Willow Tree Bend

by Kaye Dobbie

  For a while he talked about his music, how much he wanted to succeed this time, and how much it meant to him. She listened, enjoying the sound of his voice, and when he leaned in and kissed her it seemed just right. The feel of his lips on hers, and then his arms about her. She cuddled up to him, kissing him back, and gradually the curl of warmth inside her began to heat up, until it was burning fiercely.

  ‘Will you come to bed?’ he murmured against her ear.

  She knew she could say no and it would be all right. He wouldn’t hold it against her. But she didn’t want to say no, and when he stood up she put her hand into his, and willingly went with him into his bedroom.

  Here, in the privacy of the small room, their kisses grew more passionate. He began to unbutton his shirt, watching her in a way that made her feel beautiful. She slipped off her boots, and then he was wrenching at his shoes, laughing. She unbuttoned her dress while he tugged down his jeans, and it became a race to see who could be naked first.

  In the end it was a draw, and they were breathing quickly when they stood facing each other. He was thin, his skin as white as milk, with a dark strip of hair running from his chest to his groin. She didn’t want to look, but she had never seen a man like this, aroused. Actually, she had never seen a naked man at all, and she couldn’t help staring.

  He drew her into his arms again, and his voice was a murmur against her hair. ‘Is this your first time?’

  Faith nodded her head.

  ‘Do you still want to?’

  ‘Yes. I still want to.’

  He lifted her chin with a finger and kissed her lips. It felt so nice, and he was so nice. Like the music tonight at the Queens, it was slow and dreamy, at first anyway. Near the end, he was a bit rougher, but he said he was sorry, that he couldn’t help it because she was so beautiful.

  The act wasn’t as she’d imagined. Fireworks didn’t go off, and it was even uncomfortable and a little bit painful. But being in Ray’s arms, the intimacy of her naked skin against his, felt so incredible that it didn’t seem to matter. It was the sense of her being a part of him, and him of her, more than any imaginary fireworks, that won her over.

  When she climbed out of his bed and dressed in the half-light of dawn, she couldn’t help smiling at his relaxed, sleeping face. She wasn’t on the pill. Kitty had said she knew a doctor who would set her up, but after her cousin had mocked her excitement about Ray, she hadn’t wanted to broach the subject. Anyway, Ray had used a rubber, and when he’d put it on he’d promised her everything would be all right. She trusted him. Just before he’d fallen asleep he’d told her she was his special girl, and now she hugged the words to herself.

  The house was silent as she let herself out into the chilly morning and began the walk home to her own bed. The watery sun might be trying to push through winter grey clouds, but it felt like midsummer. Her heart was almost too full to fit into her chest. She didn’t know how she was going to keep her feet on the ground today, or the smile off her face.

  Was this how it was for everyone? Love?

  She might have been teetering on the verge of it from the moment she’d met him on her first day at the Angel, and tonight had tipped her, dizzily, over the edge.

  Her life would never be the same.

  It was only when she reached her door and turned the key in the lock, that the events of last night came rushing back to her. And her warm summer happiness gave way to the cold reality of winter.

  SAMANTHA

  14 January 2000, Willow Tree Bend

  When I arrived home—and I was certainly not running away—I found a phone message on my answering machine. Jason Miller, the Melbourne chef who was opening a restaurant just outside Golden Gully, and who had asked for a quote for his garden, was asking to see me as soon as possible.

  I replayed the message again, just to be sure; he definitely wanted to see me. In fact, he wanted to know if I was available for a meeting at his future restaurant because he was going to be staying there over the next few days.

  He must have liked my initial quote, but I’d made it clear that the price would be dependent upon the final decisions we made for his garden. I liked to work with my clients rather than for them and sometimes that put people off—they wanted it handed to them in a nice little bundle so they didn’t have to think at all. His wanting to meet certainly seemed like a good sign.

  I knew that after all that had already happened today, I would be too restless and upset to concentrate on my usual tasks. All the way home I’d thought about my parents, and Hope. My emotions still felt very raw, and I couldn’t help replaying the scene in the cottage over and over again. Hope and my father. Was it possible? Maybe I was imagining it?

  Well maybe, but there was definitely something. My mother had run off to Queensland and that was completely out of character. I was becoming more and more convinced that there was a dark underlying thread to this tale that I either wasn’t seeing or no one was telling me about.

  So the chef’s request gave me a chance to occupy my mind, with the bonus that, if he liked me, I would land a plum contract. I rang him back and said I’d be there in an hour, and then I did what I should have done before I went to the cottage to meet Hope. I showered, and dressed in a flowery summer dress I had bought once on impulse for a party that never happened, and then brushed my hair so it swung around my shoulders. A bit of makeup and I thought I looked pretty good.

  Jason Miller’s restaurant-to-be was sixteen kilometres out of Golden Gully and set amongst farming land. It was an impressive two-storey building of timber and red brick, which had probably originated as a single-storey dwelling back in the time of the gold rush. Golden Gully, like other towns in Victoria, began its growth spurt after gold was discovered in the surrounding hills and creeks. Soon it became a centre for the district and that probably saved it. When the gold was gone and everyone moved on to the next rush, the town had stayed.

  The soon-to-be restaurant was on the opposite side of town from Willow Tree Bend, so I wasn’t all that familiar with it. I did have a vague memory that the house had some historical significance, but right now the details escaped me. Was it protected? It didn’t look like much protecting had been going on lately; the place had become unloved and dilapidated. As I came to a stop in front of the crumbling picket fence, I noticed that the upper verandah had a sag that made me think you’d be taking your life in your hands if you ventured out onto it.

  The door was propped open with a brick, but I gave a polite knock and waited until an urbane, greying man in his forties came to meet me.

  ‘Sam Cantani.’ I introduced myself, holding out my hand.

  He was wearing comfortable jeans and a tee-shirt, but I didn’t think either were off the discount rack.

  ‘Jason Miller.’ He took my hand and held it a moment while he gave me the once-over. His smile, when it came, was warm and friendly, and relaxed in a way that helped me to relax too. Another good sign.

  ‘Looks like you have your work cut out,’ I said dryly, as he showed me inside.

  We were in a passageway that ran the length of the house, and now I could see that there were holes in walls and dust inches thick. The piles of rubble might have been the product of the renovations, or maybe the house was like this when he bought it. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should ask in case I showed my complete ignorance—I was better at gardens.

  Jason grimaced. ‘It’s a massive undertaking. Luckily my partner loves renos. For now we’re living and working in Melbourne, but we hardly see each other. We’ve been talking about a project like this for a while now, and when we saw this place … everything just came together. It’s something we can do as a couple. At least that’s the plan.’

  He shot me a sideways look that made me wonder if he was as completely sold on the idea as he seemed.

  ‘Sounds like a good one,’ I said, trying to be positive.

  He offered to walk me around the property. For the next twenty minutes, I listened to him ta
lk while I peered into grotty rooms and tiptoed over spongy floorboards. Most of the windows were broken and boarded up, and Jason explained that the house had been left empty for nearly five years before they bought it.

  ‘The people who owned the place before us had plans, too, but then their marriage imploded. Things ended up in a real mess in court, which was why it was abandoned. Their bad luck was our good luck, in a way. We would never have had the chance to buy it if they’d lived happily ever after.’

  But was that a good thing? I could already see that this was the sort of ‘project’ that might destroy more than one relationship.

  ‘People think we’re insane,’ he went on, and I wondered if he was reading my mind. I looked into his eyes and thought he might be wondering the same thing himself. ‘We aim to prove the nay-sayers wrong,’ he added in a more confident voice.

  ‘I like your spirit,’ I said.

  ‘Speaking of spirits,’ he replied with a waggle of his eyebrows. ‘There’s a fair bit of history involved with this place, and quite a lot of scandal. If you’re interested we could grab a latte before I show you the garden?’

  I was quick to agree, and he led me into the kitchen.

  It didn’t sparkle as I imagined his professional kitchen in Melbourne did, but there had been more headway made here than anywhere else in the building. It was clean, too, which made a difference.

  I sat down at a scrubbed table while he made me a coffee, and then opened a tin of the most delicious homemade carrot cake I’d ever eaten. And this from someone who considered herself a carrot-cake connoisseur.

  ‘Secret recipe,’ he said with a wink. ‘Derek’s that is—my partner—not mine. He’s a country boy originally, and he’s wanted to get out of the city for over a year now. He found this house on one of his “breaks” and brought me to see it. I have to say I wasn’t as enthusiastic as him to start with, but now I think we can make it work. Well, we have to, don’t we? This project is a big risk for us, financially and emotionally.’

  Oops, his insecurities were showing again. Time to put my positive face back on because I wanted him to make it work too. ‘I imagine you’ll have loyal customers following you up here, Jason.’

  ‘I hope so.’ He still looked a bit fragile.

  ‘You know, Golden Gully can be a springboard for great things. My mother started her business here, and now she’s selling all over the country, and overseas.’

  ‘Your mother is Faith Cantani, yes? I’ve heard of her. Maybe we can meet up?’

  I felt my stomach do a little dip. I opened my mouth to tell him she’d flown the coop, and then closed it again.

  Time to move on.

  ‘What was the scandal you were talking about?’ I asked, biting into the cake and trying not to moan. I must learn to cook, I told myself, although I doubted anything I could put together would taste like this.

  ‘Oh the scandal! This house belonged to the Dalzell family. Have you heard of them, Sam?’

  I had. A memory was struggling to surface. ‘I think it was before my time.’

  ‘As soon as we bought the house Derek was hunting around in the archives, trying to find out about it. Now, I think I have this right. The Dalzells arrived during the gold rush, and the original Dalzell was something to do with the cattle trade—he made his fortune selling meat to the miners. Derek tells me most of the wealthy families made their money that way, rather than actually doing the hard work of scratching for gold.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘So, to show how important they now were, the Dalzells built this house, although I think most of their time was spent in Melbourne.’

  ‘I remember now.’ It was coming back to me. We’d had a lesson at school about important locals and the Dalzells were mentioned. ‘Wasn’t there something about race horses? And one of them was a politician?’

  ‘Not sure about the race horses, but a couple of them were politicians. Father and son. The son is the one everyone remembers. Hubert Dalzell was around in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and there was a big scandal involving him and a nightclub in the city. Criminals and corruption, that sort of thing. He lost his job and his reputation, and when the government of the day began to talk about a far-reaching inquiry … there was nothing left for him to do but disappear. The rumour is he went north.’

  I hesitated with my cup halfway to my mouth.

  ‘What was the name of the nightclub?’

  ‘The Angel. It was pretty infamous in its day. Here, I have a photo taken inside it.’

  He stood up and opened a drawer, lifting out a plastic envelope containing a sheet of thin cardboard.

  ‘The Angel,’ I repeated, wondering why it struck a chord, as he set the photograph in front of me. It was torn and tattered about the edges, and had an unpleasant stain across one half.

  ‘Found it under a pile of fallen masonry. And look, someone’s written the name underneath.’

  The faded colour photograph had been taken in a swanky-looking dining room. There were people in the background, but the focus was a table where a smiling man sat, with a black woman in a sequined dress leaning over his shoulder. She looked very much like Aretha Franklin. Scrawled across the bottom was ‘The Angel 1969’.

  ‘High-flier, do you think?’ Jason was saying, tapping the man. ‘Look at that sharp jacket. And the Wyatt Earp moustache!’

  I smiled, but something else had caught my eye. The man wasn’t alone at the table. A woman was sitting beside him, and although the stain had obliterated most of her face, I could still see some of it. Enough. My heart gave a little stutter.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I said aloud, hoping I didn’t sound as fraught as I felt.

  Jason leaned closer. ‘Don’t know. Why, do you know her?’

  He was staring at me with interest, but I didn’t want to tell him what I was thinking, and anyway I hardly believed it myself. So I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘Probably just a companion for the night, to make him look good,’ Jason said dismissively. ‘We thought we might get it restored and blown up.’

  He went on to speculate about why the photograph had been preserved. ‘Maybe Dalzell had a gallery of himself brushing shoulders with various celebrities.’ His words barely registered with me. The woman sitting beside Dalzell looked very much like a young version of my mother, and although I knew it couldn’t be, my gaze kept returning to her. Because I’d remembered now where I’d heard the Angel mentioned before. Hadn’t Mum and Dad been talking about the club the night I went around to watch Looking Back with them?

  I glanced at Jason, but he didn’t seem to notice my abstraction. My thoughts took a wilder turn. Was it a coincidence that my mother was in Queensland and this politician from the same place and around the same era had run off there, too?

  ‘So, they never found him?’ I reached for another piece of cake and then wondered how many slices I’d already had and changed my mind.

  Jason noticed and hid his smile. ‘Ah, no, they never did. From what we’ve been told he had oodles of people after him. Police and government, as well as some underworld criminals, so I think it was in his best interests to stay well hidden. I believe there was a bit of a search but they soon gave it up.’

  ‘I thought you were going to tell me his ghost haunts the house.’

  ‘Derek says there is a ghost, but I haven’t seen it. Apparently, I’m not very receptive to the spirit world. Too much of a sceptic.’ Jason cleared his throat. ‘All right, I’m sure you don’t want to hear any more of my ramblings. You’re here to see the garden so come this way.’

  This was what I was here for, I reminded myself, and shut my crazier thoughts down as I followed him out the back door.

  Jason’s garden was more like a wilderness, where weeds and overgrown shrubs competed for air and light. But as I walked about, pushing aside a branch here, peering into a clump there, I began to recognise some of the shrubs. They were of the old-fashioned variety, now run sadly amok, and I could probably
save a few—cut them back, reshape them—but there were others that were at the end of their lives anyway and would need to be removed.

  A huge old rosebush had grown in a clump at the very back of the yard. It was covering some sort of structure, which was all but invisible beneath the thick, twisting branches and mass of dead twigs. That it was flowering was a remarkable feat considering the hot, dry summer, and I stood and admired the pale-gold blossoms.

  ‘Safrano?’ I thought I recognised it.

  He gave me a grin. ‘You’re good. Yes, that’s it. Derek tells me it’s an old tea rose. Gold-rush era.’

  ‘Or a bit before. It suits the climate here. They were called tea roses because they were imported to Australia in tea chests from China. What’s that underneath it?’

  ‘Derek was trying to find out. A summer house? Pergola? It’s difficult to see without cutting the rose down and we didn’t want to do that until an expert had seen it. He’s been spending long hours at the State Library, so maybe he’ll know more when he gets up here.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The rose would probably have to go, but I was hoping I could save it, or grow another bush from cuttings. After all this time, I thought it deserved to be preserved in some form or another.

  The Dalzells had probably started planting their garden from the day the house was built, and once upon a time someone had loved it. I hoped they would again. It was certainly a big job, but if I could pull it off then I knew it would be a turning point for Green Dreams.

  My excitement was rising, as Jason’s voice meandered on. He was keen to share his own thoughts on what needed to be done, particularly in regard to a kitchen garden that would be part of the attraction for the restaurant. The food would be grown right on site—green and wholesome and pesticide free.