An Iron Rose (17 page)

Stan was patting pockets for his pipe. ‘Not much,’ he said, sadly.

Francis’s face went tight. He pursed his full lips, lifted his chin and slowly turned his face away from us until he was in full profile. This was a mistake. Stan had a clipping of a magazine article in which Francis’s profile was described as that of a Roman senator on a coin.

‘What Roman senator do you think that magazine twat had in mind?’ Stan said in a musing tone. ‘Pompus? Was there a Priapus? What about Fartus?’

Francis came back into full face. He blinked several times, willing himself to remain composed. ‘In a few minutes,’ he said, voice edging on the tremulous, ‘Mr and Mrs Karsh are going to drive. Through that gate. I’d like to have something to tell them. If that’s at all possible.’ Pause. ‘Stan.’

Stan found the battered and blackened object resembling a piece of root rescued from a bonfire. He applied a yellow plastic lighter with an awesome flame. Smoke gathered around him until he looked like a smouldering scarecrow. Francis took two paces backwards to get away and was starting to speak when a black Mercedes station wagon with tinted windows nosed around the corner of the drive.

‘Oh shit,’ he said.

The car stopped next to Francis’s Discovery. The front doors opened. The driver was a tall woman, thirties, lightly tanned, sleek dark hair to her shoulders, minimal make-up. She was wearing a camelhair donkey jacket, thin cream sweater, jeans and walking boots. The passenger was in his late fifties, stocky, pale, small features, dark suit, tired eyes. He ran fingers the colour of chicken sausages through his thick grey hair and loosened his striped tie.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Why isn’t it snowing?’

Francis coughed. ‘Leon,’ he said. ‘Anne. Good to see you. Filthy weather, I’m afraid. I’d like to introduce Stan Harrop. He’s one of my associates with a special knowledge…’

Leon Karsh ignored this and came around to shake hands with all of us, starting with Flannery. ‘Leon Karsh. Thanks for your help here.’ Soft voice, unusual accent, upper-class English over something else. When he got to Stan, he said, ‘My wife tells me you were responsible for Faraway in Bowral. I knew the family. Wonderful garden.’

‘Responsible, no,’ Stan said. ‘I was the maintenance man.’

Leon Karsh smiled. ‘Excellent maintenance, then.’

‘Thank you,’ Stan said.

‘What I’m trying to do here, Leon,’ Francis said, ‘is to recapture the essence of the original garden without necessarily being constrained by the more obvious limitations of the original designer’s vision. To do that…’

‘What limitations are those?’ said Stan.

Francis gave him a look, a laser beam of hatred. ‘To the trained eye,’ he said, ‘it’s obvious that the absence of a central axis…’

‘To the trained eye,’ Stan said, ‘there is a central axis. Mac, explain. I’ve got to get these expensive craftsmen back to work.’

It was amazing to me that Stan had managed to work for other people for so long. I fetched the plan and the copies of the photographs from the truck and laid them out on the tray. Anne Karsh was at my left elbow, Leon Karsh at my right. I could feel Francis behind me, trying to see over my shoulder. Anne smelled faintly of rosemary and cinnamon, a clean smell.

I said, ‘The garden was designed around 1885 by an Englishman called Robert Barton Graham for the Peverell family. The Peverell brothers were on the Ballarat goldfields until they realised there was more money in supplying timber and then flour to the miners. They built a mill on the creek here in 1868 and the house later. It was in the family till the 1950s. Lots of them are buried down the road here, next to the church.’

I found the right photograph. ‘This is dated December 1937. Two gardeners clipping a low circular hedge. It’s box. If you look carefully, you can see there’s a circle of hedge inside another circle. Paths run to the centre. A cross of paths.’

Anne Karsh leant forward to look at the photograph. ‘A sort of double mandala,’ she said. ‘One path’s wider than the others.’ A breast touched my arm.

‘Exactly,’ Francis said. ‘Mac has been very useful…’

‘The luck here is the sundial,’ I said, pointing at the photograph. ‘It tells us this picture was taken looking north.’

‘That’s important,’ Francis said. ‘Obviously…’

‘It also tells us the time of day,’ I said. ‘It’s late afternoon. This dark at the top left of the photograph—we couldn’t work that out. That’s because we assumed that the wide path would be the key to the long sightline. You can see the path runs north–south, and that puts the house behind the photographer.’

‘It’s the shadow of the house,’ Anne Karsh said, the pleasure of discovery in her voice. ‘That’s the big chimney.’

I said, ‘That’s right. It made Stan think that perhaps the long axis of garden ran across the front of the house.’

‘Odd thing to do, isn’t it?’ Leon Karsh said. ‘Not that I know anything about garden design.’

‘You have an instinct for form, Leon,’ Francis said. ‘It’s a gift.’

‘It is odd,’ I said, ‘and unlikely, according to Stan. Then we got the aerial photographs.’

‘I insisted on aerial photography,’ Francis said. ‘One of the most valuable tools in the armoury of the garden restoration architect.’

‘Tools in an armoury, Francis?’ Anne Karsh said. Stan was going to like her.

I unrolled the big enlargement. ‘Here’s the house. Here’s the creek. Here’s the old mill. Now, from the length of the house shadow in the old photograph…’

‘You can pinpoint the sundial,’ Anne Karsh said, pointing. She had strong hands, no rings. ‘God, it’s just jungle.’

‘We’ve found it,’ I said. ‘Box and yew trees now. Something else puzzled us.’ I pointed to a large area, bare in comparison with the rest of the garden, to the right of the house.

‘Not a natural shape,’ Anne Karsh said. She bent over the photograph and her hair swung like a silk curtain and touched my cheek. I flicked a glance at her. I wished I’d shaved.

‘Not at all natural, Anne,’ Francis said. ‘Very perceptive of you.’

‘No-one had mentioned,’ I said, that the original house burned to the ground in 1904.’

‘The shape of a house,’ Leon Karsh said. ‘You fellows have done well.’

‘Thank you, Leon,’ Francis said, modestly.

‘The mark of the house still shows because, for some reason, they didn’t finally demolish the ruins until the late 1940s,’ I said. ‘They built the new house as a replica of the old one, but it was too late to change the main axis of the garden. You’ll also have to live with it.’

‘A pleasure,’ Anne Karsh said. I didn’t look at her. I wanted to.

‘Stan’s worked out the focal point of the main axis,’ I said. ‘The main sightline leads the eye to the church steeple in Brixton. You can’t see it now because of those pines planted about forty years ago. Stan found out that while Graham was working on the garden, he also designed the church. Colonel Peverell paid for it.’

‘One cheque satisfied both man and God,’ Leon Karsh said. ‘In that order. Things don’t change much.’

‘So,’ Francis said, ‘you can now appreciate the enorm… the magnitude of my task here.’

‘Can we see what’s happened so far?’ Leon Karsh said to me. I looked at Francis. He was not a pleased person.

‘Go ahead, Mac,’ he said. ‘I have planning to do.’ He turned to Anne Karsh. ‘My dear, you have no idea—the logistics of a project like this resemble fighting the Gulf War.’

The Karshes put on gumboots and I showed them what we’d found so far, including paths, a sunken tennis court and a pond that was gravity-fed through a stone aqueduct from a spring on the hillside behind the house.

‘Where does the water go from here?’ Anne Karsh said.

‘Haven’t got to that yet,’ I said. ‘Probably channelled down to join the creek above the pond that feeds the millrace.’

‘There’s a millrace?’ She checked herself, delighted. ‘Well, since there’s a mill, I suppose there is.’

‘In good shape,’ I said. ‘Locals say the mill produced flour until World War II. The creek’s dammed down there to create a millpond. You open a sluicegate to let water into the headrace.’

‘I’d like to see that,’ Anne Karsh said.

‘Next time,’ Leon Karsh said. ‘The architect should be here. Should have been here before us.’ He turned his weary eyes on me. ‘So you’re a landscape gardener?’

‘No.’

Leon looked at me. Not a glance. A look. In his eyes you could see instinct and intelligence. I was being evaluated. God knows what he saw in my eyes. Attraction to his wife perhaps.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m a blacksmith. I work for Stan when things are slow. Which is quite often.’

‘But you haven’t always been a blacksmith.’

‘Leon,’ Anne said, ‘you’re prying.’

‘That’s right,’ Leon said. ‘I’m prying. My whole life is spent prying.’

‘I’ve done a few things.’

‘And you’re not easily pried. We’ll need an estate manager here when we’re finished. You might be interested.’

‘Bit too independent these days,’ I said. ‘But that might change. I’ll show you what’s left of the walled garden on the way back.’

The architect was waiting at the house, a thin middle-aged man, wispy chicken-feather beard, dressed for an Atlantic crossing in an open boat. With him was a clone, cloned smaller, presumably the assistant architect. In my days among the rich, I’d observed that nothing they paid for came in ones: not lawyers, not gardeners, not architects, not whores. Even their women came with a mother or a sister or a friend, usually fat, often ugly, always resentful.

I excused myself to rejoin the labourers, to go back to my place. Leon shook my hand. Anne said, ‘I’d like to see the mill some time if that can be arranged.’

‘Any time you want to see it, it’s down there,’ I said. ‘It’s your mill.’

‘Mac,’ Leon said, ‘I’ll tell Francis to build in the time for showing Anne the mill. Keep her away from the dangerous places. These old buildings, everything’s rotten.’

‘Any time,’ I said.

I found Flannery and Lew on their hands and knees looking for a path. ‘Glad to see you’re safe,’ Flannery said. ‘Thought you’d slipped over onto the managerial side. Notice that woman’s mouth? Very powerful. Suck the grips off your handlebars. She give you an indication of anything?’

‘Said she found the bloke with the pie gravy running down his chin irresistible. Turned her on.’

‘I’ve heard it can do that,’ Flannery said. ‘Chittick’s pie.’

At the end of the day, we had a few beers at the Heart of Oak and then I went home, dog-tired, still hurting from Saturday’s football, sick at heart about Ned.

It was Lew’s turn to make the meal. I poured a big glass of red wine and went out to the office to finish making out Allie’s invoices. There was a note from her on the desk:

You are my No 1 football hero. Can I wash your jumper, anything that has been close to you? On second thoughts, perhaps not anything. To business. You’ll see I’m booked up tomorrow but can give you a hand with the, um, gateposts on Wednesday. See you tomorrow evening. Your devoted fan, Allie.

Something was nagging at me as I worked. November 1985. Ned and Dr Barbie. The depressed Dr Barbie. Barbie the skier.

Skiing.

I stopped writing mid-invoice and looked up Irene Barbie’s number. She answered on the second ring.

‘Irene, Mac Faraday. Sorry to bother you at night.’

‘That’s all right. I’ve been thinking about our conversation.’

‘I want to ask you about Ian and skiing.’

‘Yes.’ Puzzled.

‘When did he give it up?’

‘When? Oh, I’ll have to think—um, it would have been around 1986 or ’87.’

‘You said he went to Europe or Canada every year. What time of the year?’

‘Usually from mid-November. He’d get back in time for the start of the school holidays.’

‘You wouldn’t be able to say whether he went in November 1985, would you?’

‘I’m sure he did. I can find my diary if you want to hold on.’

‘Take as long as you like.’

I drank some wine and waited, feeling the tension in my neck and shoulders.

Irene Barbie was back within three minutes.

‘Mac? Still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘One second while I…’

I held my breath.

‘Left for Canada on November 13, came back December 5.’

I breathed out. ‘You’re sure that’s 1985?’

‘Oh yes. This is from my diary. Can you tell me why you want to know this?’

‘I’d like to talk to you again,’ I said. ‘If that’s possible. And I’ll tell you then.’

‘Ring me,’ she said.

I set off to get another glass of red. The pain had left my body. I felt a sense of relief and elation.

Marcia Carrier was lying about Ned and Ian Barbie.

Berglin traced Melanie Loreen Pavitt to an address in Shepparton, out where the neat town begins to fray. You drive past the restumped houses, disciplined yards, steam-cleaned driveways, tools hung on pegboard in swept garages, retired men in caps, full of empty purpose. Then the brick veneers, low, brown, ugly, lawns shaved, big windows blinded. At the end of the concrete drive, fixed to the two-car garage, a hoop. It waits for the sad boy to come home and throw the meaningless ball, pass the time until summoned to eat the processed food, watch the manufactured world, sleep.