Lyrebird Hill (22 page)

I stopped. Lucien seemed interested, but there was amusement in his eyes, too. He must have been having a private laugh to himself, thinking me peculiar for traipsing alone into the trees with my sketchpad, and then lecturing him about plants.

I got to my feet, my cheeks beginning to burn. ‘I’m sure you’re not here to discuss unusual flora. Has something happened back at the house?’

Lucien stood. ‘Miss Adele is home. She’s keen to see you.’

A rush of joy caught me alight. I began to retrieve my strewn brushes, while Lucien moved to collect the papers that lay scattered
in the damp grass. Leaf by leaf, he stacked them into a pile. When they were gathered, he didn’t return them to me immediately, but stood with his head bowed examining the top sheet.

I hurried over and took them from him. Retrieving my satchel from the ground, I crammed my papers inside. Then I picked up my pencils and sharpening knife and charcoal, and the wad of fresh bread dough that I used to lift mistakes from the page.

‘You’re very good,’ Lucien said, and there was a tone of awe in his voice. ‘At drawing, I mean. Your depictions are lifelike, yet poetic, too.’

I examined him, seeking evidence of mockery. He didn’t shrink from my attention as he had done before, but stood tall in the dappled light, allowing me to fully observe his fine features and the scar that marred them. He had a regal nose, and a wide full mouth with a tiny splash of freckles along his top lip; more freckles clung to his cheeks and brow, but otherwise his skin was fair, considerably lighter than mine. I saw now that his eyes were not grey at all, but green, a clear strong green – more bright camellia leaf than greyish magnolia. When I looked into the depths I saw they held no sign of mockery; rather, I thought I perceived a sort of shy admiration.

He collected my folding seat, and flattened it and tucked it under his arm. We left the glade and walked back along the trail in the direction of the house.

‘Will you finish your drawing later?’ Lucien wanted to know.

‘Perhaps.’

‘I’d like to see it finished. That is, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘I rarely show them to anyone.’

His eyes widened as if this revelation shocked him. ‘But you have a marvellous talent. It’s a waste to hide it away.’

I pretended not to hear, and picked up pace along the track towards the house, eager to see Adele. Lucien soon caught up with me, taking one stride for every two of mine, peering into my face with open curiosity.

‘Do you ever draw animals?’

‘I’ve drawn antechinus – the little marsupials everyone mistakes for rats – and a few possums. Insects, too. But botanical specimens are my specialty.’

‘What about people?’

I shook my head. ‘I like the honesty of plants. They are exactly what they appear to be – a clump of poa grass, or a delicate orchid, or a tangled sarsaparilla vine. Their beauty is uncomplicated. Nature has its own deceptions, but sometimes that is how it survives. Mankind, on the other hand—’

I stopped. My husband’s face intruded into my mind’s eye. As my tongue found the graze at the corner of my mouth, my thoughts turned bitter. ‘Plants bear you no malice,’ I said. ‘Even deadly ones, like the wolfsbane I was drawing. Its compounds can be used to kill or to heal, but how you use them is of no consequence to the plant. It simply exists.’

Lucien smiled, his gaze full of green fire. The ugly whiplash scar on his face vanished into that smile, and I became aware only of the shining eyes that crinkled at the corners, the dimples bracketing his mouth, the fine cheekbones and brow framed by tendrils of bright red–gold hair.

‘I believe the same is true of horses,’ he said gently. ‘They bear no one any ill will. I’ve spent a great deal of time observing them. If a horse is tricky, I can guarantee you there has been a cruel master in its history.’

I looked at Lucien from the corner of my eye, sensing that there was also a hidden meaning to his words, just as there had been to mine.

‘If I was a great artist like you,’ he went on, looking down at the grassy track we walked away, ‘then I would want to uncover the secret nature of things.’

I gave him a sharp look. ‘What do you mean, secret nature?’

A pink flush crept across his cheekbones. ‘I suppose I mean the spirit in us. The good. The truth that lies beneath the false
face we show to the world. We aren’t like those orchids or vines you talked about. We are complicated. We are joy-seeking beings – and yet we bring harm to one another, lie and mistreat and prey on others’ weaknesses for our own ends. But deception is its own reward. The only ones we truly hurt are ourselves. We get distracted by the mask, and forget that our true nature is love—’

These last sentences were spoken in a raspy whisper, but I clung to each word, enthralled by what he was saying. Once, Mee Mee had related a story about an old woman who killed and ate her son’s young wife. The son was heartbroken because he believed his wife had deserted him, and his mother continued that deception. In the end, the son learned the truth, and banished his mother into the submerged root system of an ancient red gum.

Mee Mee’s meaning had been clear, just as Lucien’s meaning was now clear.

Deception is its own reward.

Lucien stopped walking and gave me a lopsided smile.

‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly. Splashes of colour danced on his cheekbones, glowing against his paleness and clashing with the copper tones of his hair. ‘I’ve run off my mouth and made a fool of myself. Now you see why I keep my own company.’

I ventured a small smile. ‘I enjoyed your train of thought. It’s given me much to ponder.’

He dragged his fingers through his hair. ‘You must think me a firebrand for ranting on that way.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Everyone else does.’

‘I’m not everyone else.’

We stood regarding one another in the dappled sunlight. Adele was waiting at the house and I longed to see her; I knew I shouldn’t dally here in the company of my husband’s manservant. But my head felt so suddenly light, I feared the slightest movement would send me drifting up into the clouds like a feathery wisp.

It wasn’t Lucien’s appearance that held me transfixed to the spot at that moment, but his words. Who was this wild boy who preferred the draughty stables to the warmth and comfort of a manor house? A boy who shrank from society, and yet spoke with such eloquent abandon of delving into the mysteries of human nature?

‘I liked what you said,’ I admitted. ‘I can see sense in it.’

We walked on in silence. I was curious to hear more of his theorems, but already my mind was awhirl. I needed a quiet place to brew over what he’d said, absorb it. To absorb him.

He was no longer the humble stable-hand; he was a young man aglow with passion, his hair on fire, his dark eyes full of the ferocity of the sea. The sight of him, the idea of him, the very existence of him sent shivers across my skin. My spirit rose, soaring free on wings of possibility. For a moment I was as he said, a joy-seeking being in full flight . . .

But then my elation dimmed.

How must I appear to him? Next to Adele I was plain and drab, bookish and thin. I was the moon, while Adele was the brilliant, radiant sun. Anyway, why was I thinking these thoughts? I was a married woman now. For better or worse, I was bound by law to a man I was swiftly coming to despise.

We reached the perimeter of the garden. Shadows crawled among the birches. Through gaps in the tall straight trunks I could see the house, its stone walls glowing pale gold in the sunlight. And there on the eastern face was a tiny rectangular blot of darkness: my bedchamber window.

I said my farewells to Lucien, who set out along the path to the stables, while I hurried towards the house. In the short span of time it took me to reach the verandah, my mood had darkened. My meeting in the glade with Lucien glowed in my mind’s eye like a bright gemstone, full of colour and light – contrasting all the more painfully with my memory of Carsten’s rough treatment of me.

I paused in the shadows to glance back along the path. From this side of the house there was no view of the stable yard, just the copse of birches and the wilderness of garden beds between. Lucien was gone, but somehow he still lingered.

I was dimly aware that a change had occurred. My customary prudence and good sense had broken formation and flapped away like a flock of southbound geese. Outwardly I looked the same, but inside my secret nature stirred. The blood of my mother’s people flowed through my veins; it was wild blood, blood that sang of open spaces and wide starry skies.

Hugging my elbows, I went into the house.

Carsten might take my body and do with it as he pleased, but he would never have my heart.

I found Adele sitting in a patch of sun on the jasmine bench. She was staring vacantly at a book that must have fallen from her lap onto the grass. Her eyes were shadowed by dark circles, and her lips bitten.

I rushed to her and kneeled at her feet. ‘Adele, look at you. You’re clearly unwell.’

She shook her head and went to speak, but instead began to cough. Drawing out a handkerchief, she covered her mouth until the fit subsided. Finally, she looked at me with glassy eyes.

‘I’ll be better tomorrow once I’ve rested. The journey back from Launceston always tires me. Will you sit with me awhile?’

It troubled me to see her ill, yet I sensed again that she did not wish to speak of what ailed her.

‘I shall do better than that,’ I told her, retrieving her fallen book.

It was an English translation of
Aucassin and Nicolette
, a charming French tale to which Adele had recently introduced me. The cover was printed in red and black on Japanese vellum,
and the etched title page displayed a headpiece of sea creatures holding a tiny book between their entwined tails.

I opened to the page we had marked, and began to read.

Nicolette came to the postern gate, and unbarred it, and went out through the streets of Biaucaire, keeping always on the shadowy side, for the moon was shining right clear, and so wandered she till she came to the tower where her lover lay. The tower was flanked with buttresses, and she cowered under one of them, wrapped in her mantle. Then thrust she her head through a crevice of the tower that was old and worn, and so heard she Aucassin wailing within, and making dole and lament for the sweet lady he loved so well.

I stopped reading, overcome with emotion. Beside me, Adele had slipped into her own reverie, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her breath whispering in and out of her in soft sighs.

At the far edge of the garden, the sun sank towards the horizon. Shadows crept along the pathways, moving stealthily across the grass towards the jasmine bench where we sat. When the dark came down and I could no longer see the page, I closed the book and rested my head back on the vine-covered lattice. I recalled Lucien’s words as we walked along the trail from the glade, and despite the beauty of what he’d said, a deep melancholy filled me.

Deception is its own reward.

In my heart, I felt the truth of his words; but it was a bitter truth, a truth that made me despair. I was riddled with deceptions. The lie behind which I hid my Aboriginal heritage; the false facade of my marriage. And now, most dangerously of all, my growing feelings for a man who could never be mine.

Happiness isn’t an elusive grail to be pursued; it’s simply a choice you make.

– ROB THISTLETON,
EMOTIONAL RESCUE

Ruby, May 2013

‘H
ow about that bath?’ Pete settled back beside me on the verandah seat. ‘I’ve just checked the water, and it’s nice and hot.’

The brandy had taken the edge off my shock after hearing about Esther, and the tea had revived my spirits; even so, I felt weary and grubby from my night in the car and consequent trek through the mud.

‘A bath would be perfect.’

I stood up, expecting to follow him along the verandah and back into the house, but instead he headed downhill across the garden. Mystified, I followed. When I’d lived here as a kid, Mum had boiled water on the gas cooker in the kitchen and bucketed it into an antique hip bath that had once belonged to Grampy James. I assumed that, after Esther moved in, she would have overseen the building of a new bathroom.

As it turned out, that was exactly what she’d done.

We walked down the hill a short way, then followed a narrow path into a grove of grevillea until we came to a small clearing. The clearing was surrounded on all sides by thick walls of bottlebrush, and cast into dappled shade by a lofty apple gum. In the centre was a huge claw-footed bathtub sitting on a base of granite pavers. Over the tub was a huge old shower rose, connected to a mad tangle of galvanised pipes and gate valves and pressure gauges. The pipes led uphill to a 44-gallon drum resting on a steel frame. Under the drum smouldered a wood fire, drifting smoke up into the clear sky. Further uphill was a rainwater tank, from which ran more pipes leading back downhill to the drum.

‘Esther’s donkey burner,’ Pete explained, indicating the drum. ‘A wood-fuelled hot-water system, courtesy of the river and a bit of ingenuity.’ He went across to the tub and wrenched on a huge brass tap. Steaming water gushed out and the bath began to fill.