by Anna Romer
‘Brenna!’ a man bellowed.
Adele jumped to her feet, scattering a snowfall of small garments about her. ‘It’s Carsten,’ she whispered, grabbing up the knitted blanket we had been admiring and cramming it into the drawer. ‘He’s back early. Quickly, he mustn’t see them.’
Hurriedly we collected the baby’s clothes and shoved them into the drawer, jamming it shut just as the door burst open.
Carsten stood in the doorway, glowering. He pointed at me and yelled, ‘Where is it? I want it back.’
I stared, dumbfounded.
Lucien appeared in the hall behind Carsten; his face was white, the scar stark in the flickering candlelight. Had he broken our pact of silence? Had he confessed to Carsten about our midnight chess games – or worse, our stolen kisses? Lucien must have anticipated my thoughts, because he shook his head.
‘Well?’ Carsten strode into the room and gripped me by the arm, shaking me so hard my teeth clattered. ‘Where is it?’
‘Where’s what?’
Adele was beside me. ‘Let her go, Carsten.’
‘Stay out of this, Adele.’
‘Please, Carsten, there’s no need to shout. Whatever you think she’s done, for heaven’s sake hold your temper and speak like an adult.’
Carsten growled in fury. ‘I’ll speak to my thieving wife however I please.’ Elbowing Adele aside, he dragged me through the door and along the hall to my room. Quinn had joined us, alerted by the fracas; her face was stiff with shock and her eyes kept darting protectively to Adele.
Again I tried to tear free of Carsten’s grasp, but I only succeeded in bruising my wrist, and earning myself another severe shaking.
‘I want her room searched,’ Carsten told Lucien. Looking back at me, he snarled. ‘And if I find it in your possession, God help me, Brenna, I’ll have you horsewhipped.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘Let me go, you’re hurting me.’
‘Consider it a taste of what’s to come, you treacherous bitch.’
Adele grabbed her brother’s free arm and tried to hinder his progress down the hall. ‘What have you lost, Carsten?’
Shaking her off, he barged into my bedroom. Thrusting me ahead of him, he towered over me, his face twisting, his eyes – the same intense eyes I’d once sighed over – fixed on me. I felt his hatred blaze out of him like fire.
‘I’ve lost the only thing that matters,’ he said rasped. ‘You stole it away because you couldn’t bear the truth of what it contained. But you’ll be sorry. More sorry than you’ve ever been in your life.’
Carsten then turned and instructed Lucien to search my belongings.
‘A silver locket on a fob chain,’ he explained. ‘Embossed on the face with a lyrebird tail. It’s one of a kind, and of great personal value.’
Adele stood back and frowned at her brother. ‘Could you have lost it on your travels, Carsten? That makes the most sense. You probably took it off and left it somewhere.’
Carsten glared at me. ‘Brenna took it before I left. I saw her eyeing it, and one night I caught her trying to steal it. No indeed, my wife took it to spite me, I have no doubt of it.’
I glared back at him, my nerves alight with loathing. How could I forget that night? I’d been intrigued by the one object my husband appeared to treasure above all others, and had merely wanted to observe it at close range. But Carsten’s vicious response to my prying had left me sore and bruised, and I had come to hate the sight of the locket – not only for being a reminder of that night, but because I knew it contained the portrait of my husband’s lost love.
‘I only wanted to know why you looked at it so frequently,’ I told him through my teeth. ‘But I didn’t steal it, Carsten, I swear on my life. After that night I had no desire to touch it.’
Carsten ignored me. ‘Lucien, go through everything.’
Lucien turned to me. His face was pale, his eyes – the dark hue of stormy waves at sea – observed me warily.
‘Would you mind, Mrs Whitby?’
‘It’s not her choice,’ Carsten barked. ‘Just do as I instructed, man.’
Too angry for words, I turned my back on them all and went to the window. I tried to look down into the dark garden, but all I could see was Lucien’s reflection in the glass, standing at my chest of drawers, illuminated by candlelight.
Out came my jackets and shawls, kid gloves, and dresses. Two drawers down were my underclothes, my blouses, my nightgowns and stockings. Right at the bottom he found my shameful secret – the collection of patched cotton bloomers and threadbare shirts and stockings darned at the toe and heel; all the old clothes I had brought with me from home and been unable to relinquish to the rag basket.
Carsten stood hawklike, his keen eyes missing nothing. When he was satisfied that his treasure was not concealed in my clothing, he pointed to my bed.
‘Drag the mattress off and check it,’ he instructed. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her to have buried it in the stuffing.’
Lucien did as he was bid, although from his demeanour it was clear he wasn’t happy about it. But as the mattress was hauled from the bed’s frame, Carsten pointed to the travelling trunk shoved into the shadows beneath.
‘What’s that?’
Before I could utter a protest, he had directed Lucien to bring the trunk out into the light and unlatch it.
If I had felt exposed when my underthings were made public, then the sight of Lucien reaching into my trunk made me want to shrivel and die. With a cry I made to rush over, intending to shut the lid and keep him from seeing the trunk’s contents – but Quinn grabbed my arms and wrenched me away.
‘Steady now, Mrs W. Mr Whitby just wants a look-see.’
Lucien appeared miserable as he withdrew the flat parcel from the bottom of the trunk. He might have recognised it as the one he had given me all those weeks ago, because his face paled. But the sheets of paper wrapped within were vastly transformed.
My breath became a solid mass in my lungs, I could not breathe. He must not see them. Carsten must not see. Tearing from Quinn’s grip, I made a dash towards him, but my husband barred my way.
‘Open it,’ he told Lucien.
Unwrapping the brown paper, Lucien glanced at what lay within, then hastily wrapped it again and made to replace it in the trunk.
‘What is it?’ Carsten demanded.
Lucien looked at his master, his cheeks pink. ‘It’s nothing, Mr Whitby. There’s no locket in there, just scraps of paper.’
But Carsten had – as we all had – taken note of Lucien’s reaction. Poor Lucien had tried to keep his face impassive, but the deep flush in his cheeks and the shock of surprise that widened his eyes at the sight of the paper had given him away.
Carsten released me and stalked over to Lucien, snatching the parcel from his servant’s hands. Taking it to the candle and tilting it to the light, Carsten peeled open the wrap. One by one he flicked through my sketches, examining each page for the longest time. Finally, he frowned at me.
‘Did you draw these?’
I shut my eyes.
‘Answer me, did you draw them?’
I nodded.
No one spoke or moved for several heartbeats. The air in the room was stuffy and warm, but I felt cold to the bone. Shame washed over me; I wished I could sink under the floorboards, down into the earth, and vanish beneath the weight of dirt and stones and rubble.
Carsten went to Lucien, and slapped his face. Then, without looking at me, he left the room.
Not one of us murmured a word; we barely breathed, only stood in our silence, listening to Carsten’s footfall on the stairs, and then below us in the parlour. A door banged somewhere at the back of the house. A moment later, a cold blast blew along the hall and through my bedroom door, extinguishing Quinn’s candle.
The sudden darkness disoriented me. Was it possible to die of heartache and shame, of fear? But of course I wasn’t dead. Quinn rattled a box of vestas from her pocket and
struck one of the wax matches alight. Reigniting her candle, she took up the candleholder and marched to the door.
‘That was an ill wind if ever I saw one,’ she intoned dramatically, then marched off along the hallway leaving Adele and Lucien and me to regard each other unhappily in the gloom.
15
Ghosts abound in the human psyche, feeding and growing strong on our fear.
– ROB THISTLETON, EMOTIONAL RESCUE
Ruby, May 2013
It was nearly dawn. The mattress was full of lumps. Quills from the feather pillow pricked through the pillowcase, needling my cheeks and neck as I tossed from one side of the bed to the other in a bid to get comfortable.
My skin was super-sensitive, my lips swollen. I kept turning my head to check that the moon was still shining beyond my window. It had drifted across the sky, sliding inevitably closer to the western horizon, but its ghostly silver rays were still falling on the landscape below, just as they had fallen on Pete and me on the dark hillside. I wondered what he was doing at this exact moment – sleeping like the dead, or glaring up at the moon and thinking of me?
I hammered my pillow, then flopped back against it, my ill-fated words echoing in my mind.
Not great timing.
I moaned and shut my eyes. I’d promised myself that Rob was ancient history, and he was. I’d already wasted three years of love on him, only to be repaid with lies and humiliation; it was time to move on. So why had I hesitated last night on the hillside with Pete? Why had I botched a perfectly lovely kiss in the moonlight by freaking out at the critical moment?
You’re scared of letting anyone close . . . scared of love.
I sat up and opened the window. Cool air flowed in from the garden, and I expanded my lungs to absorb what I could of it. After a while my head stopped spinning.
I thought about Pete’s smile, about the way it lit up those hypnotic kingfisher-blue eyes; I thought about his warmth, and the easy way we talked, and how his nearness tonight had made me quake with desire. He had kept his dogs out of my way, knowing my fear; and he had never once pushed me to remember him, despite clearly wishing I would. He was kind and dependable . . . and utterly gorgeous.
What was there to be scared of?
Leaping out of bed, I dragged on my jeans and a cardigan, slid my feet into my runners and dashed along the hall. When I burst onto the verandah, I looked at the sky. It was light enough to navigate through the bush, yet there still remained a hint of darkness in which to hold the magic – at least until I got to Pete’s cottage, a twenty-minute hike on the other side of the river.
But as I rushed down the stairs, something fluttered past my cheek – a moth, a gust of air, a strand of my hair – whatever it was, it made me jerk back in surprise. And in the unexpected chaos of the moment, the vault door opened a crack and I found myself flashing back in time.
Since Esmeralda’s death, I’d lost interest in the hens. Then Mum introduced a couple of new Isa Browns, and one of them, newly christened ‘Chocolate’, had quickly got under my skin. She was smaller than the others, with a fluffy white underbelly and caramel feathers. I knew the instant I saw her we would be first-rate friends – as long as I could keep her off the lunch menu. She had a pretty beaky face, although she was very small and her eyes lacked Esmeralda’s clever twinkle. But as the Wolf was fond of saying, nobody was perfect.
Hmm. The Wolf.
Months had dragged by since he’d gone back to Newcastle. Still no letter came. The kids at school forgot about him. Somehow, my old life settled back into the hole created by his absence. I resumed my role as unwanted team member; I sat alone at lunchtime; and the teachers continued to reprimand me for getting lost in daydreams. To Mum’s disappointment, my grades remained low.
I began to suspect that the Wolf hadn’t been real at all, but a creature who had leaped from one of Granny H’s fairytales.
I stopped in the middle of the yard. The girls flocked around me squawking excitedly, scratching the dirt for the treats they knew would soon fall from my colander.
If only we’d been able to say goodbye. If only I’d been able to look in his eyes and see that he was still the same dear, funny old Wolf. If only . . .
Stupid. ‘If only’ was for fairytales.
The truth was, the Wolf had forgotten me.
Picking the corn cobs and celery stalks out of the colander, I threw them about the yard. The girls darted after them, attacking their delicacies in a joyful frenzy.
I took the remaining scraps – mostly lemon skins and onion parings that were yucksville for a chook – over to the compost and scraped them into the bin.
A charred bit of paper caught my eye.
My first thought was: Who’d put burned paper in the compost? Whatever we incinerated was supposed to go in the ash bucket, and from there onto Mum’s tomatoes to sweeten the yield. Everything we incinerated – pinecones, old bones, blackberry brambles and noxious weeds – made good ash for the garden and was never wasted.
My second thought was: It looks like part of a letter, and I think I recognise the handwriting.
Peeling the sooty scrap off the bottom of the colander, I smoothed off a smear of rockmelon and peered at the carefully printed words.
. . . know where I am, but you haven’t written yet so maybe you think . . .
I gasped. It was a letter from the Wolf. At least, part of a letter. Why had it been burned and put in with the scraps? I tried to flatten it out, but the damp, scorched paper tore and disintegrated until nothing remained but grey confetti. I tried to ease the remains into my jeans pocket, but they drifted to the ground and were lost.
Whirling around, I glared at the house. ‘Jamie!’
I stomped back inside. Voices drifted from the lounge room, where I found Mum listening to the radio, sorting through her folio of watercolours. Normally I’d hang about and watch. Mum was really clever, and I liked the pictures she painted – seed-pods she took from the bottlebrush trees, and colourful bird feathers, and the wildflowers that Jamie and I collected for her.
‘Where’s Jamie?’ I asked.
Mum looked up and frowned. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. On the table sat a glass of wine and a half-empty bottle.
‘No idea,’ she said, then looked back at her drawings.
‘A letter came for me,’ I told her. ‘But it ended up burned in the compost. The mail is Jamie’s job. Why did she burn my letter?’
Mum’s bleary eyes focused on me. ‘Oh Ruby, what is it with you and Jamie these days? Always at each other’s throats, always at loggerheads. You used to be so close.’ Reaching for her glass, she drained the contents. ‘If you find her, could you tell her the solar battery needs checking? With all this sun, I expect the water needs a top-up.’
I didn’t bother replying, just stomped along the hall and back out into the yard.
‘Jamie!’ I yelled as loudly as I could. Behind me in the house, a glass smashed. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled even louder. ‘You rotten bitch, Jamie! You’ll be sorry for burning my letter! Really sorry, and that’s a promise!’
Mum’s footsteps thumped along the hall, but I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture about language. Running to the woodshed, I dragged out my bike, climbed on and pedalled up the slope into the trees. I rode uphill until I came to the goat trail that led to the Spine. Speeding through the pine forest, I bumped over cones half-hidden under the mat of needles, then veered along a smooth ledge of granite and into the tea-trees on the other side.
If there was one small glad thing adrift in this sea of shitty things, it was knowing that the Wolf hadn’t forgotten me after all. But somehow that made me feel worse. He might have written other letters. He might have waited ages for a reply, and when none came assumed I didn’t like him anymore – because of Mrs Drake’s stolen locket.
. . . you haven’t written yet so maybe you think . . .
A hollow feeling came over me. It got bigger and darker, a thundercloud growing
against the inside of my chest.
I hated my sister.
I hated my mother.
I wanted to run away to Newcastle and find the Wolf. We could rent a little cottage on the edge of a forest somewhere and do as we pleased, playing the game all night if we wanted, eating ice-cream and cake for breakfast, and lemon meringue pie for lunch, fish and chips every night for tea. There’d be no more scrubbing carrots and grating Mum’s horrible turnips – and no more waking up to the sour smell of empty wine bottles, no more getting roused on for things I didn’t do. And best of all, there’d be no more smirking, gloating, smart-alec, ballet-dancing Jamie.
The sound of a car motor drew me back to the present. I peered along the track into the early light, expecting to see Pete’s ute emerge through the trees. So when the sleek black Jaguar appeared and rolled to a stop in the circular drive, my heart kicked over.
Rob got out and walked towards me. He was wearing jeans and polo shirt, his gleaming Hugo Boss brogues unnaturally shiny in an environment that coated everything else in a fine layer of dust.
‘Hey, babe.’
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, suddenly aware of my bruised and bitten lips; they felt swollen, chafed pink from stubble-burn. Folding my arms across my chest, I summoned a glare.
‘It’s six o’clock in the morning.’
Rob smiled. ‘The best time to catch someone at home.’
‘What you want?’
He sighed. ‘You haven’t returned any of my calls. I was getting worried. Look, Ruby, I feel wretched about what happened last week. You took off before I had a chance to explain.’
‘What I saw in your bathroom was pretty self-explanatory.’
Rob dragged his fingers across his scalp, and his face was suddenly tight, furrowed with frown lines. ‘Trust you to freak out like this. It was a mistake, okay? A stupid mistake. I’m really sorry.’
‘And the bra?’
