Thornwood House (19 page)

‘What is it?’

‘A little boobook hatchling – cute little fella, isn’t he?’

‘Will it live?’

‘Raptors – that is, birds of prey – are pretty tough. But it’s always hard to tell. Doesn’t look like he’s got anything broken after his tumble from the nest, but I don’t like to take any chances.’ He got up and went down to the Valiant, retrieved a cardboard box from the boot, and hurried back.

‘Why’s its beak opening and closing like that?’ I asked. ‘Is it in pain?’

Hobe placed the box near the little bird. ‘He’s hungry. I reckon once he has a decent feed he’ll be right as rain.’

I didn’t like the bird’s chances. It’s soft feathers looked ruffled, the brown and white markings chaotic, its open beak a sign of distress rather than hunger.

Hobe didn’t seem worried. He pulled a towel from the cardboard box, then placed it over the little owl. With infinite gentleness, he bundled the bird into the box, so all we could see was its round face and huge golden eyes.

‘What’ll you do with him?’ I asked

‘Normally I’d put him back in his nest. Seeing as that’s been destroyed, I’ll have to play mum for a few days, get him vet checked. I’ll make him up a nest box at home and keep him warm, give him a feed on the hour. See if he’ll take a bit of minced grasshopper, a few eyedroppers of water.’

‘Sounds like you’ve done this before.’

‘I might have. Once or twice.’ His lips twitched. ‘I’m a carer for WIRES, lass. You know . . . wildlife rescue?’

I grinned. ‘Bronwyn’ll be keen to know all about that.’

Hobe seemed chuffed. Picking up the box, he stepped from the fig tree’s shade and headed down the slope towards his Valiant. The grass smelled warm as we moved through it.
When we reached Hobe’s car, I huddled in the meagre shade of a nearby eucalypt while Hobe placed his box on the passenger seat and buckled it in.

‘Me and Gurney’ll be back in a few hours,’ he told me. ‘I’ll grab those glass panels and some timber offcuts. Gurney can start on the garden this arvo. Providing all goes to plan, we should be done sometime tomorrow.’

He lingered, apparently reluctant to leave. A feeble chirring sound issued from the box, and he peered in, readjusting the towel. The baby owl let out a mournful hoot, then fell silent.

‘I hope he survives,’ I said helpfully.

Hobe beamed. ‘I’ll bring him back on the weekend. Bronwyn might like to watch me set him loose.’

‘Sure.’

The hatchling gave another worried peep, which made us laugh.

‘You’ll have your hands full,’ I told him, ‘with four new puppies and now a baby owl.’

‘Ah yes, never a dull moment at the Miller residence.’ He regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Listen, Audrey, why don’t you bring young Bronwyn up to the bungalow sometime. She can choose a pup, if she’d like one. Alma’s a great guard dog, and I’d be relieved if at least one of her litter went to a good home.’

My smile faltered. We’d never had a proper pet – unless you counted composting worms, or the hordes of beetles and butterflies and mantises that Bronwyn habitually brought home. She’d given up badgering me for a dog years ago, worn down by my unwavering refusals. But we’d come up here for a new beginning, I reminded myself; maybe it was time for a change of tack?

‘She’d love that.’

Hobe’s brilliant eye danced in the dappled sunlight. ‘Would she, Audrey? Would she really?’ He looked up towards the house again, shaking his head as though marvelling at the sight of it.

I was a little overcome myself. In less than an hour my opinion of Hobe Miller had altered dramatically. Corey was
right, he was turning out to be a bit of a treasure. I wondered how far I could push our newly established familiarity.

‘Hobe? Can I ask you something?’

He was still considering the homestead. ‘What’s that, lass?’

‘Who was Aylish?’

He jerked his head around and stared at me. His brows were furrowed, and his good eye snapped with electric blue light. ‘Young Aylish Lutz . . . Well, she was the one they said Samuel murdered.’

‘Tony’s grandmother?’

‘That’s right.’

A breeze whispered through the grass and curled around my ankles. Hearing Hobe validate my suspicions brought a heaviness to my chest, as though a stone was wedged in there. Aylish had loved Samuel, her letter had made that clear. So how had he come to betray her so brutally?

‘He didn’t, though,’ I heard myself say, ‘did he . . . ?’

Hobe’s brow wrinkled. ‘Who’s to know for certain, Audrey lass?’ he said kindly. ‘The old boy
was
declared not guilty in a court of law, after all . . . maybe the accusations were nothing more than a bunch of old hogwash.’

‘You don’t sound very convinced.’

‘Well, now – ’

‘What makes you think he was guilty, Hobe?’

Hobe looked down the hill. ‘I was just a speck of a thing in forty-six when it happened – so I’m only going on hearsay, you understand. Y’see, young Aylish got herself in the family way, and there was no question in anyone’s mind that the father was Samuel. They’d been thick as thieves for years. They planned to marry, but then Samuel was deployed to Malaya. Got himself captured in forty-two when Singapore fell, and by the time he returned to Magpie Creek he’d changed his mind about marrying her.’

‘Why?’

A wedge of sunlight pierced the fig tree’s canopy and carved Hobe’s craggy face into sharp relief.

‘Samuel was a doctor, a good one from what I’ve heard. He specialised in tropical diseases, and at the start of his service he made quite a name for himself as an RMO – that is, a regimental medical officer. After the war, doctors were in high demand. At least they were in little backwaters like Magpie Creek, and Samuel was keen to set himself up. But there were those who speculated that marrying Aylish would have wrecked his career.’

‘Why would they think that?’

‘Young Aylish was part-Aboriginal, lass. Her father Jacob was a Lutheran pastor who’d run an Aboriginal mission up north in the twenties. He’d fallen for one of the dark lasses there, wanted to marry her. Of course the church refused, but Jacob couldn’t give her up. She bore him a little daughter – Aylish – and they spent the next decade in relative peace. Old Jacob once confided to me that those years at the mission were the happiest of his life. But then tragedy struck. Aylish’s mother died of scarlet fever. Jacob left the mission and brought his little girl with him to Magpie Creek. Raised her good, too. All the old-timers only ever sing her praises, and Jacob, poor old bugger, he worshipped the ground she trod on, so he did. After she died he turned into a shell of a man. Never recovered.’ Hobe shook his head, as if trying to dispel the sadness of what he’d just told me.

I felt it too, a dirty, oppressive sort of sorrow that lodged in the vicinity of my heart and made my lungs ache. But with the sorrow came a fierce curiosity.

‘Where did they find her body?’

Hobe opened his mouth to answer . . . but then went rigid. His face was pale, and his eye grew wide behind the lens of his glasses.

I turned in time to see Bronwyn on her bike flying over the grass towards us. Earlier that morning, before Hobe arrived, she’d been immersed in a school project, head bowed over the
kitchen table threading cicada shells into a sort of macabre daisy chain. I’d half-expected her to muscle in on my discussion with Hobe, curious about a new face, but obviously she’d been too absorbed . . . until now.

Her cheeks glowed from the sun despite her sunhat, and her long hair whipped her shoulders. She beamed at us, lifted her hand off one wobbling handlebar in a quick wave, then veered away from the fig tree and continued down the slope along the service road.

Hobe stared open-mouthed, as though at a ghost.

‘That’s Bronwyn,’ I told him.

She coasted the bike until she reached the overhang of trees at the edge of the road, then looped back uphill and resumed her furious pedalling. It wasn’t until she disappeared behind the house that Hobe finally spoke.

‘She . . . the girl . . . she’s the image of – ’

‘Tony?’ I forced a smile. ‘Everyone says that. They were very close. Not only in looks, but in temperament as well – ’

Too late I realised what he’d been about to say.

Glenda. She’s the image of Glenda.

Hobe’s gaze was still fixed on the spot where Bronwyn had vanished, as though half-hoping she’d rematerialise. The baby owl was chirruping in its cardboard box, but Hobe didn’t appear to notice. To my astonishment, his good eye filled and a single tear popped over the rim and vanished into the rugged terrain of his wrinkled cheek.

‘Well, then,’ he said, brushing self-consciously at his face and throwing a guarded glance at me. ‘I suppose I’ll be off. Best collect those window panes while the day’s still young. We’ll get started after lunch, if that suits you?’

‘Oh . . . sure.’ I tried to shrug off my disappointment. He seemed eager to get away. ‘I’ve got a fill-in job later this morning, a wedding shoot. I should be back mid-afternoon.’

Hobe nodded, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere. There was a stretch of silence as he continued to stare up at the house, then he shook himself, as though out of a daze. He gave a jerky little wave and climbed into the Valiant. The engine growled to life, and a moment later the car was engulfed behind a billowing plume of dust.

For a long while I stood in the fig tree’s sizzling shade, clutching my elbows, listening to the quiet natter of birds. The world seemed so tranquil, so at peace. And so at odds with the havoc raging inside me.

‘Mum . . . ?’

Sneaking my fingers around my ribs, I stared bleakly out at the sun.

Aylish Lutz . . . The one they said Samuel murdered
.

Closing my eyes, I summoned the image of Samuel in the rose arbour: his intense eyes, his reluctant smile, the rigidity in his broad shoulders that might have been repressed anger. Foul-tempered, Hobe had called him. Malicious. When he died, people had sighed with relief.

‘Mum, it’s quarter to nine. We’re going to be late!’

I whipped around to find Bronwyn standing by the Celica. Her school uniform was rumpled, but her shoes had been polished and her hair brushed into a shiny tail.

She stared at me, horrified. ‘You’re not even dressed.’

I looked down. Ratty cut-offs. Threadbare T-shirt. Runners, no socks. It would have to do. I stalked through the grass and collected the keys from Bronwyn’s outstretched hand. As I did, I saw my fingers. Crusts of blood clung to one thumbnail, and the cuticle was a black half-moon. I’d bitten it in the night, in my sleep. Night biting was a habit I’d shaken years ago. When had it crept back?

Diving into the Celica, I revved the engine as I waited for Bronwyn to buckle up. Then I tore off down the service road in an explosion of dust and gravel.

I didn’t much like the picture of Samuel that was taking shape in my mind. I could understand that he’d endured much in the war, and that his suffering must have made it tough for him to re-enter civilian society; but so many ex-servicemen and women had readjusted, so many had thrived. Why had Samuel failed? Worse, to my mind, was the implication that he’d believed marrying Aylish would ruin his career as a doctor. It stung, as though his rejection had been, not of Aylish, but of me.

Clamping my fingers around the steering wheel, I helmed hard against the bumpy road. The Celica kept wanting to get away from me, to skid out of control on the loose rubble, to bounce off over the potholes and take me somewhere I didn’t want to go.

Winding down the window, I dragged in a lungful of warm air. It tasted of pine sap and dust, of grass and flowers. It tasted alive. I drank it in, trying to flush away my thoughts of death, my thoughts of betrayal and murder.

I’d fallen head over heels for Thornwood. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want the past to uproot me, to chase me away from where I belonged. But Samuel’s presence in the house was tangible. He had once walked the same floorboards that my daughter’s soft feet now trod; he had breathed the same air that we now breathed, slept in the same darkness that now settled over us. His blood flowed in my daughter’s veins . . . and his dreams flowed in mine.

If he’d been a murderer, then how could we stay?

The truth was, I couldn’t let myself believe that Samuel Riordan had murdered anyone. Which meant that somehow, if I wanted to continue living here, I would have to find enough evidence to prove, at least to myself, that he was innocent.

The potholed dirt road ended and the tarmac began. The Celica stopped jolting and our ride became smooth. I looked at Bronwyn. She had her headphones on, staring out the window adrift on her thoughts.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, tried to shake free of the shadow that had settled around my heart. Yet it refused to budge. If anything, it was growing darker by degrees.

Aylish and Samuel were starting to feel very real to me. Like family members, or very close friends. I felt keyed up whenever I thought about them, kept having flashes that I’d known them intimately, loved them. It was as if a part of me had flown back into the past to join them, and was now unable to return. I felt lost . . . and utterly, wretchedly, alone.