by Helen Brown
‘There it is!’
They rounded a corner and the house suddenly appeared. Lisa made Maxine stop the car. Heart thumping, she climbed over a grass-filled gutter and stood at a wire fence.
Basking in the afternoon light, Trumperton Manor seemed larger and more imposing than in the photos. Two storeys high, it was the archetypal red-brick manor, worthy of a BBC costume drama. With its handsome portico and wraparound veranda, the proportions reflected the height of pure Georgian architecture. The decorated eaves and columns offered hints of grandeur. Large shuttered windows whispered of rustling gowns and gavottes. Lisa could almost hear horses clopping up the driveway and gliding to a halt outside the entrance, while the strains of a string quartet wafted from inside. Half-closing her eyes, she imagined the scent of honeysuckle mingled with freshly poured champagne on a warm summer’s evening.
‘Stunning!’ she breathed.
‘It’s a wreck,’ Maxine said. ‘Just look at that roof. It’s a sieve. And the brickwork’s wobbly. The place needs a demolition ball.’
The manor certainly had been neglected for years, if not decades. Paintwork blistered on window frames and eaves. In some places it was peeled back to the wood. On the upper level, two shutters hung at drunken angles, perilously close to plummeting to the ground. Large cracks glistened in the windowpanes. Curtains hung in rags. Two of the downstairs windows were boarded up with wood. A dilapidated wooden add-on slouched against the back of the main house.
Across a yard around the side of the house, Lisa could see another building. It was even more dishevelled than the main residence, and some of the slates in its pitched roof were missing. Lisa had spent enough time with her fictional heroines to know any establishment like Trumperton would have needed stables. These ones were larger than a modern family home.
The garden had reverted to scruffy paddock. Not even the pampas grass had survived. From where Lisa was standing, she could make out a tangle of overgrown fruit trees behind the house. Trumperton Manor was as unloved as Lisa had felt since Jake walked out.
A squawk pierced the autumn air. ‘Look who’s here!’ Lisa said.
A tiny white figure waddled down the driveway. With his crest waving like a yellow glove, the cockatoo looked like a small circus clown. When he saw Lisa, he stopped and put his head to one side, raised his wings and flapped furiously, affording a glimpse of the pastel yellow feathers on the underside of his wings. Lisa willed him to take flight. But for all his efforts the bird stayed earthbound.
‘He can’t fly!’ she cried. ‘Oh Maxine, did we do that to him?’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Maxine answered. ‘He’s probably still in shock.’
The bird gave up flapping and hopped across the paddock to peck at the grass.
The house tugged Lisa’s attention back to the front door. She longed to climb the front steps, walk through the rooms and drink in the aromas that Alexander knew. She felt an immediate attachment to the crumbling ruin. Trumperton Manor needed healing as much as she did.
‘Don’t you feel a connection to this place?’ she asked her sister.
‘Not a bit,’ Maxine said, shooing a fly off her shoulder. ‘You always were the fanciful one.’
Maxine escorted Lisa back to the car and firmly shut her in the passenger seat.
They drove off in a plume of dust.
Chapter 7
Morning light filtered through the net curtains in Maxine’s spare room. The red foghorn leered down at Lisa from a corner shelf. She removed her mouthguard and snapped it in its box. Her teeth must’ve known something was wrong with her life before she did.
Sleeping in a single bed was like returning to childhood. Even after several weeks at Maxine’s, Lisa was still falling onto the floor in the middle of the night. The pillow was hard and high. She’d tried to bring her special pillow with her, but her suitcases had been overflowing.
Rolling onto her back, she fingered the ridge of scar tissue across her chest. The tapestried sea captain stared down with prurient interest. The bitter charade of her marriage paraded through her mind. The week before Jake had walked out on her, he’d had the nerve to hold her hand in Central Park Zoo. She should’ve guessed something was up. He hated the zoo with its swarms of tourists and screaming kids. He’d only taken her there out of guilt.
Japanese snow monkeys had scrambled over their artificial island. Leaves sailed off branches and landed gently on the lake. Suddenly overcome with gratitude for being alive, she’d turned to him and told him how much she loved him. She felt comfortable being older and no longer slave to her hormones. He’d nodded agreement and said he felt the same way. The reptile.
They’d made love that night, slotting comfortably into each other’s bodies. With the lights out, Lisa’s self-consciousness about her lopsidedness dissolved. She swam in a private lake of bliss before returning to the familiar warmth that was Jake. He’d stroked her hair, the outline of her hip. As usual, he avoided the chasm in her chest. She reminded herself to change the sheets next morning. Washing the bed linen the morning after they’d made love had become a routine. As they were guaranteed to make love once a week, she didn’t need to count the days. It usually happened Saturday nights. Except in recent months, it’d stretched out to ten days—and once even two weeks.
Jake was wasted in banking. He should’ve starred in B-grade movies. His affection for her was as artificial as an island for Japanese monkeys in the middle of New York.
Now hot with anger, she reached for her phone on the bedside sea chest. She checked the time. It would be mid afternoon in LA. Texting was hardly communication, but it was the only hope she had of getting a response from her daughter.
‘How r u?’
The screen flashed a reply. Lisa’s pulse quickened.
‘Gr8! U???’
When baby Portia slipped out of her thighs into the world Lisa had been overcome with a golden concoction of sensations. Triumph melted into relief when she heard her daughter’s first sputtering cry. And when she looked down at the little creature—slimy, indignant and perfect—every pang of agony she’d endured dissolved. Happy tears had tumbled down her face. She’d looped her hands under the baby’s armpits and, with the rope of pulsing umbilical cord still attached, raised Portia to her breast.
Right from the start, the infant had known who she was. She’d gazed up at Lisa with an appraising stare, and a fierce maternal flame was ignited. Lisa had adored her laughing, chubby toddler with a tangle of fair curls that framed aquamarine eyes. Portia had grown into a tall clever, outgoing girl who devoured books, music and theatre with equal fervour. Having had her own confidence battered by Ruby, Lisa knew how, for a young woman, self-esteem was vital. So she often told Portia she was beautiful—and meant it—but Portia always looked away.
Lisa loved her daughter with every cell in her body, her devotion huge and constant as the stars. Lately, though, the thought of Portia jagged her with all-consuming anxiety. She tried to pinpoint when things went wrong. Although she’d been disappointed when Portia dropped out of college, she’d tried not to let it show, instead encouraging her daughter to pursue the acting career she so desperately wanted. Perhaps it was the day she made Portia her favourite waffles and the offering remained untouched on the plate. Or was it the time she told Portia she was beautiful and Portia spat ‘No I’m not! I’m fat.’
Portia had never been overweight, but she was wholesome by the standard of the pipe cleaners on magazine covers. Portia’s height more than compensated for any extra waffles. Nevertheless, she began eschewing cakes and fries for bottles of water, shedding pounds to become a Botticelli beauty. Perfect in anyone’s book. But Portia hadn’t stopped there. Her arms and legs had become more spidery, her torso stooped over the stalk that had been her waistline. The eyes that had once been hauntingly beautiful were now sinking into their sockets.
The thinner Portia became, the more violently she pulled away from Lisa. On the few occasions Lisa had confronted her, regr
ettable screaming matches ensued: ‘You don’t understand! I want to be beautiful!’
‘But you are!’
Most of their communication was now reduced to butchered type.
‘Fine. What r u up to?’
‘Just chillingxxxxx.’
The Xs were the equivalent of a nod from Queen Elizabeth I declaring the conversation finished.
Lisa Xed Portia back and let the phone tumble out of her hand. It landed with a thud on the turquoise carpet.
A chill of sadness crept over her. At least the sleepless nights had allowed some privacy to rough out a few early chapters of the book. Emily had accepted an invitation to a ball at the earl’s mansion. Frederick the stablehand had gone into a sulk while he got the horses ready.
Lisa waited for the next scene to appear in her head. The sea captain leered down at her. She desperately needed her own space if she was to make any real progress. Her chest shook with sobs.
‘Lisa?’ Maxine called from the room next door. ‘Are you all right?’
She had to move out. Soon.
Maxine, Ted and his flatmate friend were open-home junkies, and they cheerfully sacrificed their Saturdays to trudge through properties. Wary of the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting through hastily painted hallways, Lisa wasn’t so keen. The salesmen’s fake smiles, aftershave and bright-eyed lies made her innards shrivel. But there was no choice. If she stayed with Maxine much longer there was going to be a case of double ‘sistercide’. Fortunately, Jake had been sufficiently crippled by guilt to agree to a reasonable divorce settlement, but with half of a shrunken nest egg, the Palace of Versailles was out of the question.
Maxine had urged her to rent a studio, but Lisa thought of it as lack of commitment. Instead, Lisa warmed to a cottage in downtown Carlton. Ted and his flatmate approved, too. Ted ran an architectural eye over its century-old ceilings and deemed it structurally sound. Tastefully renovated with exposed brick walls and scrubbed floorboards, the cottage had French doors opening onto a tiny paved garden. With an outdoor table it would be the perfect setting for Sunday lunches. Ted lived just a few blocks away—close enough to be cosy without her presence being overbearing.
Around the corner in Lygon Street, cafés bustled with university staff and students. An art-house movie complex advertised live screenings from the Metropolitan Opera. Across the road from the movie house stood a thrilling example of an endangered species—an actual bookshop. Ted dived into the back of the fiction section and waved the two copies of Three Sisters: Charlotte they had in stock. He assured her they must’ve sold the rest, and arranged them on top of the number-one bestseller pile.
Maxine drew attention to the fact the cottage had no off-street parking, but Lisa was unconcerned. She could see herself putting in a herb garden. And now Jake and his allergies were out of the picture, she might take on a rescue cat or two.
Maxine pointed out the house was jammed up against a large student accommodation block. ‘Do you really want kids keeping you awake all night?’ she said. ‘Young people don’t sleep any more. It’s the drugs. Which reminds me, isn’t there a rehab clinic around here somewhere, Ted?’
They walked around the corner to Brunetti and ordered coffee and cake.
‘I could see you in that cottage, Mrs Trumperton,’ Ted’s flatmate said.
‘Oh, call me Lisa.’
This habit Lisa had of not registering the names of young people was appalling. In an effort to at least dredge up the boy’s first name, she asked about his background.
His pale eyes shone with amusement under a froth of dark-gold curls. He’d grown up on a sheep farm on the South Island of New Zealand. There was evidence of an outdoorsy youth in his square shoulders and sprinkling of freckles on his nose and cheeks. His father had wanted him to take over the farm, but he had ‘zero interest’, he said. He’d moved to Melbourne and worked his way up to chef in a restaurant specialising in modern Australian cuisine.
‘You like living here?’ Lisa asked, trying not to sound patronising. She willed Ted to give her a clue about the boy’s name, but he was engrossed with the real estate brochure.
‘It was hard to begin with,’ the young man said, digging into a trembling tiramisu. ‘But now it’s sweet.’
Either sweet was a Kiwi colloquialism or he was referring to the confection. Watching enviously, Lisa swilled her sparkling mineral water and hoped the bubbles would fill her up. This understated young man was every bit as handsome as Ted. She imagined them fighting off the girls, and wondered when she might get a chance to meet some of them.
‘I suppose you two are out on the town tonight?’ she asked, sounding like a creature who observed life from under a stone.
‘Why don’t you join us?’ Ted’s flatmate said. ‘Stella and Heidi are coming. One more won’t hurt.’
He was joking. Obviously.
‘No, I mean it. You’d enjoy it.’
She assured him she’d be tucked up in bed well before they set out for the clubs.
The next place they looked at was an apartment on St Kilda Road. German appliances gleamed so ferociously they hurt her eyes. The ensuite bathroom shone with Italian marble. Standing in the living room, she gazed over the Botanical Gardens. There didn’t seem much point moving all the way from New York to live in another tower block.
‘I have a feeling this one’s going to be you,’ Maxine said, aiming her Golf back towards Camberwell. Bare branches clawed the grey sky. Winter had claimed all but a few of the suburb’s leaves.
‘You can’t go past brand new,’ Maxine said, pulling up outside a construction site. Two recently completed townhouses stared across the street. ‘There’s one more out the back,’ Maxine called, already out of the car and halfway down the drive. ‘It’s more private.’
The smell of fresh concrete tickled Lisa’s nostrils. The single-storey townhouse was solidly built in a Tuscany-meets-Camberwell mode.
A woman stood at the door holding a clipboard. Glossy as a seal in a dark satin suit, she bared her teeth through scarlet lipstick. ‘The builder won an award,’ she recited, handing them each a brochure. ‘The other two are sold. I’ve got an offer coming in for this one later on today. You’ll have to be quick.’
They stepped into a featureless living room overlooking a small rectangle of rubble. The carpet, walls and fittings were so neutral they were practically invisible.
‘You’ll be able to make it your own,’ Maxine muttered out of the agent’s earshot. With a nod of approval Ted pointed out the solar-heating panels on the tiled roof. His flatmate the chef said the kitchen was extremely workable. ‘And look at the way the sun’s pouring in,’ Maxine said with a flourish of her fake fur sleeve.
The townhouse ticked many boxes. It was spacious, private and sunny. Most of the rooms opened onto the rubble that would someday be a patio lined with rosemary and lemon trees in tubs. Lisa’s imagination was in overdrive. There was a guest room for Portia, Vanessa or Kerry, if any of them deigned to visit. Next to it was a smaller room. Lined with her books and masks and painted an interesting colour it could make a study.
Lisa thanked the agent and wandered back to the car.
‘What do you think?’ Maxine said, hurrying after her.
‘Bland.’
Maxine drew a breath and took lipstick and a powder compact out of her handbag. ‘The thing is, when you get to our age . . .’ she said, circling her mouth in orange lipstick, ‘you have to be practical.’
Not another lecture.
‘You’ll be just a few streets away from us here. I’ll keep an eye on you. Our doctor, Ross, isn’t taking any new patients, but I’ll put a word in. And you’ll like our dentist, Evan. He’s very good.’
‘Thanks, but . . .’
Maxine put her hand on Lisa’s shoulder. ‘You need to look to the future,’ she said, gazing into her eyes. ‘Single-storey’s ideal. When your knees give out you won’t have to climb stairs . . .’
Oh lord!
‘
And the Meals on Wheels people will be able to drive straight to your doorstep,’ Ted chuckled.
‘I’m not dead yet!’
‘Seriously, it’s solid. You should think about it,’ Ted added. ‘There’s a train station at the end of the street.’
‘And a good café on the corner,’ the chef chimed in.
Lisa was confused.
‘I reckon it’s a good investment,’ Ted said. ‘You could lock it up and leave it anytime you want to travel.’
Lisa knew they were right. The townhouse was logical to the core of its concrete-pad foundation. Besides which, a month with Maxine had been more than enough. She was starting to look like a white chocolate muffin. More importantly, Maxine didn’t understand the quirky rhythms of a writer’s life. The moment Lisa got into a flow with Three Sisters: Emily, her hostess would burst in on her with mugs of tea, while working at night led to pointed remarks about lights being on at all hours.
The agent tapped down the driveway and was about to climb into her BMW.
‘How soon is it available?’ Lisa called.
‘Pretty much immediately,’ the agent replied.
‘How do I make an offer?’
The agent flicked her ponytail and flashed her teeth. She slithered into the BMW and trailed the Golf back to Maxine’s house.
They arrived to find Gordon in his dressing gown reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. Maxine told the agent not to mind him. He’d been sick with a cold lately, she said, which wasn’t true. Gordon scraped his chair back and shuffled amiably down the hall to their bedroom.
The group arranged themselves around the table as the agent explained how the contract was quite straightforward. It was just a matter of initialling every page and . . .
Lisa didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. Gordon had left the newspaper open at the property section. Her attention zoomed in on an advertisement halfway down the left-hand page.
