Spirits of the Ghan

by Judy Nunn

  ‘Yes,’ Dave agreed, ‘yes, she does.’

  Beside them, Matthew nodded. Tears were running down his face, and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  Despite the selfless dedication she’d displayed during her mother’s lingering months, it was not long before Lilian’s ruthless ego resurfaced. Less than six weeks after Svetlana’s death she set about radically re-designing the home in Wakefield Street to suit her purposes, starting with her mother’s beloved antiques, all of which were to be sold as soon as possible.

  ‘If Leonard can’t display them at the showrooms,’ she said, referring to her mother’s manager and partner, who now ran the business, ‘then he’ll just have to put them in storage until he can find buyers. This place has become a veritable museum. I need space! And I need light, lots and lots of light!’

  She intended to convert the upper floor to a massive studio. The upper floor had always been her mother’s exclusive quarters, with master bedroom, dressing room, bathroom, sitting room and the spare bedroom that had recently housed the live-in nurse.

  ‘I’ll keep the spare bedroom and the bathroom intact,’ she said to Dave as they toured upstairs together discussing the renovations, or rather as Lilian unveiled her plans, ‘and all the rest will be gutted. I’ll have the walls ripped out and huge skylights built into the roof: the light will be amazing.’

  Dave wasn’t sure how the Heritage Council would feel about the gutting of a hundred-year-old home.

  ‘Pretty structural stuff,’ he pointed out. ‘You might have trouble getting permission and I don’t think they’ll like you chopping holes in the slate roof.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she declared, ‘I’m not altering the facade of the place. It’s none of their business what goes on inside and who the hell ever sees a roof anyway?’

  Dave didn’t pursue the subject. The property was hers after all and he had his comfortable study downstairs. He rarely came up to the top floor anyway.

  ‘What about the studio out the back?’ he asked. ‘What do you plan to do with that?’

  ‘That’ll be Mattie’s,’ Lilian had everything worked out, ‘his very own quarters. There’s tons of space and it already has a kitchen. I shall have it converted to a self-contained flat.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Dave very much approved. Matt had had two girlfriends in the past and although he didn’t appear to be on the kind of rampage many sex-obsessed males his age indulged in, he was certainly not a virgin. ‘A young man should have his privacy,’ he said.

  ‘Of course he should. You never know when he might want to bring a girl home and this way he doesn’t have to run her by the parents.’

  ‘Right.’ Dave smiled. Lilian always had to state the obvious. He wondered if she’d be as blunt with Matt. Yes, he thought, she probably would.

  She was. ‘You’ll have your very own place, Mattie,’ she said as she told him her plans. ‘You can bring girls home whenever you like and we won’t even know.’

  Father and son exchanged a whimsical glance. Was she merely being forthright or did she intend to be funny? No matter: she was just being Lilian.

  Two and a half years later, however, when Matt did bring a girl home, and not just to his flat, but in order to meet his parents, Lilian was the one who was flabbergasted.

  ‘Mum, Dad, this is Angie …’

  They’d been waiting to meet Angie. He’d talked about her a lot and was obviously very keen. The two had met at university. Angie was doing an arts course. She was very pretty, he’d said. Then he’d corrected himself.

  ‘She’s good-looking actually,’ he’d admitted, ‘really good-looking. I don’t know what she could possibly see in me.’

  ‘Why so bloody humble?’ Lilian had castigated him roundly. ‘Don’t put yourself down like that.’

  ‘… Angela Marsdon,’ Matt completed the introduction. ‘Angie this is my mum, Lilian, and my dad, Dave.’

  ‘How do you do?’ the girl said and they shook hands all round.

  Lilian remained uncharacteristically silent and let Dave do the talking, which he quite happily did. They were gathered in the main sitting room and he told Angie to take a seat and offered her a drink.

  Lilian automatically sat herself while Matt fetched her a glass of wine and as she did so she openly stared at the girl.

  Very pretty? Really good-looking? How utterly inadequate. Young Angie was neither ‘pretty’ nor ‘good-looking’: she was flawlessly beautiful. And not only was she flawlessly beautiful, she oozed sex appeal. She’s a siren, Lilian thought, aghast. She’s the kind of woman who lures men to their doom. Oh my God, Mattie, what sort of trouble have you let yourself in for?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Matt and Angie had met at that year’s O-Ball. It hadn’t really been a meeting as such, more a challenge, or so it seemed to Matt. At the time he’d been rather swept off his feet.

  ‘Want to dance?’

  Pitching her voice above the cacophony, she hadn’t even said ‘hello’, this glorious sex goddess in a bright red mini-dress standing before him.

  ‘Sure,’ he yelled back and they weaved their way through the throng.

  Hundreds were gathered in the open quadrangle, the rock band was thumping out ‘When Love Comes to Town’, and in the corner reserved as a dance floor bodies were gyrating to the beat in a youthful frenzy.

  Matt and Angie joined them. They made no attempt to communicate with each other, but just hurled themselves around like everyone else, which was after all the purpose of the exercise. Orientation week was promoted by the staff as a welcome to new students, an opportunity for them to ‘explore the campuses, make new friends, and acquaint themselves with university life’ they were told, but the students themselves, freshmen and seasoned alike, knew better. Orientation week was an excuse to party, particularly the culminating event of the O-Ball.

  The O-Ball was held in the huge, open courtyard of Union House known simply as the Cloisters, a lovely rectangle surrounded by verandahs and stone-arched walkways. A stage was set up and the live entertainment was non-stop, rock bands and pop groups belting out their stuff, solo performers braving an audience vocal in its criticism if they were found wanting and loud in voicing its approval if they were not. Licensed areas provided alcohol, also non-stop, and hundreds upon hundreds of revellers partied through the night, spilling out into the grounds and onto the lawns, flooding the campus. These were not only Adelaide University students, but many others who’d come to know the O-Ball as one of the events of the season.

  The band’s choice of music proved relentless and after throwing their bodies around to ‘All I Want is You’ and ‘Angel of Harlem’, Matt and Angie retired from the madness of the dance floor.

  They each grabbed a beer and headed out to the lawn where people were mingling. Then, finding a spare piece of grass some distance from the crowd, they plonked themselves down to recover, Angie kicking off her evening sandals and stretching out her legs, the mini dress exposing a healthy expanse of bare, tanned thigh.

  ‘You’re Matt Witherton, aren’t you?’ she said. Still panting from her exertions, she tossed back her mane of honey-blonde hair and took a healthy swig of beer.

  ‘That’s right.’ He was surprised she knew his name.

  ‘I’m Angie Marsdon.’

  ‘I know.’ Everyone knew Angie Marsdon’s name. The moment she walked past you could hear the whispers of ‘Who the hell’s that?’ as heads turned. He doubted there was anyone at uni who didn’t know Angie’s name and hadn’t for the past twelve months. ‘You’re doing second year arts, aren’t you?’ he said. He’d made no enquiries, this was just another piece of information offered up by the whispers, ‘Angie Marsdon, she’s in arts.’

  ‘Yep.’ Angie nodded, unsurprised that he knew about her, everyone did. ‘And you’ve finished your BSc and your honours and you’re in your final post-grad year.’ Her voice had a ‘so there’ ring to it and her glorious sapphire-blue eyes gleamed, triumphant. Angie’s own enquiries had been
very thorough. ‘And when you’ve completed your MSc I believe you’ll be known in the trade as a Master Surveyor,’ she added smugly.

  ‘Where the hell did you hear that?’ Matt was amazed. He got on well enough with his fellow students, but tended to keep fairly much to himself and certainly never talked about his plans.

  ‘I asked one of the tutors of course.’ Her shrug seemed to say ‘simple’, and it had been. The male tutors, like the male students, were only too eager to oblige Angie. She held up her beer: ‘Nice to meet you, Matt Witherton.’

  ‘Nice to meet you too, Angie Marsdon.’ They toasted each other.

  Matt was flattered that she’d singled him out for attention, but he couldn’t help wondering why she had. He’d seen her around on campus over the past year of course, who hadn’t, but not once had it crossed his mind to introduce himself. Why bother? She was way out of his league, probably a spoilt princess, and he had no wish to compete. The prize of wearing the best-looking girl at uni on his arm was one that didn’t interest him enough to enter the contest.

  All of which made him highly intriguing in Angie’s eyes. So much so that she’d had him in her sights for the past several months. There was an air of mystery about Matt Witherton that was extremely attractive. Why hadn’t he made a play for her? He wasn’t one of the shy ones who ogled from a distance, too scared to come near her; he wasn’t one of the smartarses who made showy passes and after being knocked back badmouthed her to his mates; he simply appeared disinterested. Why? She wondered if perhaps he was gay. He certainly doesn’t look gay, she thought, but of course it’s sometimes so hard to tell. She’d decided to put him to the test. Unaccustomed as she was to going unnoticed, Angie couldn’t resist a challenge.

  ‘Ready to return to the fray?’ she asked, polishing off her beer.

  ‘I’m up for it if you are,’ he replied.

  They returned to the dance floor two more times and they drank two more beers, then …

  ‘Do you want to come back to my place?’

  He was astonished, both by the offer and the timing. It was only ten o’clock – she wasn’t propositioning him surely.

  She most certainly was. ‘I share a house in Richmond with three other students,’ she said, ‘they’ll be partying on here for hours. If we go now we’ll have the place all to ourselves.’

  ‘Right. Great. Good idea.’ He was being railroaded, but how could he resist such an offer?

  They drove there in her Corolla, which had been parked several blocks away. Matt drove a Land Rover himself, but had walked to the university as he always did.

  The house in Brooker Terrace was a modest three-bedroom brick-and-wood dwelling, probably built in the late 1950s or early 60s, with a shabby front hedge and an even shabbier front garden.

  ‘None of us is keen on gardening,’ she said as she turned on the porch light to reveal the ill-kempt patch of grass and the weeds that had overtaken what had once been flower beds. She unlocked the front door. ‘It’s a bit better inside.’

  They stepped into an old-fashioned lounge room with big comfortable sofas and armchairs: a cosy room, but decidedly drab, the colours being predominantly brown and beige. Hardly the setting Matt would have associated with a glamorous young woman of the nineties like Angie, or for that matter with university students in general. Everything was so dull.

  ‘The place came furnished,’ she explained, dumping her small evening bag on the coffee table. ‘Actually it belonged to Jane’s godmother, who died a couple of years ago. Ena was a bit of an eccentric apparently, never married, no kids of her own, doted on Jane and left the place to her in her will.’

  Jane must be one of the flatmates, Matt thought as he followed her through to the kitchen where a mottled-green Laminex-topped table stood opposite an ancient Kookaburra stove and an enormous, equally ancient Kelvinator refrigerator. He felt he’d stepped onto the set of a movie based in the fifties.

  ‘Jane has a theory about Ena. Ena was her mother’s best friend –’ Angie interrupted herself as she opened the fridge door ‘– wine or beer?’

  ‘Oh.’ The offer took him by surprise: she hadn’t halted for breath. ‘Whatever you feel like, I’m not fussy.’

  ‘Time for a change I think.’ She lifted out a bottle of white wine, put it on the table and handed him a corkscrew. ‘You do the honours.’

  He started opening the bottle.

  ‘She thinks Ena was a lesbian,’ Angie continued, taking the glasses from the cupboard and setting them on the table. ‘She’s convinced that Ena was in love with her mother for the whole of their lives, but never declared herself. Hence Jane sees herself as the symbol of “the love that dare not speak its name”.’ Angie gave a suitably melodramatic ring to the Wildean quote and smiled as she watched him pour the wine. ‘Jane has a decidedly romantic streak.’

  She returned the bottle to the refrigerator and they took their glasses into the lounge room where she threw off her sandals and rather pointedly elected to sit on the sofa.

  ‘I take it Jane’s one of your flatmates,’ he said as he joined her.

  ‘Yes. She’s a lesbian herself, which probably explains why she romanticises poor old Ena, who probably wasn’t a lesbian at all. Cheers.’ They clinked glasses and drank. ‘Or perhaps Jane’s right. Perhaps Ena saw in her best friend’s daughter a younger version of herself, who knows?’ She gave a careless shrug. ‘Either way we win with the house. It’s fantastically cheap living here.’

  Matt enjoyed the uninhibited way she chatted. She’s very easy company, he thought, no spoilt princess at all. Assured, yes, but nicely so.

  ‘Jane shares the master bedroom with her girlfriend,’ Angie explained, ‘and Helen and I have the two spare rooms. We split all the bills, and the rent we three pay sees Jane through uni, so everyone’s happy and we get along fine.’

  ‘Sounds ideal.’

  They conversed comfortably for the next fifteen minutes and Matt, upon enquiry, discovered that her family had a farming property a hundred kilometres or so north west of Adelaide … ‘Too far to commute,’ she said, ‘but easy enough to get home on weekends if I want to.’

  ‘What sort of property?’ he asked.

  ‘Wheat and sheep mainly, but they’ve recently converted a sizeable acreage to vines – they’re not far from Clare so the country’s ideal. I love vineyards, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure.’ He raised his glass as if to prove the fact. ‘What sort of wines do they intend to produce?’

  Like his father, Matt had a talent for encouraging others to talk while revealing little of himself. In any event, he had no wish to speed up proceedings. The prospect of sex with Angie was certainly arousing, but he’d let her call the tune. She’d done so from the outset and they were on her home ground after all.

  He didn’t have to wait long. ‘I don’t think we want another wine, do we?’ she said meaningfully as she placed her empty glass on the coffee table.

  ‘No, we don’t.’ He put down his own glass, which was still half full, and followed her into the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

  Hers was the door to the right at the far end, and as she turned on the light and ushered him inside he was surprised to discover how vastly the room differed from the rest of the house.

  She was aware of his reaction. ‘You can take only so much of Ena,’ she said, closing the door behind them. ‘We’re happy to live in her time warp, it’s cheaper that way, but our rooms are our own to do with as we please.’

  The furnishings certainly reflected her personality, smart, modern and for the most part red, which appeared to be Angie’s favourite colour. But the most dominant feature of all was the prints that covered every inch of wall space. There were several that were attractively mounted and framed, probably limited editions and of some value, including a very impressive Brett Whiteley, but every other inch of wall was given over to cheap poster prints stuck up with sticky tape. Matt recognised the distinctive styles of Charles Blackman and Robert Dickerso
n among them.

  ‘I rotate the posters to match what I’m studying at the time,’ she explained. ‘If you’d been here a while back it would have been the Impressionists.’ She gazed about at the collection. ‘My history tutor told me this week we’ll be looking at The Antipodeans Group of the late fifties, so I hunted around for these and stuck them up just yesterday. I find it an inspirational way to study.’

  ‘How clever …’ he said. He hadn’t known she was so focused on art. The BA course was a flexible one and could be used as a springboard for many a career. He wondered what path she intended to pursue, but they weren’t here to talk about art. ‘That’s a really clever idea,’ he murmured, drawing her to him and moving in for the kiss. It was time to take the initiative.

  Given the anticipation that had been building up over the past hour or so, they were both quickly aroused and without breaking free from the kiss they started undressing themselves, fumbling with buttons and hooks and zips while their mouths continued to explore.

  They made love with the overhead light on, neither of them self-conscious, each revelling in the sight and the sound and the touch of the other.

  Matt was unsurprised to discover that her body was as flawless as the rest of her, the mini dress had left little to the imagination, but he had not anticipated her total lack of inhibition. Angie clearly enjoyed sex, giving herself wholeheartedly to the exercise, which he found so exciting that at one stage he was close to losing control. He managed, through sheer force of will, to restrain himself, however, and having safely regained command of his body he basked in the reckless abandonment of their lovemaking. The crescendos of her moans were so unrestrained, the muscular spasms that undulated wave after renewed wave so gripping he felt he could have gone on forever. It was only when he sensed she was utterly spent that he finally allowed himself to let go, by which time his own climax was a merciful release.