by Joy Dettman
He left, but left the door open.
*
The roof room was heated by a water-filled radiator, though not overheated; or perhaps more of the outside air seeped in. She’d struck those radiators from Cornwall to Scotland and found them effective clothes dryers. No washing today. In thirty-odd hours she’d be on a plane and on her way home to Myrtle’s washing machine, a clothes line and summer. She draped two wet towels over the radiator, then looked up at the exposed overhead beams, heavy beams, blackened by the patina of years, the mark of the builder’s axe still on them. Knew she couldn’t sleep beneath them in that four-poster bed. Knew she had to get a lift back to the station, or to a local hotel.
The land outside the two small windows already fading into night, she could see little. Wanted to see more, much more.
She shook her head. No pain this time. Shook it again to test it. Her stomach felt queer; perhaps more hungry than queasy. She’d eaten nothing since mid-morning, when she’d bought coffee and a cake so she might use the café’s toilet.
Leaned on the wide sill to look down on a leafless tree, then over it to more distant leafless trees to the left, and beyond them to what appeared to be a cluster of rooftops, in the darkening distance.
She’d ask him to give her a lift down to those rooftops. The situation had been complicated enough when there’d been a wedding tomorrow and a house full of Grenvilles. It had become more complicated now. She couldn’t stay here.
No movement of life outside that window. No cows, sheep, horses, no roads. This place would have been a hive of activity a hundred years ago, two hundred. When England had started shipping her convicts to Botany Bay, there would have been poachers in those woods, and this house swarming with maids.
She’d seen no sign of a maid. They must have had one, two. The house was huge. When Myrtle had been growing up, her parents had employed half a dozen live-in maids. This place was three times the size of the Amberley she’d known as a kid.
She wiped at the sill with the palm of her hand, feeling for dust. Someone had dusted, had made up the bed. Letty hadn’t appeared capable of much more than a duck-like waddle. Men may make up a bed, but not as the four-poster had been made; and the men she knew didn’t understand about dust. She wanted to stay here and find out how this place worked. And what a talking point that bed would be at Helen and Michael’s next dinner party.
No more dinner parties. Chris and his junior solicitor would be there.
She shrugged, opened her case and dug deep for the frock she’d spent days searching for. When she’d found it, nothing else would do. It was black and white – stunning, the saleswoman had said, and it was; and exactly what Cara had wanted. Something that would knock his eyes out. Crushed for two weeks in a limited space, it no longer looked so stunning. She shook it, then looked for a place to hang it overnight. No wardrobe, but a door to the left of the bed, which argued loudly about being disturbed. When she won the war, she wished she hadn’t. There was something dead in the dark behind it.
He returned, with two glasses and a bottle.
‘There’s a dead rat in there,’ she said, indicating the door.
‘It’s Henry. Or one of his ancestors. Close it.’
‘It’s a rat. We had one under the floorboards in the boarding house. Dad had to get in a builder to rip up the floor of the lodgers’ kitchen.’
‘My money’s on old Henry. He’s sticking around to make sure Letty doesn’t sell up.’
He placed the glasses on the window ledge, then came to her side to close the door. She stepped away from him too fast.
‘Watch your head,’ he warned. ‘It’s not a room to be darting around in.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘Dry rot. We’re in the original Langdon Hall, and it needs big money spent on it. The old section was locked up and forgotten until ’58 when we moved in. I unlocked it and found this room – it had been used as a junk room for a hundred years. That old chest of drawers was here, the trunk.’
‘Did you find anything in it?’
‘Old clothes, a few documents.’
‘You kept them?’
‘They’re still in it.’
‘You rented this room to strangers and left a trunk full of history here?’
‘It added to the authenticity.’
‘They could have . . . shredded them!’
‘Vandals couldn’t afford our prices,’ he said.
She was still holding the frock. ‘Guests need wardrobes.’
‘Few could afford more than one night. For those who could, Mum and I played maid and valet.’
She was only staying one night – if she stayed.
She shrugged and draped the frock over her case. ‘Only in England could one family hold the deeds to the same house for five hundred years. This is what Jenny was writing about: Patient writer of life’s journal, caretaker of time,’ she quoted.
‘I fell in love with its permanence at seventeen,’ he admitted. ‘And out of love with its weather before we’d been here for a week.’
‘I haven’t had my coat or boots off since I got here, and my coat is going mouldy.’ She picked up one of the glasses and sipped. He knew she liked white wine, and not too dry. ‘You said once that you rented out your paddocks?’
‘Fields, lussie.’
‘You don’t grow anything?’
‘A local chap puts a crop in.’
He came to her side at the window, his head more than high enough to hit those sloping beams. But he knew them well, ducking beneath one as he reached for the second glass.
Her hair was drying wild, as it did when she had no tools to tame it. She placed her glass down and with her fingers attempted to lift her curls into some form of shape. He reached out to touch an exposed earlobe.
‘No diamond stud,’ he said. ‘Are you going to marry him?’
Back in ’69 she’d removed Chris’s diamonds for Morrie.
‘No,’ she said and sipped more wine.
‘You’re moving back to Sydney?’
‘I hope to spend at least twelve months there; get a job in an office maybe, get some of Dad’s bank loan paid off. He won’t be able to work next year.’
‘I thought he’d retired years ago.’
‘He’s been tutoring at night. He’s incapable of driving unless he swallows a couple of painkillers half an hour before he leaves.’
‘Arthritis?’
‘Probably a bit of that, but mainly a war injury. He came home with half a ton of shrapnel in his knee, and apparently it’s moved to where it shouldn’t have moved. He’s probably addicted to painkillers.’
‘Are you still writing?’
‘I was until my flat was robbed.’
She told him the tale, omitting the names of the perpetrators. Told him the tale of her black overcoat, the only item returned to her. Told him about the sorting of four hundred unnumbered pages, and how she’d considered herself lucky that her other two novels had been away at the publishers’.
‘They came back, both of them, before I left. I brought one with me to send to an English publisher, but haven’t had time to find one.’
‘Which novel?’
‘Rusty. The one you edited.’
So good to speak to someone about her writing. Those who didn’t do it failed to see why those who did did.
‘What’s the other one about?’
‘It’s written as the diary of an unmarried seventeen-year-old girl. The publishers kept it for so long, I thought they were going to accept it.’
Ran out of things to say then, and silence wasn’t good. She emptied her wine glass.
‘What do you do all day?’ she asked.
‘Not a lot.’
‘When did Phyllis lose the baby?’
‘Three weeks ago.’
‘You could have sent me a telegram. I was still at the dogbox until the morning of the eighteenth.’
‘The phone was somewhat tied up – until I disconnected
us. I phoned, belatedly – phoned Cathy, who in turn phoned your mother. But by the time she did, you’d already flown the coop.’
‘I got to see a bit of London, a bit of the country,’ she said. ‘Where are your aunt’s dogs?’
‘They spent their lives tripping Pops. We had to find them new homes. We kept an elderly female until three months ago. She died.’
‘Your father needs to be in a nursing home.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’ He refilled the glasses. ‘Letty won’t hear of it. And I promised Mum I’d look after him.’
‘Does he know where he is?’
‘Letty knows. She likes talking things over with him. He never argues.’
‘Have you got maids, Morrie?’
‘A German woman comes in daily to clean and cook, but she won’t last long. Letty hasn’t forgiven the Germans. They killed Henry’s only cousin. We’ve got a male nurse who comes in morning and evening to get Pops in and out of bed. It’s party time when he gives him a shower. Pops is slippery when wet.’
‘That nurse probably costs you as much as a nursing home. And deathbed promises are made so the dying can rest easy, not to saddle the living with guilt. Find a place close by, and buy Letty a dog to talk to.’
‘Bernard’s more her son than her brother. His mother died when he was five, and Letty and Henry’s many offspring died at birth or soon after, so they ended up raising Bernard. He took their name before he married Mum – or tacked it onto his own.’
Her stomach groaned, gurgled, the wine and aspros at war. ‘Have you got a dry biscuit, a bit of cheese – something?’
He clattered again downstairs.
Later, standing side by side at the window, a packet of biscuits between them, a square of cheese and a knife, they stood crunching and sipping wine while watching night swallow the last of the day. Watched a squirrel jump down from the large tree beneath the window, then scamper across to a smaller tree and up it.
‘They’re so cute,’ Cara said. ‘Australian possums look like rats. Everything is so different over here. Trees, houses, land, shops. Everything.’
‘I miss here when I’m over there, and miss there when I’m over here.’
‘You said in one of your letters that your grandfather left you a farm and houses back home?’
‘You read them.’
‘I read them,’ she admitted.
‘There’s only one reason I’d go back,’ he said.
‘You’ve got four good reasons in Woody Creek.’
‘They be my reason for bein’ over ’ere, lussie.’
She ate another biscuit. He topped up her wine glass and she sipped a little more.
‘I spent the night with Jenny not long ago. She said she still looks for you every time she’s in a crowd.’
‘You didn’t mention me?’
‘I wanted to.’ She sipped wine, cut more cheese. ‘I should have.’
‘I know who I am,’ he said.
‘You’re hiding from who you are, Morrie, like you hid it from me.’ He crunched another biscuit, so she did likewise. ‘She told me how she lost you.’
‘Lost, meaning to misplace. Sold, meaning to accept payment in return for goods received.’
‘She didn’t sell you. She loved you, and they stole you from her while she was half-dead with pneumonia.’
‘I’ve got a bill of sale stating how much she loved me – two thousand quids’ worth. I was signed over to my grandfather in December of 1947, and for her signature she received what must have been a king’s ransom back then.’
He took his wallet from his pocket and removed a wad of paper, which he unfolded carefully before offering it to her. The light was too poor to read and she frowned at the page. He pointed to the figure, and it was there: 2000 pounds.
‘Your grandfather stood over her hospital bed to get that signature, and your ghoul of an aunty kidnapped you while she was getting dressed to take you to the hospital,’ Cara said.
‘As nice a piece of fiction as I’ve heard in a while. You ought to write it.’
‘Hospitals keep records. You’ve got the date. Check it out, smart-arse.’
‘Did you?’
‘I don’t need to. I believe her.’
‘I believe this.’ He reclaimed the bill of sale, folded it and placed it back into his wallet.
‘It deserves burning. The fact that your grandfather kept it shows me exactly what an evil old coot he must have been.’
‘It’s not every man who knows his true value. Will ye be puttin’ in a bid for me, lussie?’
‘Are you in touch with the ghoul?’
‘We correspond. I tell her to get her skinny arse over here forthwith; that the will states that she is obligated to live with me until death do us part. She tells me what I can do with England and that pathetic pile of pommy horse droppings – namely Bernard. I invited her to my wedding. To quote her non-acceptance: You were born of a slut’s desire to break up her sister’s wedding and are no better than the slut who whelped you.’
‘Your mother lied to you. Ask yourself why she lied.’
‘She took the easy road.’
‘I believe Jenny’s version. And having met your ghoul of an aunty, I’d believe her capable of kidnap.’
‘That, my dear, is your prerogative. Where’s my car while you’re gallivanting around England?’
‘In Barry’s shed, under a tarp – where it will stay until you collect it.’
‘You’ll need a car in Sydney.’
‘The car needs Barry, and he won’t be in Sydney. There’s no room for it up there anyway, and I’ll be driving Mum and Dad around. I can’t see either of them riding in your car.’
‘Can’t they operate on his knee?’
‘That’s what I asked. He’s scared they’ll make it worse than it is, though I doubt they could. He winces every time Robin–’ The blood draining to her feet, she turned away. ‘Every time Miss Robinson . . . Robertson comes in.’
She went on too fast then, and knew she was talking too fast, knew she sounded guilty. ‘She and Mrs Collins share unit two,’ she said. ‘They’re about eighty, and at the door every day wanting a new light globe put in or a jar opened. I wish they’d move so I could have their flat.’
Brainless tongue. Blame half a bottle of wine, the aspros.
Brainless, breathless, she pushed away the dribble in her glass. His eyes were on her face, and she looked again at the dark land and chattered again, afraid of his silence.
‘Your car is a red rag waved at the police. They follow me. And it doesn’t like starting on cold mornings; and when it does start, cold air blows in everywhere.’
Couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t get a breath down to where she needed it. He was too close. She moved away to the corner.
‘Watch those beams,’ he warned.
‘I’ve been pulled over by the cops twice. One of them looked so disappointed when he saw a staid old schoolmarm behind the wheel.’
‘You don’t fit my image of a schoolmarm.’
He’d followed her to the corner, boxing her in and cutting off the rest of her air.
‘If you want to keep the thing, then have it shipped over here,’ she said.
His hand was on her shoulder. She shook it off, but it came back to brush her cheek, then to rest there.
‘Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse. How much better is thy love than wine. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.’
Loved his voice, his face, his touch. Loved the scent of him. She stood, conscious of each breath, every nerve in her body responding to his touch.
‘Shakespeare,’ she said.
‘The Bible.’
‘I need–’
Needed his kiss and he knew. He kissed the words from her mouth and took the last of her breath away.
Stood there, ha
nds at her sides, drowning. And hadn’t that drought of no feeling gone on for too long? Why should she try to control what she felt for him, and what did it matter anyhow? They’d done it all before.
Rested against him when he was done with her mouth. Encouraged, his hand slid beneath her sweater to make music on her soul. When he lifted her face to his, her mouth, wanting for too long, clung to his and her hands were no longer at her sides.
This place wasn’t real anyway. This room wasn’t real. Just another dream – without the red velvet curtains and bed.
No more Phyllis Willis. No more wedding. No phone, and how could anyone ever hope to find them in this place? And it wasn’t wrong anyway. They’d met as strangers, fallen in love as strangers.
But he was moving her towards the bed and . . . and they weren’t strangers. And one week of making love with him had given her a son, and he didn’t know about that son and could never know about him, and she wasn’t having another one.
Pulled away from him too fast, moved away too fast.
‘Watch your head!’ he warned.
Too late. Her hair warned her; she ducked her head.
‘Watch yourself,’ she said. ‘It’s wrong and you know it’s wrong.’
‘You’re the only right in my life,’ he said.
He didn’t follow her to the door. She found the light switch, and the shock of that white glare imprinted a photograph in her mind that would never fade. Her own eyes looked back at her; her own sadness in those eyes. Saw his hair, rumpled, pushed back from his brow. He was her brother; and at that moment, had he been born with Jenny’s curly hair, no one would have doubted it.
‘If there was a time for us, it would have been on our wedding night,’ she said. ‘You made the right decision then, so stick to it.’
‘I was out of my head that night. They were all dead until that night.’
‘They’re not dead. They’re in Woody Creek and ready to welcome you home.’
‘I want you.’
IN A MANOR HOUSE
She picked up her overcoat and walked too fast down the narrow stairs, found her way back to the main stairs and down to the entrance hall, where she fought her way blindly into her overcoat, then fought the heavy front door open and stepped outside to a freezing night.
