The teasing way he pronounced my name, as though it were two separate words – Gin-jar – with the drawl I found so attractive. His crooked smile when he was amused by some joke I’d cracked. The way he kissed, so hungrily, as if he wanted to consume me. He didn’t, of course – his soul was too tainted b
y war and life. He was exorcising his ghosts and demons and when he was with me he could shed the skin of his suffering against my youth.

  And then Ma nearly ruined everything for me by turning up at the manor unannounced. If ever there was anything to sniff out, Molly Jarvis’s nose would be in the air for sure.

  ‘Ginger! You’ve got a visitor!’ Kitty’s sunhat fell from her head as she ran from the house into the sunshine.

  Miss Sharp had been driving me mad, barking orders at us to scrub, fetch and carry. I was sick to death of blacking stoves, shining pans and beating mattresses, and had been happy to escape her for a stray hour to read under the shade of a gum tree. The garden was exceptionally beautiful at this time of year. Bluebells, rhododendrons, azaleas and jonquils speckled the garden and woods. White daisies scattered the lawn. Cherry blossoms and flowering fruit trees made you feel like dancing for joy, while the air whispered the promise of the hotter weather to come.

  I stood up, brushing grass from my clothes. ‘Who is it?’ I tidied my hair, adjusting my scarf. I was conscious of my bedraggled appearance.

  ‘Your mother,’ Kitty replied.

  Instantly I felt alarmed. Not that I’d expected William Powell to visit, but why was Ma disobeying my orders to stay at Surry Hills? She normally wouldn’t walk to the corner shop if she could avoid it.

  ‘She’s in the front room with Doris and Miss Sharp, who gave her a lift from the station. She spotted me peeping in the room and said, “Hello, Kitty” as if she remembered me!’

  I was horrified by the thought of Ma with her rough vowels perched up in the front room. ‘Why would Ma come here?’ I asked, not expecting an answer, but then a mental image of my siblings popped into my mind. Some disaster must have occurred at home to provoke this unexpected visit.