by Penni Russon
‘Is there really a queen there? In London?’
‘Yes,’ Daddy tells her. ‘And a prince called William married to a princess called Kate.’
‘Do they have any babies?’
‘A boy called George and a girl called Charlotte, I think.’
‘Can I go there and visit Baby Prince George and Baby Princess Charlotte?’
‘I don’t think they are really babies anymore. They’re little kids like you.’
‘I’m not a little kid. I’m a big girl.’
‘Well, George and Charlotte are big too.’
‘I’m a big girl baby. And Prince George is a big boy prince baby. We could visit the Queen.’
‘Well,’ says Daddy, leafing through the nursery rhyme book, ‘she seems to be quite busy eating bread and honey and making tarts and being visited by pussycats.’
‘Does it take a long time to get to London?’
‘A night and a day,’ says Daddy. ‘On a big aeroplane called a jumbo jet.’
‘Does it cost a lot of money?’ Sibbi asks, remembering what Else said about being almost poor.
‘An awful lot. Yes. Thousands and thousands of dollars for Mama and me and the twins and Else and Clancy and you. So we’d want to be sure, before we went.’
‘Sure of what?’
Daddy gathers up the photographs. ‘Well, that the Queen was going to be home, of course.’
‘And Baby Prince George?’
‘Oh yes. Definitely Baby Prince George. We wouldn’t want to waste a trip.’
ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE
ONE RAIN-STREAKED MORNING, almost a century ago now, Almost Annie woke up dead to find Hardly Alice looming over her. Almost Annie recalled her own life in startling detail, but Hardly Alice claimed to have no memory of who she was before her death.
Hardly Alice wore beautifully made clothes in fine fabrics, but they seemed old-fashioned to Almost Annie. Her corset was straight and unflattering, and her skirt had hoops and no bustle, so she must have lived and died many years before Annie had taken her position in Mortlake Road.
From the way she spoke, it was clear Hardly Alice had been well born, a daughter of the house. Almost Annie was a lowly nurserymaid; by today’s standards, she was not much more than a child herself when she died. She was some years, but not many, younger than Hardly Alice, who looked on the verge of grown up.
‘Oh, larks,’ says Hardly Alice. ‘Look who’s just pulled up in that black cab. It’s that dreary law-man, Old Whatshisname.’
‘Mr Brompton, and it’s not his fault he looks like that.’
‘Well, it’s not my fault, either,’ says Hardly Alice. ‘He has the countenance of a man who has lost his favourite cheese and a great deal more besides.’
‘He is always very good to Our Dorothy.’
Hardly Alice sniffs. ‘I dare say he has killed her off. He’ll turn the house into some sort of inn and let out the rooms to Scotsmen.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely?’ says Almost Annie. ‘Do you think they’ll bring their children? Not,’ she hastens to add, ‘that I am wishing ill on poor Miss Dorothy.’
‘Look out, here he comes.’
‘Do you think Dorothy is coming home?’ Annie asks.
Alice gives Annie a pitying look. ‘No,’ she says bluntly. ‘I don’t think Dorothy is coming home.’
The key rattles in the lock and the great heavy door crashes open. A flash of daylight and street noise enters the house and so does Mr Brompton, leading a pair of young men in work gear into the house.
‘Oh, look! That one has got one of those hand-held computer devices.’ Hardly Alice drifts up behind the young man’s shoulder, watching with rapt interest as the man taps and sweeps his finger on the glass screen.
‘Still in quite original condition, I see,’ says one of the men.
‘He means ghastly,’ Hardly Alice says.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ says Almost Annie.
‘It’s been very well cared for,’ says Brompton.
‘It’s an abomination,’ says Hardly Alice. She and Almost Annie have watched enough episodes of Grand Designs with Dorothy Outhwaite to know how hopelessly dated the big house is.
The ghost girls wander around the house, looking at it through the men’s eyes. The one with the iPad flicks up the dust sheets and makes notes about the furniture beneath.
‘Some of these bits might be worth a few bob, I suppose,’ the other young man says. ‘You could sell it as a job lot to an auction house, I should think. We can sort that out for you. Unless you were planning to sell the house furnished?’
‘Oh, it’s not selling. It’s to stay in the family. It’s been inherited by a nephew in Australia.’
The two young men catch each other’s eyes. ‘Poor sod. It’s a lot of work.’
‘This house has good bones, anyone can see that,’ says Annie to Alice. She is fond of Kevin from Grand Designs. He has a timeless sort of charm. But she does not fancy the modern houses, with their gleaming surfaces and empty spaces. She thinks Outhwaite House is just fine the way it is.
Hardly Alice sniffs. She’d like nothing better than to see the entire house gutted and reappointed with all the latest fittings. Gleaming, shining surfaces. Splashbacks and concrete floors. The industrial look.
The humans and ghosts leave the drawing room and wander through the kitchen and scullery and out into the garden, then back through the large reception room and up the stairs to the big room and Dorothy Outhwaite’s study and then up another flight of stairs to three bedrooms
The cleaners make notes on all the rooms – two beds in the big room on the middle floor, bunk beds for one upstairs bedroom, a single bed for the second upstairs room, and a queen for the master bedroom – until there’s just one door left.
‘No!’ cries Almost Annie and Hardly Alice hisses violently.
‘I haven’t a key to that room,’ says Brompton, firmly. ‘It’s only a storage closet or something, I believe.’
The cleaner gives the handle a twist, rattling the door vigorously, but it remains stuck fast.
‘But why don’t we want them to go in there?’ Almost Annie asks, but of course Hardly Alice, if she has ever known, does not remember.
In all the time Almost Annie has haunted this house and even before, when she was still alive and in service, this particular door has remained locked. As a ghost she can roam freely through the entire house, even into rooms forbidden to her as a nurserymaid, as far as the back garden wall, but this door is as impenetrable to her as the front door to Mortlake Road and the wider world.
She and Hardly Alice sit on the stairs and watch Brompton and the cleaners leave the house together. Everything settles back into a deep, still silence.
‘Bored,’ says Hardly Alice. ‘I wish I had one of those screens to play with.’
‘Devil’s work,’ says Annie.
But their squabble is interrupted before it begins, when Brompton comes back into the house. He stands in the hallway and clears his throat. He stares blindly at the landing above their heads. ‘It is my unfortunate duty to tell you that Miss Dorothy Outhwaite has recently passed away.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Hardly Alice murmurs to Annie. ‘Such a strange, pasty, little man.’
‘Oh, do be quiet,’ says Almost Annie. And she goes upstairs to find solitude. It turns out even ghosts can grieve the dead.
ELSE
I STAND AT the kitchen sink, looking down at the roof of Aunty May’s house. Some last pale rays of sun are making their way through the clouds. Wet leaves glisten in the trees. Aunty May still isn’t home. We’ve been to visit her a few times, and she looks so small and frail. It’s strange to see her like that, helpless in bed. A month ago she was eighty years old and still chopping her own wood for the fire.
‘I’m calling a family meeting,’ Dave says.
I roll my eyes. Another famous Outhwaite family meeting. I reach down the bickie tin, hoping for Tim Tams, or at le
ast some chocolate chip, but there are only some of Dave’s dry, nuggety Anzacs.
I wonder if Adrian has told Dave and Olly that I’m not taking violin seriously. ‘Let’s have a family vote,’ Dave will say. ‘Should we keep wasting what precious little money we have on Else’s violin lessons?’
But Dave isn’t looking at me. He says, ‘It’s about my Aunt Dorothy. Your great-aunt.’
I breathe.
‘You wouldn’t remember her, any of you. Else is the only one who ever met her, at my parents’ funeral.’
‘After the car crash?’ says Sibbi.
‘Else was tiny, just a hairless possum wrapped in a blanket, like Hester was when we first met her.’
‘Is she the same kind of aunty like Aunty May?’ asks Sibbi.
‘Aunty May is everybody’s aunty,’ says Olly, spreading her hands to include the neighbours, the people from the post office, the guys from the stock-and-feed shop. ‘But Dorothy was just Daddy’s aunty.’
Dave says, ‘Anyway, we’ve had news that Aunt Dorothy died.’
I try to conjure a memory of myself and someone greatauntish, but all I can imagine is Aunty May holding Hester. Still, I feel some measure of importance, since I’m the only one who ever met Great-Aunt Dorothy.
Sibbi’s eyes are round and worried. She’s seen lots of dead things – kangaroos, wombats on the side of the road, flies with their legs in the air on the windowsills – yet she never takes it very well. Dave holds her hand.
‘She was very elderly and she died in a hospice for old people. I looked it up online and it seemed very comfortable, very social. There was a choir, art classes. It wasn’t a sad death, or a lonely death.’
‘Did she have a long happy life?’ asks Sibbi.
‘Yes,’ says Dave. ‘I think she did. She never married, always lived in the same house. But she had lots of friends and did interesting work. She was some kind of scientist. She worked with the BBC. She loved nature like Clancy. And Else, she was very fond of music. She would have loved to hear you play.’
At the thought of this, my chest grows tight again and the Anzac feels like sawdust in my mouth. I stand up. ‘I should practise,’ I say. ‘Sorry about Aunt Dorothy.’
‘Wait till Dad finishes,’ Olly says.
I sigh, noisily, still standing. Just get on with it.
Dave continues. ‘I was the only family she had left, I guess. Well, and you guys. She didn’t like long-haul flying, and I meant to go and see her, maybe when you kids were older – it’s so far and so expensive. We kept in touch after my parents died, Christmas cards mostly, I emailed her photos sometimes. I never really expected . . . well, I just didn’t think about it.’
‘What didn’t you expect?’ asks Oscar, looking as impatient as I felt.
‘It turns out she’s left me everything. The house. Some shares. Furniture. It’s all a bit unclear at this stage.’
‘Are we rich?’ I ask.
‘It’s a joke,’ says Oscar. ‘Right?’
Dave shakes his head. ‘It’s not a joke. And I don’t think we’re rich exactly, there’s a big inheritance tax we need to pay, but first we have to process the whole estate, and work out exactly what we’ve inherited. I can’t really manage it all from here. So we’re going to have to go over there.’
‘Over where?’ Finn asks.
‘England,’ I say faintly.
‘London,’ says Dave.
‘Where Baby Prince George lives,’ Sibbi supplies helpfully. ‘And the pussycat and the Queen.’
My parents glance at each other. I know exactly what they’re thinking. The twins will be all right, as long as they have each other. Sibbi, at four, is young enough to adapt – they won’t be worried about Sibbi. And Clancy, well . . . He might pine, he might suffer more than anyone, away from the animals and the bush, but he won’t shout or get cross. He’ll make things as easy as he can for everybody else.
It’s me everyone turns to look at. I am the unknown quantity. I could stamp my foot, refuse to go. I probably couldn’t stop them, but I could make it as unpleasant as possible. I feel oddly powerful, standing over them.
‘What about Hester?’ I say, finally. ‘How can Clancy leave her?’
‘She’ll be all right,’ Clancy says quietly. ‘It’s time she grew up, I guess.’
‘What about Mum’s uni?’ I say. ‘And your fences?’
I notice that Olly doesn’t look as keen as Dave. ‘I can write my thesis over there,’ she says. ‘I’ve already talked to my supervisor. I’ll miss the teaching, but –’ She breaks off, then adds as if it explains everything, ‘We’re a family.’
‘Well, I won’t miss building fences,’ says Dave.
‘I thought building fences was your passion,’ I say.
After Sibbi was born, Dave gave up his job as a lawyer in the city. He said he wanted to do something honest with his hands, build something real instead of working overtime reading contracts and pushing papers around a desk to make a small handful of rich people even richer.
Dave shrugs. ‘Turns out, not so much.’
I step back to the kitchen window. Aunty May’s house is already in shadow. Night is creeping into the valley.
‘What about Aunty May?’ I ask, but of course no one can answer that. I know as well as Dave and Olly do that Aunty May probably won’t come back home. She’ll go to some kind of aged care place. I hope it’s as nice as Aunt Dorothy’s sounded.
‘What about Else?’ Clancy asks. ‘What about her violin lessons?’
‘We can find a teacher over there,’ Olly says.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. The room seems to be swaying. I feel a sudden swoop in my belly, like I’m falling. I hold on to the bench to steady myself.
‘Of course it matters,’ Olly says.
‘But it doesn’t,’ I say, wondering if it’s true. ‘It really doesn’t. I’m fine.’
CLANCY
I LIE AWAKE in the dark, listening to Hester scramble on the roof. I test my feelings about the move.
Of course I’ll miss Hester. But there will be new animals to learn about. Storybook animals: squirrels, moles, hedgehogs, otters. Badgers and weasels and shrews. Not in the city, though.
When I think about school, I feel only relief. I loved Christmas Hills Primary School. I’d been happy in that little school, only forty of us, and most years the twins were in the same class as me. But this year I’ve started at the high school in the suburbs, though it’s so big that I hardly ever see Else except on the bus. Actually, I wouldn’t mind school, if only it wasn’t for lunchtime and recess. Why do they have to be so long?
And the bus ride home. It’s okay if Else is on the bus too – then they pretty much leave me alone. But on the days Else has violin lessons . . .
Missy Carter and Keeley Smith and those girls. They confuse me, coming up to me one at a time, telling me they’re sorry, that they just want to be friends. And I say it’s fine. It’s always a trick. I know it’s a trick, but I don’t know what else to say. While I’m distracted one of the girls eases my maths book or drink bottle out of my bag and passes it to the others, and then they start tossing it around. They always give it back, but not until I’m red in the face and almost crying.
Worse is when they do the same thing with my words, tricking me into saying something, like which one of them do I think is the nicest, or the smartest, or the best looking. Snatching my words and tossing them around until they’re tattered and dirty and wrecked. Last week, Keeley reported me to the bus monitor, her big eyes swimming with real tears, for saying she’s fat, which I don’t think I said, but I’m not even sure myself anymore.
Hester scrabbles and slides on the tin roof, leaping up at the eucalyptus tree whose long branches sway low over the house. The rain begins again, a slow steady drum and then, I suppose, I fall asleep.
SIBBI
IN APRIL IN Christmas Hills, one day sweeps into another like dry leaves. It’s cold outside. The air smells of woodsmoke and da
mp soil. The days are shortening. Sibbi and Hester know not to get underfoot. Clancy makes a nest for Hester in a wooden box. Sibbi helps him line it with the woollen jumper and he nails it under the eaves on the veranda.
‘Is it comfy for Hester?’ Sibbi asks.
‘She has to learn to get used to us not being here,’ Clancy tells her. ‘That’s the kindest way.’
In bed that night Sibbi unexpectedly weeps for Hester and can’t be comforted, but Clancy does not cry.
Arrangements are made. Boxes are filled, rattling with cups and saucers, or bulging with books. Daddy puts a sign by the gate, Permanent Garage Sale, and Sibbi watches cars wend up the driveway, bringing neighbours and strangers to finger through Daddy’s records or measure up chests of drawers. Daddy hums happily every time someone drives away with a car-boot stuffed with their belongings but Sibbi just watches.
They take a load of things to the op shop too, cramming it into the back of the van. ‘You’ll miss the van,’ says Clancy. ‘It’s like your other child.’
‘Our van?’ says Sibbi.
‘Rick’s van now,’ says Daddy.
Daddy’s fence-building friend, Rick, has arranged to buy the van; on the last day he will drive them all to the airport and then he will drive away in it forever. Everything is fitting into place.
‘When do you move?’ the next-door neighbours ask. ‘You lucky ducks.’ They drive away with the Outhwaite’s dining table strapped to the roof of their station wagon.
‘Are we lucky?’ Sibbi asks.
‘Oh, yes,’ says Mama. Her voice echoes, hollow in the stripped living room. With the dining table and couch gone, they’ll have to eat picnic-style on the floor. Mama sighs. ‘Very lucky.’
ELSE
THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE at school says too. ‘You’re so lucky.’
Well, except for poor lovely Sam, who looks miserable all the time. I avoid lovely Sam and his broken heart. I take shelter in the thick forest of girls, and comfort from the rituals of gossip.
