House for All Seasons

by Jenn J. McLeod

  ‘Goodnight?’

  Is that it?

  ‘You’ll have to forgive an old codger. Too much grog and I start gasbaggin’. Time to hit the hay. Catch ya later.’

  ‘Oh, okay, sure. Goodnight Eli, and … thanks again,’ she called after the man now whistling and weaving his way to the cottage on the edge of the forest.

  *

  While the port had probably knocked Eli out already, hitting the hay for Poppy left her with a head reeling from too much reminiscing. She drifted in and out of sleep, trying to liken Johnno to something as solid and strong as a skyscraper, and fighting off one memory in particular, the enemy responsible for destroying her family. There was nothing extraordinary about the enemy that night, no aeroplane, no terrorist plot, no war. The enemy that had destroyed their lives was as ordinary as a cold night, a bunny rug, and a tiny electric heater.

  The strange red glow in the night sky might have been visible from the Coolibah Gully turn-off, but it failed to elicit a comment from either occupant of the old Holden Commodore. Her father’s only words during the silent trip home, after collecting his runaway daughter from Saddleton police station as instructed, were how she’d worried her mother. So, her mother was worried, but not Johnno. Poppy sulked, staring out the window and watching the red glow get bigger and bigger, and noticing her father’s driving become faster and faster.

  Johnno slid the old Holden to a stop in the middle of Sugar Mill Road. There was nowhere to go anyway; the narrow strip of unsealed road was packed with cars and people, some running, some huddled with arms locked and faces aghast. Mr and Mrs Thompson, from next door, stood in pyjamas on the far side of the street, shaking and clutching each other, while their family dog, Mutt-head, lay panting, tied to the bull bar of Gary Winston’s old ute. Beside him was six-year-old David Thompson with a squawking chicken tucked under one arm.

  Poppy sensed something shut down inside her. She didn’t scream or cry, instead feeling strangely removed from the scene, like a reporter on the telly, the detailed observations controlled. No hint that the flames spewing out of the little weatherboard house were taking away everything she knew.

  Poppy’s house was on fire.

  *

  Poppy woke soaked in sweat, the smell of burning hair in her nostrils, her heart thumping inside her chest. She flung the bedcover away and hissed several colourful expletives as she banged her toes against the cold metal bed-end, a reminder that she wasn’t in Balmain, snuggled in her queen-size Sealy Posturepedic.

  Eli had said goodnight at the door; that much she remembered. Now the sun was screaming ‘morning’ and yet she couldn’t recall climbing into bed. Still dressed in last night’s clothes and smelling of smoke and ash from their campfire dinner, she’d woken to the sound of Johnno’s agonising shouts, and the nightmare image of two policemen intercepting her father charging at the inferno, dragging him kicking, swearing and sobbing to the police car. She hadn’t had a nightmare like that for years, but her reaction had always been the same, the need to throw up catapulting Poppy from bed and down the hall to the bathroom.

  On the vanity was a spilled bottle of pills, the lid discarded on the tessellated tile floor.

  Had she taken something before going to bed?

  Had she taken more than one?

  Was she letting it happen again?

  She was tempted to return to bed; only the thought of more bad dreams stopped her, pushing her instead into the shower.

  *

  Feeling and looking slightly more human, she headed to the kitchen, needing food. At the centre of the hall she stopped, screwed up her face and squinted into the sun-filled kitchen, the haze surrounding her brain clearly playing tricks with her head. Her axolotl looked like a …

  ‘Chicken!’

  Perched at the centre of the table were two chooks, of the feathered rather than roasted variety she’d usually expect to see on a kitchen table.

  ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ She waved her arms, sending both hens fluttering as something warm and slimy squished between her toes. ‘What the …?’ Her head hurt, she had chook poo feet and she needed food. ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’

  Then her mobile rang. Poppy glanced at the caller ID.

  Max.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Is it?’ she grumbled, reefing half-a-dozen tissues from the box on the table and hopping to a dining chair.

  ‘Why so grumpy? All that fresh country living not doing it for you?’

  ‘A little too much country at the moment.’ Six more tissues helped scrape away the remaining chook poo from between her toes.

  ‘Come on, out with it,’ Max demanded.

  ‘Out with what?’

  ‘I know that voice. Something’s wrong. Is it Johnno? Have you seen him?’

  ‘No. What makes you think that? He’s somewhere in Nimbin.’

  ‘Yeah, so, what’s that by car? A few hours? You’re the closest you’ve been, geographically speaking, in a long time. I figured you might at least try looking him up. Isn’t that all part of this going home thing?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Don’t you think he made it perfectly clear that I am not his number one priority? I never have been, so why I freaking will let him bother me still I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s your father. You should—’

  ‘I don’t need a father. I have you.’

  A few seconds of silence passed.

  ‘Hmm, not sure if I should feel flattered or not.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Max. You’ve guided me and done more for me than anyone. You’re the only man in my life and I’m fine with that.’

  ‘Popsicle, I have only one thing to say. Every time you tell me about this whole father figure thing you’ve got going on, it tends to stuff up any, you know, romantic aspirations I might have had. Kinda makes it all a bit icky, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘So stop thinking them. Really, Max, can we not go there right now? Don’t even joke about it.’

  ‘Something really has got you extra prickly this morning.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep well. And I also hate that you were right. Coming back here is going to drive me nuts.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Max murmured.

  ‘Look, I appreciate you checking in on me, but right now I feel like shit, and in more ways than one. Sorry. I have to go. When my foot is not covered in chook poo, I’ll call you.’

  *

  Feeling slightly more normal after her morning cocktail of coffee, Guarana energy drink and the new vitamin regimen, the need to run kicked in. It’s what she did to clear her head, the solitary morning jogs forcing her to focus on nothing else but the rhythmic pounding of her runners on the pavement, each muscle flexing and tightening as she pushed through the pain. This morning, with music blasting through her iPod earphones, threads from last night’s conversation with Eli tugged at her memory, unravelling her brain. The resulting resurgence of anger forced her easy jog along the track that circumnavigated the estate into a run. When she couldn’t run anymore, she collapsed on a patch of grass not far from the house.

  ‘You’ve so gotta get your head back into something productive, Poppy,’ she panted, and squirted water from her sports bottle over her heated face and into her mouth. ‘If only so you stop talking to yourself.’

  Not more than a few metres away now was a house crying out for a little TLC. Maybe she could put her energy into a project. Such a task would need proper planning, though, and she wasn’t intending to hang around that long. Any real work, she decided, would also best be taken care of closer to the sale, so the place presented well, assuming something as unique as the Dandelion House estate would go under the hammer. Anyone who knew anything about the property market knew auction fetched the best price in the city. Perhaps private treaty was a better option out here. That would require researching the local property market to see what a house like this might go for, and then agreement from the others.

  Research! The perfect project for a journo at a loose end.
>
  21

  As she wandered from room to room, eyeing the peeling wallpaper and mouldy paintwork, Poppy wondered what it would be like to renovate something this big. The reno on her terrace had taken two weeks, but size-wise she could probably fit five terraces into the footprint of the Dandelion House. Painting it alone would take a month and that didn’t include preparation: sanding, scraping, detailing. Then there was the exterior.

  Why was she even considering this? Doing anything major was out of the question until the place was theirs, and even then, such a mammoth task would surely tie Poppy down—something she never allowed. What she could do to fill in a few days was sort through the contents, get things into boxes, that kind of thing. It surprised her that Sara had not thought to do the same.

  On the surface, without having searched every nook and cranny just yet, the house seemed clean and organised, to a point. But mingling with mothball- and mildew-scented remnants of a long life was the smell of disappointment and loneliness. The odds and ends still scattered about the house were the type of everyday clutter one expected, without any clues to what life had been like for Gypsy after Poppy and the others left town. Gypsy had obviously had time and the presence of mind to make plans, a legal will for one and the nameplates on the bedroom doors; although they looked like the work of a child, not a woman in her eighties, and they’d definitely not adorned the doors last time Poppy had stayed here. To her knowledge, Caitlin and Amber had never even slept over. They never had a room to call their own, like Poppy and Sara. A thought niggled Poppy’s brain as to why Amber had even been included in the inheritance, but as no one else had raised it in the conference room that morning, Poppy wasn’t going to broach the subject. She simply added it to the silent list of unanswered questions.

  With some of the windows stuck tight with age, she opened those she could to allow fresh air to circulate. The back door was the opposite of stuck. It opened regularly all by itself; hence the free-range, axolotl-eyeing chooks on the kitchen table earlier. There were several outdoor sheds too, a couple quite close to the house. The old outhouse—pit gone, although not the distinctive smell of disinfectant—was now junk storage, while the slightly larger shed next to the toilet, constructed from wooden boards and corrugated iron, housed a disused copper. Its modern-day equivalent, the Hoover washer, sat adjacent, sparkling white in the otherwise dingy shed. There was a pile of junk and several pot plants amassed on the floor. Poppy took a quick plant inventory on her way outside. Prognosis not good. A dozen plants, dead or in the process of dying.

  What on earth did she do with the survivors?

  Keep them?

  There was certainly no promise of a future for them in that plan, given Poppy’s previous lack of success with the few indoor plants she’d tried over the years. She liked to blame the amount of time she spent travelling from assignment to assignment, but in reality, homely touches such as plants and pets didn’t have a place in Poppy’s world. Rocky could thank his lucky stars for the little girl next door.

  ‘Crap!’ she grumbled. ‘Maybe this project idea wasn’t such a good plan after all.’

  Poppy returned to the house, continuing her nook and cranny tour and realising the enormity of the job should she choose to start. There was so much stuff. Still the reality hadn’t hit. Less than twelve months from now this house would belong to the four of them, until they sold it, that is. And they would sell it, wouldn’t they?

  Some things wouldn’t, couldn’t, be sold, but what would they do with things like the mountainous collection of scrapbooks Poppy picked up and stacked on the kitchen table? She had not expected to see Gypsy’s personal belongings still in place, as though the woman was simply off on a European vacation—and any day she’d be home with pictures and stories to tell. Poppy had loved Gypsy’s storytelling, but did that automatically make Poppy the best person for this job? Who would be around to pack up her life when the time came? What could be sadder than having your life packed away by a stranger?

  ‘Whatch ya found there?’ Eli was standing outside the open French doors watching Poppy thumbing the pages of one of the scrapbooks.

  ‘You won’t believe it. Look at this.’ She presented the book to Eli. ‘They’re old, and some of the pages are stuck together, but this looks like cut outs of every article I wrote when I was agriculture features editor with the Newcastle News. And this …’ She slipped another scrapbook out of the pile. ‘This one is all the stories I wrote when I was a kid. I can’t believe she’s kept all this stuff. I haven’t gone through every album yet, but there’s books about Caitlin and those …’ Poppy pointed to a separate pile of six books, ‘… they’re all Amber.’

  ‘Seems to me you got a bit of reading to do then,’ Eli said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  *

  Poppy had set a stack of scrapbooks by her bed, planning to flick through a few before sleep, but her head had barely hit the pillow when her eyes closed, fresh country air making sleep no longer elusive.

  Over the following days, bored with the same jogging track, daily drives became almost therapeutic, but only as long as she stayed away from Sugar Mill Road and the Calingarry Creek Bridge. She stuck to old haunts and familiar places with fond memories, like Cedar Cutters Gorge where at fourteen she’d tasted her first champagne and her first kiss, courtesy of Peter Whatshisname. She’d learned some years later that the champagne was actually sparkling spumante, not that it had mattered to Poppy. Anything to stop Peter from tasting like the Butter Menthols he constantly sucked was all right by her. As for the kiss? So not worth it when a week later she learned firsthand why he’d liked his lozenges so much.

  The kissing disease.

  The symptoms: a sore throat and an acute case of agonising embarrassment, especially if Dr Wynter’s daughter—Poppy’s best friend, Caitlin—found out.

  By day eight at the house, even though she wasn’t counting anymore, Poppy had fallen into a comfortable albeit monotonous routine that included: a morning jog, a read, a nap, copious coffees, a quick email check—while avoiding Max’s teaser messages—more sorting, more mess making and more tidying, dinner, and finally sleep. Somewhere among all that she’d helped Eli around the property, including fixing a new chain lock onto the back door to stop it flying open when the southerly blew in.

  *

  She was getting a real feel for country life again when Eli appeared at the front door, packed bag in hand and muttering something about a sick relative somewhere needing him. So Poppy’s days were now going to involve animals, something a political correspondent should be used to, only these ones were of the four-legged and feathered variety. Before leaving, Eli showed her how and when to feed the chooks and the sheep. The easiest of all was the cow, a cream-coloured beast with brown splotches that made her look like the loser in a game of paintball.

  It was all coming back, and for someone whose usual days were full of chaos and constant deadlines, the hours here were slipping away strangely unnoticed. How things had changed from those endless Calingarry Crossing schooldays when as a restless teenager she’d be counting down the months, weeks and days until she was out of the place for good. The Dandelion House had been a distraction back then. She’d often lose track of time and not get home until just before dark, not that there had been anyone at home to wonder or worry about her whereabouts. Her grandad could always be found at the pub, and her dinner could usually be found in the fridge. As for her father? Well, Johnno could never be found much at all. Even on those occasions her father was around, he wasn’t really there, not for Poppy, and nothing she did could distract him from the place he went in his head or break down the force field he kept around his heart.

  Her grandfather did his best. He at least tried to make up for his son-in-law’s poor parenting, but he had his own grief to deal with after the fire.

  Was it any wonder a desperately lonely young Poppy had attached herself to the eccentric and colourful Gypsy, who could take something bad and make a pe
rson feel better about it? She’d been Poppy’s first lesson in how to spin a story for good. Journalism and the media had taught her how to spin a story for gain.

  ‘Well, well, Maximilian, your timing is superb as usual,’ Poppy said, juggling the mobile phone from her left hand to her right so she could continue to sip coffee and turn the pages of the latest scrapbook. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘Sounds promising,’ Max joked. ‘In a sexy, he’s not such a bad catch after all kind of way?’

  ‘No comment.’ It was Poppy’s standard response to Max when he crossed the line. Her line.

  ‘You’ll love me for this bit of information, Popsicle.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Who’d have thought a story like this would break with you being so close and all.’

  ‘And all what?’

  ‘It’s right up your alley, Popsicle, and right in your neighbourhood.’

  ‘What is? And don’t call me Popsicle.’

  ‘An assignment for World Snapshot. I heard ACA could be calling too, which I made sure filtered through to WS to make them up the price and seal the deal quick smart. I wasn’t going to call, but the network did request my award-winning reporter for this one. I explained you were taking personal time and—’

  ‘I’ll do it. Where? What? When?’

  ‘Hey, slow down.’

  ‘Slow down.’ She laughed. ‘And this is coming from the man who coined the phrase, Truth doesn’t make the news, being first does.’

  ‘Before you make up your mind, I have to make something clear. The request might have come via World Snapshot but it stinks of Canberra, and you know who I mean. That mob and their usual Let’s stir the masses kind of spin is in full force.’