It Happened at Mount Solitary

by Alexa Aella

  Chapter 4.

  “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” Khalil Gibran

  I awoke early in the morning, about five am, with a pressing feeling that I had to look at those papers in the safe. It was still dark outside, but the rain had stopped, which would be helpful for the searchers. I threw on a few layers of old jumpers, because I felt cold, and tiptoed back to mum and dad’s bedroom, which felt as empty and desolate as before.

  I swung open the safe, and spread the papers out on the maroon bedspread again. Lots of the papers were routine and boring, but some were definitely interesting. One paper showed mum as the owner of Goolara, and a few others were contracts showing that the property had been leased out to various operators to run a bed and breakfast establishment. Another paper revealed that mum had also, been left this house at Echo Point, by her parents too. Then, there were wills outlining my parent’s wish to leave their worldly goods to each other in case of death, and to me, if they both expired. Dad, however, from what I could gather, did not actually own any property.

  Uncle Martin had asked me about my parent’s wills, but it suddenly occurred to me, that it was very strange that Uncle Martin, who was mum’s brother, did not seem to have inherited any property from his parents, as far as I knew. That was odd.

  The shrill ring of the phone reverberated through the house and I ran to the phone.

  “A body of a person, believed to be your mother, has been found in a cave” explained the police woman. It appears at this time like she suffered severe injuries after falling from a great height. She crawled into a small, partially hidden cave and died there as a result of her injuries”.

  Something inside me collapsed.

  But where was my father?

  I put the phone down as though moving in slow motion. As I turned, I came face to face with the portrait of the woman over the fireplace, dressed in the Victorian clothing. She was wearing the necklace from the safe, around her neck. Perhaps I was going crazy, because it felt like we locked eyes, and I could have sworn she moved.

  I sat in the lounge room that day, with the blinds drawn, and I did nothing. I felt numb and lost; like I had plummeted into a great vortex, and I was free-falling and powerless. Hours passed me by.

  The phone rang sometime in the late afternoon. It was Uncle Martin and he said he was coming over to take me to his home. He said that, I shouldn’t be alone tonight. Before I could say, no, he had put down the phone and within minutes, he was ringing the door bell and I found myself being propelled inside his BMW, and sinking into the soft, leather seats.

  Uncle Martin’s wife, Hannah, served us homemade onion soup and freshly made bread, which filled the house with its wholesome aroma. As I spooned hot mouthfuls of the soup into my mouth, Uncle Martin’s two young daughters chattered and giggled happily. It was nice, and it was soothing to be here with this family.

  There were so many things I wanted to ask Uncle Martin about my mother, but now wasn’t the time; the grief was too new and too raw. Instead, I blurted “who is the woman in the painting over the fireplace, in my parent’s house”. I swallowed my tears, when I thought how Mum would never again return to her home.

  “My mother…. your grandmother”, Uncle Martin said, with a look in his eye, like he was looking into the past. “She was wearing a dress for a costume ball in that painting. Some say Norman Lindsay painted it, but I don’t know about that”. He paused for a moment, “Lindsay, supposedly, attended a party at our house, but long before I was born……. Your mother was sixteen years older than me, and would have known more about such things…. perhaps”.

  I sank back in my chair, lost in sadness, and lost in thought.

  Later, over coffee, Uncle Martin looked at me seriously and said “I know it’s insensitive of me, but try to have a look for any wills in the house. Your mother gave me a sealed envelope two years ago, before she went to visit you in London, which outlined her wish that all her property should go to her next- of kin, in the event of her death. I just need to know if there is a more recent directive”.

  “OK, I’ll look”, I said glumly. I just didn’t have the energy to talk about the documents that I had found, or the jewellery.

  Not long after dinner Uncle Martin drove me home and his daughters went off to have their baths, and get ready for bed. The girls seemed happy and oblivious, that, their aunt had been lost, and found dead in the bush. Youth, I thought, is a very egocentric period of one’s life.

  This I know.

  I stepped out into the dark front yard and I looked up. I loved how you could see the stars here on a clear and crisp night like this one. Staring up into the spangled, velvet blackness, before I stepped into the car, made me feel somehow alone and insignificant, and yet, part of sometime bigger than myself. That sounds contradictory, but it is the best way I can describe what I felt.

  As we drove along, Uncle Martin chattered as though trying to fill the emptiness and silence. He told me how he had recently tried skydiving and even base jumping. I shuddered; there was no way I ever intended to do either of those things! I was missing the dopamine gene required, I think. Neither of us talked about my mother.

  The house seemed so empty and lonesome! So, I made a pot of tea, in the blue and white striped teapot, which had been mum’s favourite; I thought how she was probably the last person to touch this particular teapot and then I thought that, I probably should have left the teapot, just as it was, and not used it. I wasn’t sure.

  I wondered where my father was. Would he come home? Was he out there somewhere?

  Later, I threw myself down on the lounge and dragged the folded, mohair, tartan blanket over me. I watched a schlocky, European, Vampire movie, ate a tonne of popcorn and cried. I fell asleep around midnight.

  About three in the morning, I awoke with a leg cramp and pain in my back. The moonlight was streaming through the front window onto my face and I uncurled myself from the lounge and pulled back the net curtains to look at the incandescent disk of reflected light, which felt at this moment, like a friend. I stared at the moon, mesmerised for a while, until I began to shiver, but as I turned to stumble my way to bed, I noticed a BMW exactly the same as Uncle Martin’s, parked a little way down the street, under the street light.

  In the morning, I was eating breakfast, when I thought to have a look at mum’s diary again. I dug it out of the freezer and I started reading through the pages, tears streaming down my face when I read this:

  “Peta needs to know that Martin is her brother. My son. Not even my husband knows about this, even after all these years that, we have been together, and shared so much. How will they all feel about me when they find out? How will Martin feel? It’s all such a mess, but I was only 15 and thought myself in love. Dear, dear, dear mother, she came to my rescue and became Martin’s mother. The mother I could never be back then. My father never forgave me, of course, or, Martin for being born”.

  Crikey! Who would have guessed! This family seems to have more skeletons than that movie I was watching last night. But, I was not sure what to do with this information. I didn’t want to tell anyone right away, as I wanted some time to think, and get my mind around the whole thing.

  I walked over to the tall pine cupboard at the end of the hallway and dragged out the vacuum cleaner, as I often found cleaning to be a very good way of releasing tension. Of course, there are more pleasurable ways…...

 

  Over the buzz of the vacuum cleaner, I heard the doorbell ring and as I pulled open the front door, I found myself, face to face with a pale-skinned, red haired woman, with a face like uncooked porridge. I had never seen her before.

  “Hello, my name is Kristen Sorokin and I am a social worker from the local area. May I come in?”

  I must have looked fairly shocked; because she gave me a tight smile and tapp
ed my arm in a way that, she must have imagined was comforting. It was just weird.

  “Er… come in”, I stammered, like a hypnotised monkey.

  She walked in and I led her into the lounge room. She had barely sat down before she launched into this talk in a monotone drone, about “grief and depression” and the need, “not to do anything silly”.

  Before I could even say anything, she began to hand me all these papers about such things as: cognitive behavioural therapy, medications, positive self-talk and places to see a counsellor. Papers were falling out of my hand as she got up to go.

  And there I stood, as she drove away in her little white car, more confused than ever.

  But, I was feeling hungry, so I thought that I would try and cook some of the pasta that I had bought the other day. I say, try, because I am not the best cook. Believe me, I even fail at toast! However, since realising that I am lacking in wisdom and responsibility, I’ve decided to try and improve myself. I also realised that, I was not one of those people who lose their appetite when experiencing grief. All I can say in my defence is that, not much was feeling terribly real at the moment. Every now and then feelings of terrible loss would hit me, but soon enough, I would wonder if it was all a dream. Perhaps I really was going crazy!

  So, there I was in the kitchen stirring the simmering pasta sauce, when an uncomfortable thought popped into my mind. Wasn’t it strange that I had not been asked by the police to identify my mother’s body?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the back door, and the appearance of Uncle Martin’s face at the window. I fleetingly wondered what people had against the front door. But I opened the door, and he stepped inside, bringing the late afternoon sun with him. He was clutching a beautiful, bunch of pink and mauve flowers, and he looked very serious.

  “Hello Peta, I was wondering if you would come with me to the Golden Staircase, to leave these flowers as a tribute to your Mother.”

  “What now?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. If you don’t feel up to it right now. I’ll go myself”. He turned to go.

  I felt conflicted and guilty. I didn’t think that taking those flowers out to the Golden Staircase (that’s where the walk to Mt Solitary begins) would change anything, but then again; I did want to honour my parents.

  “OK, just let me eat something, and then we’ll go. Are you hungry?”

  “No, I’m not hungry. I have no appetite”.

  I felt guilty again.

  “Oh, and we’ll have to take your car, because mine is low on fuel”.

  I suppose at the moment it was my car.

  I just nodded and threw some dinner down my neck at top speed. Then, off we went.

  We left from the back door and walked around the side of the house, past the rubbish bins and jasmine vines. I saw the curtain next-door flick quickly closed. Someone had been watching. Again.

  The sun was setting as we headed south from Katoomba. I felt that what we were doing was crazy, but I understood that people handled death differently and after all, Martin was mum’s son, and my brother. He just didn’t know this yet. Did he?

  I drove out along Narrow Neck Road for about 2km. As we bumped along and the sky darkened, I noted that all the traffic appeared to be going the other way. But, soon, we arrived at the parking area at the top of the Golden Staircase and I parked next-to a lonely rental van with loud, purple graffiti writing on the side. We stepped out of the car, straight into a boiling wind and the darkening sky.