Thornwood House (25 page)

Turning from the window, he strode across the room. He checked the fridge was shut, then jingled a set of keys from his pocket and stood in the open doorway looking back at me. He attempted a smile, but his eyes were guarded.

In the space of a morning I’d had a fair bit of practice at reading the signs. Hand gestures, body language, innuendo. This last one came through loud and clear. I was getting my marching orders.

A
rriving back at Thornwood, I parked on the service road and gazed up the rise toward the house. In two days, the Miller brothers had transformed the overgrown yard into something resembling a stately, although still somewhat feral, botanic garden.

Gone were the strangling vines and piles of deadwood and overreaching tree limbs. Clear pathways now wended through corridors of foliage. Emerald hydrangea leaves unfolded from the shadows, and new delights had emerged from the forest of weeds – a huge bird’s nest fern with fiddleheads the size of my fist, and clusters of pink tropical orchids that swayed in the warm air.

My skin tingled as I drank in the scent of cut grass and frangipani. A few months ago I’d been living in a cramped, cold bluestone renovator in gloomy old Albert Park, struggling to pay my heating bills and squirrelling every spare cent into my nest egg. Hemmed in by timetables, appointments, to-do lists.

But here . . . Life seemed expansive. There was peace and quiet, the scent of wildflowers, and cool sweet rainwater to drink. Best of all was knowing that my daughter now had what I’d never had: a safe, permanent home.

There was a definite spring in my step as I went along the path and around the side of the house, heading uphill towards
the rear of the garden, drawn by the lonely whine of a brush trimmer. Pushing through the tangle of trees, I stepped over burst pomegranates and fallen avocados that lay rotting on the path. Halfway up the hill I paused in a shady patch to mop the sweat streaming from my face. The trimmer’s buzz died, and the garden fell to silence.

The sky was brilliant, but the shadows beneath the trees were damp and dark, humming with insect life. I continued on, my footfall muted by the carpet of leaves and pine needles. Soon the brick path petered out, became a dirt trail. A few minutes later I thrust aside a curtain of flat monsterio leaves and found myself on the edge of a trimmed grassy clearing.

In the centre of the clearing grew an immense beech tree, spreading its graceful arms skywards. Dainty blue-and-white flowers hovered above the leaf bracts, smudging the air with sweetness. The trunk was broad, its pale grey bark smooth except for a blackened cave-like opening at its base. The trunk must have been struck by lightning some time ago; the resulting fissure was hollow and large enough for someone to crawl into. From this damaged section of trunk sprouted several ladder-like branches, and I recognised it as the tree in which Bronwyn had found the old biscuit tin. The lowest branch was swaying, its leaves trembling as if in a gale. There wasn’t even the merest puff of breeze. Going closer, I saw I wasn’t alone.

A man had climbed onto the lower branch to lever himself up the side of the tree. He was reaching into the junction between two boughs, his arm plunged to the elbow in a deep knothole.

‘Hobe – ?’

The air seemed to hang suspended, an instant of troubled calm before the storm. He snatched his hand from the hollow and leapt off the branch, clouting his head in the process, dislodging his glasses. Whirling to face me, he let out a surprised grunt. His sapphire-blue eye was wide and curiously naked.

‘Lost something?’ I enquired.

Hobe stepped away from the tree, dusting his palms together, straightening his glasses.

‘Er . . . no, lass. Just checking for possum damage – luckily it’s all under control, nothing to worry about. Lovely old white beech, rare to see one in cultivation like this, shame to think of it at the mercy of the elements. Well, now . . .’

He patted his pockets, located his notebook and made an exaggerated show of ticking something off a list. Collecting his trimmer, he saluted me with a cheerful grin, then made off along the path, down the incline in the direction of the house, vanishing behind the monsterio.

‘Everything else is pretty much done,’ he said, when I caught up. ‘All the trees are pruned back from the eaves and the gutters cleared – a good thing too, could be a storm’s about to blow in . . .’

He waffled on as we trod back down the hill, filling me in on the day’s progress in fastidious detail: The pile of dead branch loppings he’d stacked beneath the house would make excellent kindling come winter. He’d send Gurney back in a few weeks to have another go at the lawn – after years of drought, he explained, if rain did eventuate I’d be able to stand at my window and watch the grass grow. And if it was all right with me, he’d mulch the vegie patch with clippings to encourage earthworms.

I was only half listening.

Possum damage? I frowned over my shoulder. As we descended along the overgrown path, the beech tree’s uppermost branches were visible above the thicker, glossier foliage of mango and wild fig. Its branch tips raked the sky, its leaves shimmered grey-green beneath sprays of waxy blossoms. It had no doubt co-existed happily with possums for a hundred or more years.

I glared at Hobe. His leathery face glowed pink and his scalp shone with sweat. He was halfway through explaining the
procedure for gutter clearing – the correct implement to use, the right way to prop the ladder, and how the leaf dross made marvellous compost tea.

In my mind’s eye all I could see was the giant beech with its pale scaly bark and burnt-out trunk, and the odd ladder-like branch formation sprouting from its flank. I could still see Hobe reaching into the fork of it, his arm sunk to the elbow as he groped around in search of something.

And it wasn’t possum damage.

Another image: Bronwyn sitting on the garden bench before school, her hair a curtain around her flushed face as she tried to prise open the battered biscuit tin.

Pretty, isn’t it, Mum
?

She’d found it in an old canvas haversack, she’d said. Aside from the tin, there’d also been clothes, makeup, a hairbrush. Rotten, all of it; she’d tossed them away, kept only the tin. The tin containing a girl’s diary.

Hobe caught me staring, and grinned.

‘Don’t forget about that puppy,’ he said affably. ‘Tell young Bronwyn she can come over and pick one out any time she likes.’

‘Will do,’ I said fake-brightly, avoiding his eye.

Something was off, and I couldn’t say what. Only that the easy camaraderie I’d shared with Hobe Miller yesterday was gone.

I dashed inside for my chequebook, cursing the dust that puffed off my jeans legs and sandals and sifted onto the floor. As I passed the back bedroom, I realised that I’d forgotten to ask Hobe about Aylish’s grave and whether he knew of anyone, other than Luella, who might want to remember her with roses. It seemed irrelevant; all I wanted to do right now was get rid of Hobe as quickly as possible and pursue the thread of this latest mystery.

I raced down the stairs and into the front yard, catching up with Hobe at the service road. Gurney had finished loading
the mower and rake and pruning saws into the ute’s tray and had secured it all with rope. He now sat in the passenger seat, seatbelt fastened, sweat trickling from his sparse hair. He twisted around as Hobe and I approached, and grinned happily when I thanked him again for the work he’d done. Hobe fastened his trimmer into the tray with the other tools. It was rude of me, but I couldn’t seem to raise the same enthusiasm when I thanked him.

Scribbling a cheque, I tore it off and handed it over. Said goodbye and watched him shamble around to the driver’s side and get in. When he waved, I pretended to be distracted by something in a nearby tree. Then, even before the rusty utility had vanished in a miasma of dust, I was sprinting back across the fresh mowed lawn towards the house.

As with most high-set Queenslanders, the laundry was located downstairs. It was a rustic space, partitioned off from the rest of the under-house area by lattice walls. The stone floor had seen better days, and I was still waiting for the plumber to arrive and install my washing machine taps. The laundry was clean and cool, a shady haven when the heat of the day became too intense. Best of all, my hand-washed clothes were dried in record time by the breeze gusting up from the valley.

I crossed to the sink. There on the edge of the concrete tub was the ruined diary Bronwyn had found. It didn’t look like much: a water-damaged wad, its clasp broken, its cover buckled and discoloured by rust and dirt and mould. I had set it on the sink the other day to wash my hands, intending to salvage it after I’d dropped Bronwyn at school. Then, after my unexpected reunion with Corey and consequent dash to the Millers’, I’d forgotten it.

As I held the diary, I had another flash of Hobe with his hand sunk in the tree hollow, groping around as if in search of
something. A haversack, perhaps. Full of female things – hairbrush, makeup, clothes . . . and an old tin box safeguarding a diary. Hobe hadn’t seemed too bothered to find it gone; he’d seemed more shaken by the fact that I’d caught him looking.

Possum damage indeed.

It wasn’t until much later that night, after the dinner dishes were done and Bronwyn had escaped to her room, that I worked out how best to peel apart the diary’s fragile pages without destroying them. Filling a saucepan with water, I placed it on the stove and cranked the gas. When the water boiled, I took off the lid and let the steam billow out. Then I clamped the diary in the jaws of my barbecue tongs and positioned it over the steam.

The smell of mould invaded the kitchen. The wrinkled wad of paper began to respond. The cover softened. The inner pages grew damp and began to peel apart. When the clump looked pliable enough, I carried the book to the table and sat over it, separating the fragile top sheets with a butter knife.

The first few pages were furrowed, blotched with yellowish water-stains, brittle as bark. Tight lines of neat cursive filled every inch of space; some words were lost beneath mildew, or faded – but most were legible. I leaned closer, drawn by the gravitational force of my curiosity.

KEEP OUT! Private property of Glenda Jarman

Monday, 8 September 1986

Is the whole world mad, or what? I was hoping to start this new diary by celebrating my progress on the romance front. There was just this one annoying incident:

I took Corey down to the creek this afternoon to update her on the new developments with Ross. Or lack of development, which is in itself a topic worth discussing. Anyhow, Corey’s been sulky lately, a real misery guts – I only wanted to cheer her up.
We sat on the embankment, chewing Redskins and drinking Coke. There’s me getting high on the sugar rush, meanwhile Corey’s looking all moony and sad. Setting aside my Coke bottle, I put my arm round her shoulders to ask her – for the gazillionth time – what was wrong, but I didn’t get the chance.

She kissed me.

On the lips, with her tongue, the way I’ve told her I’d like to kiss Ross. Dammit, what was she thinking? Me and Corey have been besties forever, how could she do this to me? Worse, she knows I love Ross, why did she have to go and get all weird?

Sigh. I like Corey, love her I suppose . . . just not like that.

Not like she wants me to.

We haven’t spoken since. I admit I was horrid to her, pushing her away, shouting at her. Shock talking, I guess. Normally when we fight she rings me, only now it’s nearly 11 p.m. and I still haven’t heard. I feel like shit.

Thursday, 11 September 1986

In answer to Monday’s question: Yes, the whole world IS mad. And me? I’m the maddest of them all.

Bloody Tony.

Just found out he’s the reason we’re not going to school camp next week. He fessed up that he accidently (on purpose?) let slip to Mum that I was keen on someone at school – the dork! Him and Mum are thick as thieves, I should have bloody well known not to trust him. He was really sorry, panicking that I’d go ballistic and do something crazy – which I nearly did, but then he gave me a funny little drawing of a bird with Ross’s face and love-heart wings, which was so daggy and annoying of him, but what can you do? He’s a shit sometimes, but a loveable shit.