Thornwood House (34 page)

Whatever she’d been about to say was cut off mid-breath by the abrupt honking of a car horn. Down on the dark verge, the Toyota’s headlights flashed. Then it rolled away along the service road, soon engulfed by the black trees. An instant later Bronwyn pounded up the stairs, her cheeks glowing crimson against the pallor of her face.

‘Mum, Jade’s going to the school camp next Friday, too. I can’t wait!’

‘Goodnight!’ Corey bellowed from halfway along the path. ‘See you midweek, if not sooner.’

Before I could reply to either of them, Bronwyn had escaped past me into the house, and Corey was clambering into her Merc, honking the horn as her brother had done, then roaring away along the access road.

I watched her headlights press through the morass of shadows, visible one moment, swallowed the next by the impenetrable black moat of bushland that enclosed Thornwood and safeguarded it from the outside world. I stood in the silence, letting the echoes of the evening float back: the conversations, the warmth, the outbreaks of hilarity. Even the sombre tone it had ended on.

After the chaos of my nomadic life with Aunt Morag, I’d come to crave stability. And yet I’d always been drawn to people who were edgy and unpredictable. Artists, musicians, poets. Outsiders who were shadowed by a darkness that was indefinable . . . yet strangely alluring.

Like Tony. Except that he’d been the best of both worlds – or so I’d first thought. Level-headed and practical. An inspiring
companion, a considerate lover. Organised and ambitious, in control of his world. And yet the moment I scratched the surface a very different sort of man emerged: prickly and secretive, plagued by nightmares and long bouts of silence. In the end the chasm between us had proved too vast.

After he left, I consoled myself that inexperience had caused me to overlook the obvious: Tony was an artist, and by his very nature he was unpredictable. I’d made an error of judgement . . . next time I’d be more careful.

Only there hadn’t been a next time. I’d been alone for five years, without so much as a glimmer of interest from the male species. In that time, I’d formulated and honed a vision of my ideal man: A quiet accountant-type without the merest hint of artistic ability. Trustworthy, reliable . . . perhaps even a tiny bit boring. For surely that was better than a man who promised to be there forever, and then ran off and married someone else?

I recalled the image of Danny Weingarten’s face in the lantern light. His handsome features burnished gold, his gorgeous green eyes, his lingering smile. I remembered the spellbound way he’d watched his sister relate a tale from their childhood; and then the way he’d studied me as though trying to fathom what went on under my skin. I recalled the question mark that had given me tingles in the rose arbour, and the tug of desire that had woven its forbidden magic around my heart.

I sighed and turned away, eager to be back inside.

It had taken me a long time to find myself after Tony walked out.

However tempting it might be to stray from the path in search of chaos and excitement, I had no intention of ever getting lost again.

A
fter they’d gone, I did a quick clean-up. Nick Cave crooned in the background, his beautiful
Nocturama
lulling me into a reflective mood. I did the dishes and then, still basking in the afterglow of the evening, filled a saucepan with water and set it on the stove to boil.

Soon, wafts of steam were dampening the air. The final leaves of Glenda’s diary took longer to peel apart than the earlier ones. Starting at the back cover, I worked my way to the centre of the book. I was disappointed to find that most of the remaining pages were blank. Most . . . but not all. With luck, there’d be an entry that related the outcome of Cleve’s violent attack on Hobe Miller.

As I crept along the hall past Bronwyn’s room, I paused to listen. All was silent. I knew she wasn’t sleeping, she’d still be too manic. I heard the rattle of a page and guessed she was immersed in a book.

On silent cat-feet I hurried down the hall to my bedroom, eager to catch up on a little reading of my own.

Saturday, 11 October 1986

One week since Dad’s attack on Mr Miller. Dad’s been charged with assault. His court hearing comes up in three weeks. He
keeps reassuring us he’ll just get a fine . . . but I can’t see how you can attack and hurt someone with a knife, and not go to jail. I’m scared. Scared for Dad . . . and, I’m ashamed to say, a bit scared OF him now. He’s changed since that day. Become distant, somehow. I think maybe he’s scared too.

Nearly five weeks since my fight with Corey. She’s still not talking to me. What started as a stupid misunderstanding has now ballooned into an awkward mess, each of us too proud to admit we were both wrong. I suppose the kiss wasn’t all that bad. If I’d known I was going to lose her over it I’d have bloody well kissed her back.

It’s her birthday next Sunday. I’ve gotten her a book, one we both loved as little kids,
The Magic Pudding
by Norman Lindsay. Daggy, I know, and I probably won’t get the chance to give it to her . . . but I so wanted to see her face light up and hear her laugh again, and I miss that silly snort she does that always cracks me up. I wrapped up the book and wrote a card, but I guess now it’ll just languish away in my bottom drawer forever. Sigh.

Sunday, 12 October 1986

This morning I went to Grandfather’s, dunno why, just moped along the trail in that direction, mulling things over, trying not to cry as I worried about Dad and what he’d done to Mr Miller.

The wildflowers are beginning to bloom. Tony’ll be up there soon, sketching and painting – though he hasn’t done much artwork since Dad took us to the Millers’. He escapes from the house more often than usual, but I know it isn’t to draw or paint. He was friendly with the Millers, and I don’t reckon he’ll ever forgive Dad for what he did.

It was a scorcher of a day so I stopped at the gully for a drink of creek water. By the time I got to the hollow tree at the edge of Grandfather’s garden, the sun was blazing and I started wishing I’d stayed at home. I had a headache from crying, and
it depressed me to see Grandfather’s garden so neglected and overgrown.

I was pondering whether or not to turn back, when I saw someone up ahead.

A man. He was carrying something in his hand. A fold of paper, it looked like. Too late I recognised him. My stomach dropped, there was no time to escape into the bushes and hide. I froze in my tracks. He’d seen me.

‘Glenda – ?’ Mr Miller’s voice was ragged as a crow’s. ‘I’m sorry, lass . . . so terribly sorry. My brother told me you and Tony saw what happened – ’

He was babbling like an insane person, but that wasn’t what scared me. His head was bandaged, the strip of gauze twisted skew-whiff over his eye. The dressing was stained with dry blood, pink in patches, sunken over his socket. His face was pale and shiny with sweat, his whiskers stark white, his hands trembling. He looked wasted, barely human, more like a zombie than a man.

‘Give this to your mother, will you – ?’ He flapped his bit of paper, urging me to take it. ‘Just a note to let her know I’m all right. Will you give it to her, lass?’

I cringed away. He didn’t look all right. His voice trembled even worse than his hands, and he smelled of Dettol and fire-smoke, maybe a bit sweaty. He was acting all doddery and frail, no doubt on account of his injury.

The injury inflicted by my father.

I took a shuffling half-step back, and when I realised he wasn’t going to follow me, I turned tail and ran. All the way home, gasping for air as though my lungs had shrunk to the size of peanuts. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t let myself think. It was only when I reached the safety of the paddock next to our house that I allowed a couple of hot tears to splash over my lashes and down my cheeks.

I stumbled inside. Luckily no one was home – Dad gone fishing, Mum rostered at the hospital, Tony . . . God knows where.
I chucked my clothes in the hamper even though they weren’t dirty, and got in my pyjamas, crawled into bed and pulled up the covers. The heat was wretched, but I didn’t care. Better to sweat it out in bed, burn my tears into the pillow, pretend I’d come down with something contagious – anything was better than letting myself think.

I kept seeing him, though – his pasty white face, his shaky hands. His hair standing on end like the hair of a crazy person. One eye blue as a shard of sky, the other hidden behind a pink-stained bandage.

Burying my head under the pillow, I shut my eyes. Something was very wrong. Mr Miller had always been kind to me and Tony, back in the early days when we used to take the chutney. What had he done to make Dad hate him? Why had he been so upset about us seeing the attack . . . and why had he written a note to Mum to say he was all right?

The note.

I sat up. Looked around for a hanky, then wiped my nose on my sleeve. Thinking back to the day of the attack, I remembered how Dad had been yelling at Mum, waving around a sheet of paper. Then out in the yard he’d shown the paper to Tony: ‘Did you deliver this for your mother?’

In all the fuss, I’d forgotten – but the memory crashed back to me now. Mum had given an envelope to Tony the day I’d been spying on him from the verandah. An envelope and – I’m pretty sure – she’d given him some money too. Inside the envelope was a letter . . . a letter which had somehow found its way to Dad.

A strong gut feeling came over me. If I could find that letter, the one that’d made Dad so upset, then I knew it’d explain why Dad had gone ape-shit and attacked Mr Miller.

Of course, Dad might have burnt the letter, or thrown it away – but I didn’t think so. He’s a hoarder, a real squirrel when it comes to mementoes or keepsakes, his little bits of evidence
from the past. He’s got boxes and jars and tins of things stashed all around the shed: rusty bolts, broken bits of machinery he was still getting around to fixing, old bike wheels, a collection of ancient Coke bottles. Mouldy stamp albums that had belonged to Grandpa Klaus, packets of seed, coins and paper notes from before the war.

If Dad had hidden that letter, then I had a pretty good idea where it might be.

‘Mum – ?’

I jerked upright. The diary toppled from my lap and thumped onto the floorboards. Bronwyn was peering through the crack in my bedroom door, pyjama-clad and rumpled, sleepy-eyed. Her eyes sharpened, however, as they focused on what I’d dropped.

She gave me a questioning look, then said, ‘It’s late. I saw your light on, I wondered what you were doing.’

‘Just revising my sign language lessons.’ Retrieving Glenda’s diary from the floor, I tossed it onto the bed among the jumble of Auslan manuals. ‘Off to bed now, are you?’

She scowled, her gaze darting past me to the pile. ‘I thought you said it was boring?’

‘What? Oh, you mean this?’ I laid my hand on the diary’s buckled cover, ashamed when the first thought that came to mind was another lie. I shrugged it off, groping at least for a fragment of truth. ‘I guess I got hooked, after all.’

‘Did you manage to find out who it belonged to?’

Dragging in a breath, I looked my daughter in the eyes and said, ‘Still working on that one.’ Yawning, I tucked my legs back under the covers, settled the sheet around me, and relegated the pile of books to the bedside. ‘Well, goodnight then,’ I hinted. Reaching for the lamp, I flicked it off and plunged the room into darkness.

The moment the door clicked shut, I swung out of bed again and waited, my ears pricked. Faint footsteps padded down the hallway, and I heard Bronwyn’s door rattle. I counted to twenty. Then, grabbing the diary from the bedside, I found my way across the dark room, slipped silently out the door, down the hall, and into the secluded privacy of my studio.