Lyrebird Hill

by Anna Romer

  At nine o’clock I went onto the verandah to wait for Pete.

  The ute pulled up on time, and the dogs craned over the side of the tray and wagged their tails – but I barely recognised the man who stepped out and strode towards me.

  The beard was gone. He seemed a little lost without it, and his unease made him enticingly vulnerable. He had a square jaw and full mouth that, even as I stared, softened into a smile. It was a slow, sad smile, and it made the breath catch in my throat.

  ‘Hey,’ he said as he approached, and then stood at the base of the steps, looking up at me. He had combed his hair, and his face and hands were spotlessly clean. He wore an expensive-looking navy shirt, which enhanced the blueness of his eyes. The suit was dated – maybe as far back as the 1970s, which impressed me enormously; it had wide lapels and a light pinstripe, snug-fitting around his muscular arms and chest.

  ‘You scrub up well,’ I told him, unable to keep the admiration out of my voice. I could hardly believe my eyes when a faint flush of colour infused his cheeks. The dimples came out, and his teeth were white and straight behind the embarrassed smile.

  I rattled Esther’s car keys from my pocket. Earlier in the week, Pete had given the old Morris a jumpstart and a clean-up. He’d handed over the keys, insisting that Esther wouldn’t have wanted me to be stranded out here. Today, I had decided, we would forego the dusty old Holden and travel to Esther’s funeral in style.

  Two hours later, we were sitting at the front of the church, an arm’s length from Esther’s coffin. The casket was glossy black, simply decorated with a wreath of gumnuts and red roses. While the minister spoke about a woman who had worked tirelessly for the environment, and had given most generously of her time to Landcare, and to WIRES, and was a benefactor of the local Indigenous organisation, my thoughts drifted to the wonderful storyteller I’d known as a child.

  She had kept her door open to a pair of misfit kids, and given them the gift of stories; she had baked scones and brewed hot chocolate, and transformed the simple act of reading a book into an experience so thrilling and rousing that it had inspired endless hours of enthralment – acting out the tales, talking about them, living and dreaming them.

  I had barely thought of her in the last eighteen years, but suddenly I missed her terribly. I wanted to go over to the casket and lift the lid, and see her kind face one last time. I wanted to rain tears on her and wake her up, like in the fairytale. And I wanted to tell her that I was sorry that I’d run away and forgotten her; sorry that the whole Jamie mess had turned me into someone I didn’t want to be, someone I’d hated so much that running was the only way I could stand to be around myself.

  Sorry, too, that I’d huddled in my car and taken shelter from the storm beneath my cosy picnic rug, while she lay on the cold riverbank, pounded by the downpour, her blood trickling into the rocks. And later, while she lay dying in the sterile whiteness of the hospital, I had stalled and dithered, listening, in my mind’s ear, to Esther’s younger self as she related one final story.

  Pete must have sensed the tremble that overtook me then, because he reached for my hand and enclosed it in his warm fingers. But although I felt a rush of gratitude for his kindness, I found myself withdrawing, giving his hand a quick light squeeze, then sliding it out of his grasp and back into my lap.

  Pete was one of the pallbearers, so when he got up to attend the coffin, I trailed behind the stream of people making their way to the cemetery at the back of the church. Afterwards, Pete found me and we lingered by the graveside until everyone was assembled, then he stepped forward and read a short verse – not from the Bible, but from Bram Stoker.

  How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams. Well, here I am tonight, hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play . . . I feel sleep coming already. Goodnight, everybody.

  He placed the book on the coffin and said quietly, ‘Thanks for everything, old girl. Sleep in peace.’

  Then he returned to his place by me, and as the coffin was lowered into the ground, he shifted so that his arm pressed against mine. We stood like that, shoulder to shoulder, while the minister recited the final benediction.

  But it was Pete’s short reading that lingered. The beautiful words had brought to mind a very different scenario. I was sitting in Granny H’s tiny cottage, cross-legged on a mat on the floor, gazing up at Granny’s flushed face as she recited those very same words to us.

  . . . sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.

  Beside me on the mat, his arm resting comfortably against mine, sat a boy. A boy with freckles and dark unruly hair, a cheeky grin, and eyes the colour of a kingfisher’s wing.

  I stole a look at Pete.

  He hadn’t changed so very much. The face was older, craggier, carrying a few more scars and fewer freckles. The hair was longer, and the beard had, until today, finished off the job of hiding his boyish identity – but I knew him, and now that recognition had kicked in, I wondered how there had ever been a time when I hadn’t known him.

  I tugged his sleeve.

  He looked at me and his eyes were wet and his face raw with grief, yet somehow he found a smile for me.

  ‘I remember,’ I told him softly. ‘I remember you.’

  Tears welled up out of my eyes, and I reached for his hand. He squeezed my fingers, and for a moment his strength and warmth were an anchor that held me secure in the violent deluge of emotion. Then he released me and I floundered, but only for an instant; suddenly I was in his arms, held firm, engulfed by the scent of pinewood and motor oil and Esther’s handmade rosemary soap.

  And all the while, in my mind, the same words, over and over.

  Why had I forgotten him? Why had I ever let him go?

  Jamie was standing in the kitchen. She was red-faced, out of breath. Her hair was a windblown mess.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  She ignored me.

  Even when she was being a snobby cow, she was still the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Once, her prettiness had made me feel proud; now, it only made me cranky. Answering her snub with a rude face, I went over to the sink and pulled out the strainer.

  Mum came in from the garden with a basket of carrots and parsnips and leafy celery. She dropped the basket onto the benchtop and began unpacking the vegetables onto the sink. The silence must have alerted her that something was wrong, because she glanced around.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Jamie. Look at your hair! What do you girls think it is, bush week?’

  I gritted my teeth. It irked me how, if I did anything wrong, it was Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, but if Jamie acted up, it was You girls. I didn’t say anything, though, just filled the sink with water and grabbed the vegie brush. Cutting off the carrot fronds, I started scrubbing away the dirt.

  ‘Well?’ Mum said to Jamie. ‘Spit it out.’

  Jamie flopped onto a chair with a loud sigh. Always the drama queen, making sure she had everyone’s attention.

  ‘You know that foster kid at Mrs Drake’s?’

  My ears pricked and I glared at Jamie, feeling a rush of possessiveness. The Wolf was my friend, not hers. And why did she keep glancing across at me, her normally smooth brow puckered in a frown?

  ‘What about him?’ Mum wanted to know.

  ‘He’s gone.’ Jamie eyed me from under her lashes. ‘They sent him back to Newcastle.’

  I stopped scrubbing. ‘He’s not gone. I saw him at school on Friday.’

  ‘For your information,’ Jamie announced loftily, ‘he was a thief. He got caught stealing, and Mrs Drake sent him back to the boys’ home. Good riddance, I say. He was weird.’

  ‘Stealing?’ Mum said. ‘That’s a shame. The teachers always speak so highly of the boy, I must say I’m surprised.’ She looked at me and frowned. ‘Well, if anything good comes out of this, it might be that Ruby’s grades pick up.’

  ‘His b
rother’s a jailbird,’ Jamie said, ‘and his dad’s a loony tunes. He’s no better. Everyone at school knows that bad blood runs in his veins.’

  Mum frowned. ‘Jamie, that’s not a nice thing to say. It’s not the boy’s fault his family is dysfunctional. I won’t have you speaking like that.’ She turned back to the sink and dithered for a moment, then opened the pantry cupboard. Subject closed.

  I felt the blood drain from my head. There must have been a mistake. The Wolf wasn’t a thief. He couldn’t be gone. My heart began to thrash like a rabbit in a trap. I had a picture of my life before the Wolf came along – sitting by myself at lunchtime, getting picked on at school, muttering and fumbling on account of my horrible shyness.

  He couldn’t be gone.

  Jamie looked at me and smirked, twirling her finger near her ear. ‘Loony,’ she mouthed.

  I threw the vegie brush in the sink and ran to the door. Stuff them, I thought, rubbing my eyes with gritty fingers as I raced along the path to where I’d left my bike. Stuff them both . . . they could scrub the blasted carrots themselves.

  ‘I knew the very minute I saw you.’

  Pete and I were sitting on an embankment beside the river, lounging on a tartan picnic rug. Old Boy and Bardo were dashing about in the water below us, chasing sticks that Pete periodically threw down to them.

  I toyed with one of the sticks, picking at a sliver of loose bark.

  ‘Not the very minute,’ I said a little shyly. ‘Come on, how long did it really take?’

  ‘Really? Let’s see . . . it took all of, oh, shall we say – a nanosecond?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You haven’t changed that much.’

  I grimaced. ‘Still the geeky twelve-year-old, eh?’

  Pete snorted. ‘Roo, you were anything but geeky. A bit of a tomboy, maybe. And a temper like a cut snake.’

  ‘So Mum always claimed.’

  His smile fell away. ‘I have to confess, I was smitten.’

  I gave him a shove. ‘Get out of it.’

  ‘Hey, it’s true.’

  I shook my head in mock disbelief, but inwardly I was chuffed. The Wolf . . . smitten with me?

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ he said with a laugh. ‘But I can prove it.’

  My gaze drifted down to his mouth. Oh yes, I wanted him to prove it. Right now, the sooner the better. Because all of a sudden I needed proof, craved it like a drink on a parched day, longed for it the way a moth longs for the moon.

  Which was wrong, very wrong. I’d given up on love, remember? Anyway, what did I really know about Pete – that we’d been friends as kids for six months while he’d been fostered on a neighbouring farm; and that he’d been sent back to the boys’ home by his foster mother for stealing? Not the strongest foundations upon which to build a romance.

  But then the Wolf was smiling at me from the face of a grown man, and it was such a friendly face, with intelligent blue eyes and a gaze that somehow turned the straw of my failings into gold, and lips that quirked at the corners in that cheeky way that made me want to lean forward, press my mouth to his, and lose myself in the forbidden pleasure that awaited me there.

  Wicked thoughts. Fiendish. I had to stop thinking them.

  But as I sat on the velvety green grass beside the river with Pete, tickled by shadows as the casuarinas swayed overhead in the warm breeze, I could feel the draw of my desire. And despite the cautioning voice in my head, I wanted to abandon myself, maybe even go a little wild. So, when Pete got to his feet and reached for my hand, and hauled me up beside him, it took me a moment to register what he’d just said.

  ‘You’re going to prove that you were once smitten with me?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘You bet.’ He waggled his eyebrows mysteriously. ‘Follow me.’

  High along the rocky slopes of the Spine, formed by the junction of neighbouring boulders, was a crevice. It didn’t look like much, just another shady gap between big flaky rocks. But as Pete kneeled on the ground before it and reached his hand into the cool darkness, it brought back a flash.

  Granite wears away like an onion, the Wolf had once told me. Hundreds of years of frost and fire, sunlight and rain cause the surface to expand and contract. The constant stress causes the top layers to flake away, which is why it’s called—

  ‘Onionskin weathering,’ I remarked to no one in particular.

  Pete looked over his shoulder and studied me a moment, then winked. ‘That old memory of yours is sharpening up. It must be all the fresh air.’

  Ridiculous, how an offhand comment and a wink had the power to make me glow. But as I stood in the shadows of the tall trees, basking in the warmth that radiated off the clustered boulders, I did glow.

  Pete dragged a long rectangular steel box from the crevice, and grappled with the lid. ‘Remember this?’

  I nodded. The Wolf and I had been learning about time capsules at school, and had decided to make one of our own. Granny H had given us an old army ammunitions box in which she’d once stored broad beans. The box was rat-proof, waterproof, and – though Granny H had said not to quote her on this – fire-proof. She’d also donated a TV guide, a crocheted beanie and a paper bag of homemade shortbread – only the shortbread hadn’t survived long enough to make it into our capsule.

  ‘Open it.’

  Wedging the ammo tin between his feet, Pete gripped the front handle with both hands and pulled. Finally, on the third try, the lid squealed open.

  Inside was a tiny rocket ship the Wolf had built out of tin and wood and coloured glass – far too good to bury, I remembered arguing, but in it went anyway, along with a photo of the puppy the Wolf had had as a kid, and a packet of Smarties. My contribution had been a book. Not just any old book, but one I’d made myself with leftover paper from one of Mum’s art projects. Mum had showed me how to stitch the spine and glue the binding boards, and on the cover I had painted a picture: Granny H’s face as the sun, and her hair poking out around her like rays. She was beaming down on two small sunflowers, which were supposed to be the Wolf and me, but really were just blobs with eyes. My book was full of the stories Granny H had told us – all the crazy fairytales that grew out of shape and turned into something else entirely.

  Right at the bottom, we found another book.

  ‘Here,’ Pete said, passing it to me. ‘Proof.’

  ‘I don’t remember this going in.’

  ‘I snuck back later and added it. I wanted to give you something to remember me by.’

  ‘But it was meant to be a time capsule. We were supposed to wait fifty years before we opened it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’ve just shot that plan to hell. Still, eighteen years isn’t a bad effort.’ He gestured at the book I held. ‘Aren’t you going to look inside?’

  I turned the little book over in my hands. The cover was leather, and looked really old. A loop sewn into the edge of the back cover held a slim pencil. All its pages were blank. Except one.

  When I opened the flyleaf, a soft brown feather wafted out.

  ‘Esmeralda,’ I marvelled, picking it up and beaming at Pete. ‘I was gutted when Mum gave her the chop. I don’t think I ever really forgave her.’

  ‘You were pretty upset.’

  ‘You held my hand.’

  ‘There you go. More proof.’

  I blinked quickly and looked back at the book, turning to the first page. Written in the Wolf’s careful handwriting – smudged with a grubby fingerprint – were two short sentences that made me feel hot and cold, happy and sad all at once.

  I’ll never forget you, my lovely Kangaroo.

  Your friend always, the Wolf.

  ‘You called me your “lovely kangaroo”?’ I pointed out. ‘That’s your idea of declaring eternal love?’

  Pete frowned at the wobbly inscription. ‘Hmm. I’m sure I remember filling the page with soppy devotion. At least, it felt pretty momentous when I wrote it. I definitely remember spending hours mulling over what I was going to write, what word
s best captured the depth of my feeling.’ He grinned. ‘Hey, stop laughing. “Lovely” is a pretty passionate word for a twelve-year-old!’

  As we joked and bantered I couldn’t help stealing secret glances. Pete had brought me here to unearth a fragment of our past – a time capsule that had waited in the dark for nearly two decades for our return. His inscription touched me, but more than that I felt a surge of warmth that he had remembered.

  ‘Why are the pages blank?’

  ‘For your stories.’

  ‘What stories?’

  ‘The ones you were always writing down on scraps of paper, or the backs of envelopes, or inside the covers of your exercise books.’

  I shook my head. ‘I never wrote stories.’

  He picked up the book I’d handmade with Granny H’s face on the cover, and flipped through it.

  ‘Yeah, you did.’

  ‘But they weren’t my stories. Granny made them up, I just copied them down.’

  He started packing our various treasures back into the ammo box, but kept the little leather-bound book out. Tucking the feather back in the flyleaf, he handed it to me.

  ‘Well, now you’ve got another blank book to fill with someone else’s stories. And maybe, occasionally, you’ll turn to that first page and remember the boy who was once smitten with you.’

  I took the book and smiled into his eyes, intending only to offer my silent thanks; instead, I found myself lingering in his gaze, melting into that clear, impossible blue. I tried to pull back, but there was something there I needed to see. A recognition, maybe. An acknowledgement that these first warm threads of feeling were real.

  ‘Why did you vanish out of my life?’ I asked quietly. ‘After they sent you back to the home. Why didn’t we stay in touch?’

  He considered me, his head tilted, his smile at half-mast. ‘I guess I went a little off the rails, after that.’