Wildflower Hill

by Freeman, Kimberley

  Touchstone

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Kimberley Freeman

  Originally published in Australia in 2010 by Hachette Australia Pty. Ltd.

  Published by arrangement with Hachette Australia Pty. Ltd.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Touchstone trade paperback edition July 2011

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  Designed by Renata Di Biase

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-4516-2349-9

  ISBN 978-1-4516-2351-2 (ebook)

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter: One

  Chapter: Two

  Chapter: Three

  Chapter: Four

  Chapter: Five

  Chapter: Six

  Chapter: Seven

  Chapter: Eight

  Chapter: Nine

  Chapter: Ten

  Chapter: Eleven

  Chapter: Twelve

  Chapter: Thirteen

  Chapter: Fourteen

  Chapter: Fifteen

  Chapter: Sixteen

  Chapter: Seventeen

  Chapter: Eighteen

  Chapter: Nineteen

  Chapter: Twenty

  Chapter: Twenty-One

  Chapter: Twenty-Two

  Chapter: Twenty-Three

  Chapter: Twenty-Four

  Chapter: Twenty-Five

  Chapter: Twenty-Six

  Chapter: Twenty-Seven

  Chapter: Twenty-Eight

  Chapter: Twenty-Nine

  Chapter: Thirty

  Chapter: Thirty-One

  Chapter: Thirty-Two

  Chapter: Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  for Janine, who is precious

  PROLOGUE

  Sydney, 1989

  The girl danced.

  Right leg, pas de chat. Right leg, petit jeté.

  “Emma, your grandmother asked you a question.”

  “Hm?” Left leg, pas de chat. Left leg, petit jeté. On and on across the parquetry floor, from one sunbeam to the next. She loved Grandma’s house, especially the music room, where the sun patterned through the gauzy curtains, and there was enough space to dance and dance.

  “Emma, I said—”

  “Leave her be, dear,” Grandma replied in her quiet, musical voice. “I’m enjoying watching her dance.”

  Right leg, pas de chat . . .

  “If she practiced her manners as regularly as she practiced her dancing, she wouldn’t have been booted out of two schools already.”

  Right leg, petit jeté . . .

  Grandma chuckled. “She’s only eleven. Plenty of time to learn manners when she’s older. And you do insist on putting her in those uppity schools.”

  Left leg, pas de chat . . . “No, no, no!” Emma stamped her foot. Deep breath. Start again. Left leg, pas de chat. Left leg, petit jeté . . . She became aware of the silence in the room and glanced up, expecting to find herself alone. But Grandma was still there, on a deep couch beside the grand piano, watching her. Emma shook herself, pulled her spine very upright, and gazed back. Above Grandma’s head hung a large painting of a gum tree at sunset: Grandma’s favorite painting. Emma didn’t really understand how anyone could be so interested in a tree, but she liked it because Grandma liked it.

  “I thought you’d gone,” Emma said at last.

  “No, I’ve been watching you. Your mother left ten minutes ago. I think she’s with Granddad in the garden.” Grandma smiled. “You certainly love your dancing, don’t you?”

  Emma could only nod. She hadn’t learned a word yet to describe how she felt about dancing. It wasn’t love, it was something much bigger and much weightier.

  Grandma patted the couch next to her. “Sit for a wee minute. Even a prima ballerina needs to rest.”

  Emma had to admit that her calves were aching, but she didn’t mind. She longed for aching muscles and bleeding toes. They told her she was getting better. Still, Grandma had been very kind to watch all this time, so she crossed the room and sat. Somewhere deep in the house, music played: an old big-band song that Grandpa liked. Emma preferred Grandma to Grandpa infinitely. Grandpa went on and on, especially about his garden. Emma knew her grandma and grandpa were important people with a lot of money, though she cared very little about what it was they did or had done. Grandma was fun and Grandpa was a bore, and that was that.

  “Tell me about your dancing,” Grandma said, taking Emma’s slight hand in her soft fingers. “You’re going to be a ballerina?”

  Emma nodded. “Mum says hardly anyone is a ballerina, and I should do something else just in case. But then there wouldn’t be enough time to dance.”

  “Well, I’ve known your mother all her life.” Here Grandma smiled, crinkling the corners of her blue eyes. “And she’s not always right.”

  Emma laughed, feeling deliciously naughty.

  “You must work hard, though,” Grandma said.

  Emma grew serious, lifting her chin. “I already do.”

  “Yes, yes, by all accounts you work so hard on your dancing that you haven’t time for anything else. Including making friends.” A look crossed Grandma’s forehead, one that Emma couldn’t decipher. Was it worry? Or something else? They sat in silence a few moments. Outside, the autumn sun slanted on rattling branches. But inside it was very still and warm.

  “You know,” Grandma said, shifting in her seat and squeezing Emma’s hand before dropping it, “I’d like to make you a promise.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a little incentive.”

  Emma waited, unsure what the word meant.

  “If you do become a ballerina, I will give you a present. A very precious one.”

  Emma didn’t want to seem rude, but she couldn’t fake excitement. She smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you,” as her mother would want her to.

  This made Grandma burst into laughter. “Oh, dearie, that doesn’t thrill you at all, does it?”

  Emma shook her head. “You see, Grandma, if I become a ballerina, then I will already have everything I want.”

  Grandma nodded. “A dream come true.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nevertheless, I will keep my promise,” Grandma said. “Because you’ll need something for after. Ballerinas can’t dance forever.”

  But Emma was already off again. Thinking of making her dream come true had lit up all her nerves and muscles with desperate energy: she had to move. Pas de chat. Petit jeté.

  “Emma,” Grandma said softly, “do try to remember that success isn’t everything.” She sounded sad, so Emma didn’t look around.

  She just kept dancing.

  ONE

  Beattie: Glasgow, 1929

  Beattie Blaxland had dreams. Big dream
s.

  Not the confused patchwork dreams that invade sleep. No, these were the dreams with which she comforted herself before sleep, in her trundle bed rolled out on the floor of her parents’ finger-chilling tenement flat. Vivid, yearning dreams. A life of fashion and fabrics; and fortune, of course. A life where the dismal truth about her dismal family would fade and shrink and disappear. One thing she had never dreamed was that she would find herself pregnant to her married lover just before her nineteenth birthday.

  All through February, she obsessively counted the weeks and counted them again, bending her mind backward, trying to make sense of the dates. Her stomach flipped at the smell of food, her breasts grew tender, and by the first of March, Beattie had finally come to understand that a child—Henry MacConnell’s child—was growing inside her.

  That night she arrived at the club as though nothing were wrong. Laughed at Teddy Wilder’s jokes, leaned in to the warm pressure of Henry’s hand in the small of her back, all the while fighting the urge to retch from the smell of cigar smoke. Her first sip of the gin cocktail was harsh and sour on her tongue. Still, she kept smiling. She was well used to navigating that gulf between how she felt and how she behaved.

  Teddy clapped his hands firmly twice, and the smoke rose and moved with the men and their brandy snifters to the round card table that dominated the room. Teddy and his brother, Billy, ran this not quite legal gambling room above their father’s perfectly legal restaurant on Dalhousie Lane. It was at the restaurant that Beattie had first met them. She’d been working as a waitress; that’s what her parents still believed she did. Teddy and Billy introduced her to Henry, and soon after, they’d introduced her to the club, too: to the darkly glittering underbelly of Glasgow, where nobody cared who she was so long as she looked pretty. She worked half the night serving drinks and half the night keeping Teddy’s girl, Cora, company.

  Cora patted the chaise to invite Beattie to sit down. The other women gathered near the fireplace; Cora, her short curls flattened over her ears with a pink satin headband, was the acknowledged queen of the room. Though none of the others liked the idea, they were careful enough not to stand too close for fear of unfair comparisons. Beattie probably would have done the same if Cora hadn’t decided that they should be bosom friends.

  Cora grabbed Beattie’s hand in her own and squeezed it: her usual greeting. Beattie was both in sacred awe of Cora and excruciatingly jealous of her heavily made-up dark eyes and her platinum hair, her easy charm and her endless budget for tasseled dresses in muslin or crepe de chine. Beattie tried, she really tried, to keep up. She bought her own fabric and sewed her own clothes, and nobody could tell they weren’t designed and made in Paris. She wore her dark hair fashionably short but felt that her open face and large blue eyes ruined any chance of her seeming mysterious and alluring. Of course, Cora was born to her confident glamour; Beattie would always struggle for it.

  Cora blew a long stream of cigarette smoke into the air and then said, “So, how far along are you?”

  Beattie’s heart spiked, and she looked at Cora sharply. Her friend looked straight ahead, her red lips closed around the end of her cigarette holder. For a moment Beattie even believed that she’d imagined the question: surely her shameful secret couldn’t make its way from the dark inside to the brightly lit club.

  But then Cora turned, fine curved eyebrows raised above her sloe eyes, and smiled. “Beattie, you’re practically green from the smoke, and you’ve not touched your wine. Last week I thought you might be sick, but this week . . . I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Henry doesn’t know.” The words tripped out, desperate.

  Cora softened, patting her hand. “Nor a chance of me saying a word. I promise. Catch your breath, dearie. You look terrified.”

  Beattie did as Cora said, forcing her limbs to relax into the languid softness expected of her. She accepted a cigarette from Cora, even though it made her stomach clench. She couldn’t have another soul noticing or asking questions. Billy Wilder, for example, with his florid cheeks and cruel laugh: oh, he would find it great sport. She knew, though, that she couldn’t hide it forever.

  “You didn’t answer my question. How far along?” Cora said in a tone so casual she may as well have asked Beattie what she’d eaten on her lunch break that day.

  “I’ve not had a period in seven or eight weeks,” Beattie mumbled. She felt unbearably vulnerable, as though her skin had been peeled off. She didn’t want to speak of it or think of it another moment. She was not ready to be a mother: the thought made her heart cold.

  “Still early, then.” Cora pulled her powder compact from her bag and flipped it open. Loud laughter rose from the card table. “Still a chance it won’t stick.”

  For a breath or two, the oppressive dread lifted. “Is that right? I know nothing. I know I’m a fool, but I . . .” She’d believed Henry’s promise that if he withdrew from her body at precisely the right moment, this could never happen. He’d refused to take any other measures. “French letters are for the French,” he’d said. “I know what I’m doing.” He was thirty, he’d fought in a war; Beattie trusted him.

  “Listen, now,” Cora said, her voice dropping low. “There’re things you can do, dearie. Have a hot bath every day, take cod liver oil, run about and wear yourself out.” She snapped her compact shut, her voice returning to its usual casual tone. “It’s early days. My cousin’s friend was three months along when the bairn just bled away. She caught the wee thing in her hands, no bigger than a mouse. She was devastated, though. Longed for a baby. Married, of course.”

  Married. Beattie wasn’t married, though Henry was. To Molly—the Irish wolfhound, as he liked to call her. Henry assured Beattie it was a loveless marriage made between two people who thought they knew each other well but had slowly become strangers. Nonetheless, Molly was still his wife. And Beattie was not.

  She puffed her way inelegantly through half of the cigarette, then excused herself to start work. As she brought round the drinks tray, she considered Henry’s square jaw and his red-gold hair, longing to touch him but careful not to break his concentration. She dared not tell him yet about the child: if Cora was right and there was a chance Beattie could miscarry, then why create problems? Nothing may come of it. It might all be over tomorrow or next week. All over. A few long, hot baths; certainly, it was hard to spend too long in the shared bathroom on their floor of the tenement block, but if she went down early enough in the morning . . .

  Henry glanced up from his cards and saw her looking. He gave her a nod: that was Henry, no grand gestures, no foolish winking or waving. Just his steady gray eyes on hers. She had to look away. He returned his attention to his cards as she returned her tray to the little bar in the corner of the room and lined up the bottles of gin and brandy along the mirrored shelves. She loved Henry’s pale eyes; strangely pale. She could understand him through them when he didn’t speak, and he spoke rarely. Once, right at the start of their relationship, she’d been watching him play poker and noticed how stark the contrast was of his pupils against his irises. In fact, she could read his hand in his eyes: if he picked up a good card, his pupils would grow, while a bad card made them shrink. Almost imperceptibly, noticeable only by the woman who gazed at those eyes endlessly.

  This led her to watch the other men at the table and try to predict their hands. Not always easy, especially with Billy Wilder, whose eyes were practically black. But in instances of high stakes, when the men were trying hardest to keep their faces neutral, she could nearly always tell if they were bluffing. Henry thought it a load of rot. She’d tried to show him what she meant, but he’d tipped her off his lap and sent her away from the card table. He’d lost the game for not following her advice and had been in a devil of a mood for days. So now she stayed away. It wasn’t so important.

  Cora signaled for her to return; she had gossip to share. “Can you believe what Daisy O’Hara is wearing?”

  Beattie switched her attention to Daisy, who wor
e a sequined tube of beaded net over a silk slip, a silk flower at her neck, and a pair of high Louis heels. The shimmering dress was cut too tight for her wide hips: modern fashion was so unforgiving of hips. It wasn’t Daisy’s fault. A good dressmaker could drape those fabrics so she looked divine, tall, a goddess.

  “Lordy,” Cora said, “she looks like a cow.”

  “It’s the dress.”

  Cora rolled her eyes. But tonight Beattie hadn’t the heart for Cora’s razor-sharp analysis of every other woman’s failings. She listened disconsolately for a while, then returned to the bar.

  The evening wore on—clinking glass and men’s laughter, loud jazz music on the gramophone and the ever present smoke—and she began to feel bone-weary and to long for bed. She could hardly say that, though. Teddy Wilder liked to call her “break-of-dawn Beattie”; many was the time she’d turned up for work at Camille’s dress shop after only an hour or two of sleep. Tonight Beattie felt removed from the noise and merriment. In her own little bubble of miserable anxiety.