Instead, Ginger stood at the door, dressed in a white mink stole, a frilled flamenco-style dress and the floral gumboots she loved to wear around the grounds. Despite her flamboyant attire, her large green eyes looked troubled.
He stood back so she could come in out of the cold, then closed the door behind her. ‘Hello, Ginger, are you okay?’ he asked.
‘You don’t happen to know where Elizabeth is, do you?’ she said. ‘She had invited me over to her Nest to discuss another shoot.’
‘Is she with James?’ he asked, disturbed at how jealous that thought made him. Christ, he really had it bad.
‘Maybe, but he’s at Katoomba visiting friends. I suppose she might have gone along to photograph the town. I’m just feeling a bit anxious.’
Nick was surprised – he hadn’t believed Ginger capable of feeling concern for anyone other than herself. Some of what he was thinking must have shown on his face, as Ginger pouted.
‘I’m not totally heartless,’ she said. ‘It’s those woods giving me the horrors. People are well advised to steer clear of them!’
‘So everyone keeps saying,’ Nick said wearily. ‘I feel like an actor who hasn’t yet been given the script for his Hammer Dracula movie – all these warnings from the locals: Don’t go near the castle, young master!’
‘Joke about it as much as you like.’ Ginger frowned. ‘I know those bloody woods . . .’ She broke off, spotting Patrick’s red book on the table. ‘What are you doing with that piece of trash?’
Nick picked it up. ‘The author himself lent it to me,’ he replied. He flicked through the pages, his brain ticking over with questions. Why exactly was Ginger so anxious for Elizabeth? Did the old rogue know something? Was there actually something going on out in the woods, rather than the manor itself? ‘It looks as if it contains some pretty interesting old stories. Alien abductions, unsolved murders . . .’
Ginger’s expression was inscrutable. ‘Patrick, despite his stuffy, pompous demeanour nowadays, was once one of the original bohemians that moved to the mountains. From what Rupert told me, Edgar, Patrick and Monica had some sort of ménage à trois for a while. Yes, I know he goes on about Olive,’ she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, ‘but he had a whole other life happening. I think the muse of his little red book was too many mountain magic mushrooms shared with his arty buddies.’
Nick put on his jacket, preparing to go to dinner, feeling disappointed by this new version of Patrick. He couldn’t in a million years imagine his beloved uncle Ronnie in some bohemian ménage à trois. And he could no sooner imagine his favourite uncle taking magic mushrooms than he could see him being abducted by extraterrestrials. So the little red book was really the ramblings of some old pothead? It explained some things, anyway.
‘He seemed agitated when he discovered some of his clippings were missing from the museum,’ Nick continued, hunting for his boots. ‘And earlier he went on about how Kitty had visited him just before she died. He suspected her of nicking his book. I remember now Elizabeth said Kitty had contacted her not long before Kitty’s death, wanting to meet. I wonder if there’s a connection?’
To his alarmed surprise, Ginger’s eyes welled with tears.
‘What is it? Ginger, are you okay? What have I said?’
‘She was going to do it anyway,’ Ginger said, voice choked with tears. ‘I knew Kitty would be unable to die without confessing. And so I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’
She brought out her mobile phone and scrolled through her contacts, before selecting a number. ‘Hello, Stewart? Ginger Lawson. I need you to check something for me and call back as soon as you can.’ She paused impatiently. ‘I know and I’m sorry, but this is important, Stewart! Among your mother’s effects did she leave any letters, photographs or anything relating to her time at Currawong Manor?’
She listened in silence while Nick watched her, trying to understand what was going on.
‘Okay, I understand you’re moving, but if you could just do it for me it would be most appreciated.’ She clicked the phone off and tapped it against her hand, her brow creased in thought.
‘Are you going to tell me now?’ Nick demanded. ‘Or are you going to leave me in suspense?’
‘You should never judge a book by its cover, love – that way you won’t be disappointed.’ Ginger shook off her sombre mood and smiled tremulously, linking arms with him. ‘Come on, handsome, let’s go to dinner. Maybe Elizabeth will be there? I’ll tell you everything soon, but I want Elizabeth to be present to hear it too.’
But Elizabeth didn’t show at dinner, and Holly said she hadn’t heard from her. James wasn’t answering his phone. Nick tried to tell himself that Elizabeth must have gone out, either with James, perhaps to meet a friend in town or to get a break from the Shaws. He could tell from the way Ginger picked at her food and kept glancing about the room that she was also feeling nervous for Elizabeth. How long should they wait before contacting the police? he wondered. What if she was lost somewhere in the woods and froze to death? Or something worse? But Nick didn’t want to give too much thought to what the ‘something worse’ might be, or exactly what secrets Owlbone Woods might hold.
28
How Does Your Garden Grow?
Elizabeth was dreaming that Ginger was stitching the throat of a swan where it was seamed by a large jagged tear. The swan made protesting mewing sounds as she pushed the needle into its skin. Feathers blew softly over Elizabeth as Ginger stitched. ‘It’s all part of a pattern,’ the older woman said, examining the bird’s throat. ‘You just have to mind the beaks and claws as you sew.’
Then Ginger was on a stage in what looked to be a burlesque show. She stood in a chorus of showgirls dressed in feather tutus that resembled the bodies of swans. Now Elizabeth understood what she had been sewing. The swans were the showgirls. A feeling of betrayal assailed the dream as the dancers performed an energetic cancan. Then Ginger was singing solo in the spotlight, the chorus girls in shadow behind her. Mascara streaked her face, making her resemble a tired old clown. The showgirls jeered at Elizabeth, who couldn’t breathe properly. She was so cold and so afraid. Something terrible stood just out of view, waiting for her in the wings.
Sneering, mewing noises and clapping sounds came from the audience. Elizabeth craned her neck to see the theatre packed with applauding dolls. Seated next to her was Miss Sharp, who cradled something in her lap. In the dim light Elizabeth tried to see what the housekeeper held. It was a bloody, dead, newborn baby.
The dolls all cheered as Elizabeth tried to rise from her seat, and someone called her name. The swan feathers were still falling, and now began to fall more heavily. They held her to her seat as she struggled against them. Only they weren’t feathers at all. They were snowflakes.
‘Elizabeth?’ someone said again. ‘You were right, she is here. Or someone is . . . Can you see Bob and the others yet?’
A door was being opened somewhere outside of her dream. Elizabeth woke and looked around dazedly. Only a faint pre-dawn light was penetrating the gloom, and it took a few seconds to orientate herself. Then she remembered: she was in Miss Sharp’s cottage, surrounded by dolls. Her body felt stiff and numb; even with the mouldy-smelling blanket she had wrapped around her she was ice-cold. And last night something terrible had tried to get to her – or had she imagined the whole thing? In her just-woken, terrified state, it was all confused in her memory.
Then the kitchen door opened from the opposite side of the room. Elizabeth froze as a torch beam scanned the room and fell on her.
‘Elizabeth!’ a deep voice said. ‘Thank God, you’re here.’ The person holding the torch hurried across the room towards her, and when he got close enough she realised it was Nick. Elizabeth had never been more overjoyed to see him. Behind him, holding a lantern, was Holly. Both of them were dressed warmly.
‘What happened, Elizabeth?’ asked Holly. ‘We’ve all been worried sick! Nick woke us when he realised you hadn’t returned last nigh
t.’
Elizabeth tried to get up from her huddled position, but her legs had gone numb and they gave way beneath her. She longed for a hot drink, toilet, bath and the safety of her Nest. Her throat felt as if razor-blades were scratching her as she tried to speak. Nick reached for her, holding her up and tucking her into his body. ‘Are you alright?’ he demanded, his voice croaky with concern. ‘Have you broken anything? Why is the window boarded up?’
‘Something was trying to get in.’ Elizabeth caught Nick’s sceptical expression. ‘I know what it sounds like, but something was out there!’
‘It’s okay, love, don’t go upsetting yourself.’ Nick took off his leather jacket and placed it around her shoulders. ‘Are you able to walk back to the manor? We have to get you home and warm.’
Elizabeth burrowed gratefully into the toasty jacket which had Nick’s musky leathery scent. She suspected that he was humouring her, assuming she was hysterical, but was too fatigued to argue with him.
‘You were lucky you managed to find the cottage and break in. You might have died of hypothermia outside,’ Holly said. ‘But it’s a creepy place to spend the night. Thank God we were able to rouse Dolly at 4 am and she told us she saw you heading into the woods.’
‘We’ll discuss that later, Holly,’ Nick said sharply. ‘Let’s just get her home. She needs a doctor.’
‘I’m so sorry I worried you,’ Elizabeth said weakly. ‘I’ll cover any costs for the damage to the cottage.’ Painful cramps and pins and needles seized her body as the blood started to flow again through her cold, stiff limbs.
As Nick was helping her towards the door, another detail of the evening before came back to her in a flash of renewed shock. She glanced towards the portrait over the mantel and stopped. Holly and Nick followed her gaze, and Nick flicked his torch onto the painting. An odd silence descended.
‘Ginger wanted to tell you herself. How dreadful that you stumbled across it,’ Holly said sadly. ‘Though perhaps it’s better this way to force Ginger’s hand. Ginger had told me about the portrait and we knew Dolly must have it, although she kept denying it. Claimed her mother had destroyed it, but it never sat well with me. I imagine Dolly saw it as her property. It was given to her mother, after all, for her services to Doris and Rupert. I imagine that’s why she discouraged us from coming to the cottage. It wasn’t here when I first saw this place, so she must have hidden it.’
The oil painting was of a naked beautiful girl with red hair that fell in waves to her shoulders. She looked out at the viewer with a mixture of love, fear and sadness. She was obviously heavily pregnant. In the lower right-hand corner of the canvas was Rupert’s usual signature and the date, October 1945.
‘It belongs here.’ Dolly’s voice from the doorway made them jump. Behind her, Elizabeth could see Ginger and Bob. Even after the night’s ordeal, Elizabeth felt enormously touched that everyone at the manor had cared enough to hunt for her at this early hour. Even Ginger, as sick as she was, had risen from her bed along with Dolly.
‘It was painted here, and Rupert gave it to Mother when it was finished,’ Dolly said. ‘I watched him paint Ginger as she waited for the baby to arrive. He said if times were tough Mother could sell it, but she never did. She loved Rupert too much to sell anything of his.’
As Dolly spoke, Ginger walked past her and came to stand in the kitchen, staring at the painting. Her face, which seemed strangely unfamiliar without make-up, looked tired and strained as she examined it. She bowed her head for a second before she spoke.
‘We were so in love. Or I was. Dennis said it was just desire on Rupert’s part, that he loved Shalimar and Doris, not me. But perhaps Dennis was wrong. When I look at that painting, it looks as if a man in love painted it.’
‘Ginger?’ Nick glanced at Elizabeth with a shocked question in his eyes, then back to the older woman. ‘Why didn’t you tell us sooner?’
Ginger turned and slowly looked around the small room. ‘This looks exactly as it did when they first brought me here in August. Doris and Rupert cooked up the story of the polio outbreak to explain why I was away from the manor for so long. I thought I’d go mad – I was virtually imprisoned out here, waiting for the baby to arrive. Dreading the birth, not knowing what to expect. Half out of my mind with boredom, terrified of the pain and of dying in the bush without my ma knowing I was even here – and her shame if she ever found out how I had died. I only had occasional visits from Rupert when he wasn’t busy, and that’s when he painted me. She only came at the end, and that was to take my child from me.’ She crumpled suddenly against the table and gave an involuntary moan. ‘She took her from me – they took her from me and I let them!’
‘Who took her, Ginger?’ Nick said.
‘Doris,’ Elizabeth answered for Ginger. Her eyes were wet with tears. She already knew the answer, for she had had all night to ponder on it. ‘Doris took Lois and claimed her as her own because she couldn’t have any more children. Perhaps she hoped Rupert wouldn’t love Shalimar as much if he had another daughter to love. You’re Lois’s mother – my grandmother.’
Holly had begun to weep in sympathy, and Bob shook his head at her. ‘Don’t carry on upsetting yourself over it again, love,’ he said, surprisingly gently.
‘Tell me the truth, Ginger,’ Elizabeth urged. ‘Say it to my face, not on one of your tapes! You are my grandmother!’
‘Yes,’ Ginger said. She looked directly at Elizabeth. ‘Yes, I am. Forgive me for all of this. I was planning on telling you, but it was difficult to decide how and when.’
‘Ginger, there’s time enough to go through this later. Let’s just get you and Elizabeth home first.’ Holly took the older woman’s arm and led her towards the door.
‘Wait outside for me,’ Ginger ordered. She moved towards Elizabeth, who was examining the dolls.
‘Please hurry up, Ginger,’ Holly said. ‘We all need to get home and sort things out properly there. These woods give me the creeps.’
Elizabeth and Nick stood together. As Nick’s torch illuminated the dolls’ faces they seemed to rebuke the intruders in their cottage home.
‘The dolls are special and belong to the house, because Mother loved her dolls so much. They were associated with her work here,’ Dolly said. She crossed over to a doll propped up against the fire-hearth, scooping it up; she touched its wool hair, smiling as if at some private memory.
‘Her “work” was her real trade, wasn’t it?’ Ginger said. ‘The dollmaker had a reputation among the local women, but those who came to her kept the secret. And for every soul she scraped out, she made a doll.’
Dolly nodded. ‘The souls are in the dolls.’ She grinned awkwardly for a second, a strange twist of her lips as if the muscles of her mouth weren’t used to the movement. ‘She loved all her dolls and cared for them as if they were the real children – indeed, she believed that’s what they were.’
Dolly cradled the doll against her chest. ‘The dolls were always my friends growing up,’ she said.
Elizabeth’s heart twisted at the pain in her words.
‘Can we go?’ Ginger spoke up, distress evident in her voice. ‘This place brings back bad memories for me. I thought I would die in the months I spent here.’
Dolly scowled at her. ‘This was my home. Your birth was easy compared to many.’ She added spitefully, ‘Although you made more noise than most when the time came. From my earliest childhood I remember the terrified screams from the distorted mouths and heaving bodies of women. Bloodcurdling shrieks that gave me nightmares for weeks. Women with shaking hands clutching their purses filled with squirrelled-away nest-egg money. Women who never came by day as a normal visitor might – not that I knew what normal was! They came under cover of darkness, holding lanterns, apprehension and fear tainting their breath. I would lie in bed listening to their weeping, as they pleaded for the truth about the pain – Mother’s cautious voice explaining that she wouldn’t be held responsible if they died. She would then make them sign her
blood vow of secrecy.
‘I had little pity for them as they begged for death, crying out for their mothers as Mother scraped away at their insides to rid them of their burden. They were willing to create the sleeping angels, so pain should be their sacrifice. The blood came thick and heavy as the child was scraped away. Mostly they were covered in blood and muck, but one boy emerged with a face like an angel. We buried the special boy near Mother’s potatoes. She made a beautiful doll of that angel boy. She worked on it for weeks, her rough old hands pulling the thread, using her best lace and fabric for his clothes, humming as she “birthed” him, as she called it. And they were the sweetest, most perfect potatoes you could imagine.’
Elizabeth remembered with a chill the simple cross with Errol written on it. Was he the ‘angel boy’? A soul who had touched Miss Sharp’s heart with his pure beauty so deeply she had risked creating evidence of his whisper of existence by erecting a cross?
Elizabeth pulled Nick’s jacket closer around her, shivering in the icy house. ‘There are graves back there in the garden! Some have names.’
‘Of course there are graves,’ Dolly spoke to the doll. She gazed around at Elizabeth and Nick. ‘We wouldn’t have buried the tiny ones without making a resting-place for them. Everything returns to the earth. We always did the right thing.’
Ginger made an exasperated sound, as she stood in front of her portrait, shaking her head as if she couldn’t bear to listen to another word.
Dolly glanced around the room, trembling, her lips pressed together again. ‘No point in you all judging her,’ she said, although nobody had spoken. ‘It was hard for a woman in those days if she already had ten children and not two pennies to rub together and then another comes along. Or, if the woman was unmarried, her entire life was ruined and she took her family down with her. Men got all the pleasure of the act, Mother said, but it was the poor woman cursed to carry the burden of another child.’
Currawong Manor Page 29
