Lyrebird Hill (12 page)

‘Mee Mee,’ I called.

She looked up and beamed, then got to her feet. Rushing over, she gripped my hand, tugging lightly on my arm as she always did in greeting. She wore a possum skin tied about her waist, and a fine layer of soft powdery dust. Her white hair plumed around her face, and her large brown eyes shone as she examined me.

It only took her a moment to register my feeble attempt at a smile. She spoke to Jindera and they exchanged a few words, then Mee Mee looked back to me.

‘You go away?’ she asked, her voice jagged with alarm.

‘I am to be married.’

Again Mee Mee looked at Jindera, who spoke softly to her at length. When Jindera stopped speaking, Mee Mee looked at me with a cry. Her eyes welled, and huge tears began to spill down her cheeks leaving damp trails on her dusty skin.

I clung to Mee Mee’s hand. ‘I will come back to see you,’ I assured her. ‘I promise.’

Mee Mee mopped her wrist against her eyes, but the trickle of tears seemed unstoppable. Reaching up, she cupped her palm against my face and looked into my eyes so searchingly that my heart wrenched. As I met her dark gaze, I became aware of the stillness, the utter quietude around us, as if the breeze had stopped blowing and the birds were poised without song, and the rest of the world sat frozen in time and only we three remained; I smelled burning on the air, and caught the musty
odour of damp stone; then, faintly, very faintly, I thought I heard the distant echo of screams—

Danger
, whispered my mind.
Bad spirits
.

Jindera spoke sharply, and Mee Mee released my hand. I blinked, and the world washed back around us – the breeze sighed in the treetops, the river murmured along its primordial course. In a nearby tree, a lonely magpie stretched its throat and sent a volley of magical notes into the sky.

I felt Jindera’s gaze on me. ‘This your home,’ she said, her fluty voice firm. ‘You stay here with family, where belong. You tell man, no marry. No cross water to other land.’

‘Oh Jindera, if only I—’

The thud of a horse’s hoofs made us all look around. The group of girls who had followed us up from the river called out and pointed. My brother Owen was approaching in a cloud of dust.

‘Brenna?’ he called shakily.

I was unwilling to cut short my goodbye, but something in my brother’s tone made me regard him more closely. His eyes were huge in his pale face, dark and frightened, and his lips were chalk-white.

‘What’s happened?’ I said.

He dipped sideways off the saddle, then seemed to change his mind about dismounting, and stayed astride.

‘Come quick, Brenna. Aunt Ida’s been taken ill.’

Jindera clutched my arms. ‘Hurry, Bunna. You go now.’

Hastily I kissed her cheek, and clasped Mee Mee briefly and tightly in my arms. Then somehow I was stumbling away from them, my boots thudding on the dusty earth, my vision blurred, my promise ringing hollowly in my head.

I will come back.

Owen hauled me up into the saddle behind him. Harold was already skittering along the track ahead of us, and Owen urged the mare to follow.

I twisted in the saddle to look back. Jindera and Mee Mee now stood in the midst of a small group of women who had gathered when they heard the horse. Jindera was shading her eyes as she stared after us. She was taller than the others, her yellow dress defining her like a column of sunlight; at her side, Mee Mee huddled like a shadow. I stared hard at them through the dust kicked up by the horse’s hoofs, trying to memorise their faces, praying that this would not be the last time I saw them, yet unable to shake the feeling that it was.

‘Brenna?’

My brother’s voice was tight with fear, and it gave me cause to worry. ‘What is it, Owen? How sick is she?’

A tremor rippled through his wiry body. ‘It’s bad. Heart attack, Fa Fa thinks. He’s ridden for the doctor and Millie’s at the bedside. Oh, Brenna,’ Owen’s voice cracked as he struggled out his next words, ‘Fa Fa said she might die.’

Aunt Ida’s bedroom was dark. The curtains were drawn and the air smelled of camphor and smelling salts, and of the bitter herbal tonic my aunt habitually drank.

In the days since her attack, she had been losing strength. Now, she only had the energy to occasionally raise her head and sip the broth Millie made for her.

A cotton nightgown was draped over a chair back, and there was a cup of cold, untouched tea on her bedside. Next to the cup was a glass of lemon water, and next to that a photo of my mother, who had once been Aunt Ida’s dearest friend.

‘Aunt?’

Removing the tea cup, I placed the bowl of broth on the nightstand. Aunt Ida lay motionless on her side, her head sunk deep into the feather pillow. Her face was hidden under a spray of frizzy hair.

‘Aunt Ida? Are you awake?’

A pasty face peered around at me. ‘Florence?’

‘No, Aunt. It’s Brenna. I’ve brought you some broth. You haven’t eaten since yesterday. Why don’t you try some?’

She grasped the coverlet with shaky fingers and drew it to her chin. ‘You might distract me,’ she said, her voice frail. ‘Perhaps a chapter or two from the good book?’

Settling myself in the chair at her bedside, I took up the Bible that sat within easy reach of her pillow. Opening to the red silk tassel she used as a bookmark, I began to read from the Psalms.

Aunt Ida rolled onto her back and shut her eyes. Her face was grey, her cheeks deflated and creased with lines. While I read, her lips moved as though reciting the words along with me. But when I paused to turn the page, she continued whispering.

‘I must tell. I won’t go to the grave with a lie in my heart.’

I leaned closer. ‘Aunt, what is it? What’s troubling you?’

‘Michael is such a stubborn man,’ she rasped. ‘He could put an end to this ridiculous game, but he refuses to.’

‘Aunt, have you forgotten? I’m to marry Mr Whitby. Father’s debts will be paid as a wedding gift.’

Aunt Ida coughed weakly. ‘The fool would rather lose his only daughter than surrender a few acres of his precious Lyrebird Hill.’

‘No, Aunt, you’re mistaken. It was my idea to—’

‘You must forgive him, Brenna. Listen now. What I’m about to tell you might shed light on his actions.’ She reached for the water glass, which I held to her lips. Dabbing the corners of her mouth with her hanky, she beckoned me nearer. ‘Your mother and I were friends,’ she began, then nodded. ‘Jindera, too.’

My ears pricked up. ‘My mother knew Jindera?’

Aunt Ida’s watery eyes regarded me. ‘You are very like her, did you know that?’

I looked at the photograph on the bedside table. My mother had been tall and stout, with a strikingly pretty face. Her hair was so fair it was almost white; she had worn it bunched loosely
at her shoulders, letting it fall in soft waves. Fa Fa used to say her eyes were the colour of bluebells.

I looked down at my hands. I had long fingers like Fa Fa, and skin the colour of tea. My hair was dark, my eyes umber. My father said I had the look of his grandmother about me, her dusky European blood skipping his veins to flow unchecked into mine. Yet it was clear I had inherited nothing from Mama.

Aunt Ida gestured at the photo. ‘Do you remember how she and Michael met?’

‘At the conservation society in Armidale.’

‘I was treasurer,’ she explained. ‘And Florence’s father had been a patron of the society for many years. Florence and I struck up a friendship, and then at one of our fundraising events, I brought my brother along. It was a match made in heaven . . . or so I first thought. I did not know it at the time, but my brother’s affections already belonged to another.’

I held my breath, certain I’d misheard. ‘Another?’

Aunt Ida sighed, struggling to sit up. I propped a pillow behind her, and she smoothed trembling fingers over her frizzy hair.

‘When I was a girl,’ she told me, ‘your grandfather brought Michael and me here from Scotland after our mother died. He acquired this land, and named it after the beautiful birds that lived in the ferny gullies where the scrub was very thick. They were curious creatures, those lyrebirds, mimicking every noise they heard. Then Father started cutting down trees and burning back the scrub, and even imported a herd of robust sheep from his homeland to graze it. Soon, there were no more lyrebirds . . . but that didn’t stop him. The property made him very wealthy, and when he died he left it to Michael. And Michael continued our father’s work, only not as successfully.’

The bedside chair was suddenly too small, too hard. I shifted, trying to get comfortable. ‘What did you mean before, when you said Fa Fa’s affections belonged to another?’

Aunt Ida’s gaze drifted to my face. ‘I was once like you, dear Brenna. I ran wild, developed a passion for the bush. And like you, I had a fascination for the people who lived along the river gully at the bottom of our land. I used to creep out at night, drawn by the blaze of their fires to watch them dance. The songs entranced me, and I was compelled—’ Her voice broke off. I lifted a glass of lemon water to her lips. She drank only a dribble, than wiped her mouth and continued her story.

‘Compelled to join their celebration. I never did, of course, and yet I fancied to myself that the invitation was there. One day, two girls snuck up from behind and captured me. I was terrified they’d expose my spying to their elders, but they were more interested in examining my clothes and hair and especially my fair complexion. They were lighter than the others in the band, and I guessed there must have been some European blood in their lines; they seemed intrigued and pleased by my appearance, and I was equally fascinated by them. They were uncommonly beautiful, with luminous smiles, and minds that were quick and curious. We had no language in common, but slowly we began to learn. Soon, the three of us were steadfast friends.’

I remembered the yellow dress Aunt Ida had washed and ironed with such care a year or so ago, and then bundled into a parcel. I recalled, too, the packets of matches, the damper and fruitcake and bags of walnuts that she sent along whenever Millie visited the camp.

‘Was one of those girls Jindera?’

Aunt Ida nodded. ‘And the other was her sister, Yungara.’

‘
Sister?
’ I sat back heavily.

Jindera had never mentioned having a sister; nor had Mee Mee hinted there had been another daughter. Yet I could not bring myself to question my aunt’s story.
Yungara
. My pulse began to race, and the echo of the name rushed through my blood.
Yungara
.

My aunt smiled sadly. ‘The three of us were drawn together,
as if by an invisible bond. In those days, Michael spent a lot of time away with our father, so I was stuck at home and bored to tears with housework – much like you, my dear. My friendships with those girls saved me.’

My racing blood slowed, and warmth washed through me. ‘Jindera always asks after you. Now I know why.’

‘We were firm friends, Jindera and I.’

‘Then why did you forbid me to see her?’

Aunt Ida shook her head. ‘After what happened to her sister, it became clear to me that our two cultures were not yet ready to share the burden of friendship.’

I stared, seeing not my aunt, but another woman, a stranger. I’d always believed Ida to be stuffy and intolerant of Jindera’s band. For years I had prided myself on disobeying her wishes, escaping to spend time with Jindera whenever I could. I was flabbergasted to realise that I hadn’t been rebelling, after all, but simply following in my aunt’s footsteps.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

A stillness entered the room. I heard finches twittering in the garden, and the distant murmur of the river. I waited for my aunt to speak, and when finally she did, her words were barely audible.

‘Yungara died in 1879.’

A shadow slipped across my heart. ‘That was the year after I was born.’

Aunt Ida coughed and dabbed her lips with her hanky. ‘Jindera and I never spoke again. I told myself it was safer that way. Now, in hindsight, I realise that guilt kept me away.’

‘Guilt?’

‘One day – I was about sixteen by then – I let Michael accompany me to the camp. He was nineteen, a budding naturalist and keen to expand his knowledge of the local area. He had assumed that I visited the camp to study the people and their ancient customs. If only he’d seen the three of us giggling and
gasping and rolling about in the grass like two-year-olds, he would have changed his tune.’ She wiped the dampness from beneath her eyes.

‘Michael was keen to learn something of the people and their ways. But when Jindera and her sister ran out to greet me, I sensed that I’d been wrong to bring him.’

‘Why?’

‘I was young, I suppose. Eager to impress my older brother.’ Thin fingers came up and rested beneath her eyes. She patted the skin there, as if puzzled to find wrinkled pockets instead of the fine plump cheeks of a girl. ‘I had never experienced the glow of love myself, but I was not completely naive to the sight of it in others. The moment your father saw Jindera’s shy, sweet sister, something in him changed. He seemed to puff out his chest and stand taller. From that moment on, he took no notice of what either Jindera or I said. Yungara was very quiet, she was shy – but proud, too.’ Aunt Ida smiled laughed fondly. ‘Well, you know Jindera, the way she watches you with her soft brown eyes, so patient – when all the while she’s thinking what a silly goose you are. Yungara was like that, too.’