Thornwood House (47 page)

I sprang back, tearing from his embrace. Stumbled as my injured leg tugged its stitches and began to hurt in earnest. Loose rubble skated beneath my ill-placed boots.

One wrong step . . .

Danny grabbed my arm. I regained my balance and yanked from his grasp. The shock on his face turned to confusion, then understanding.

It’s okay.

I looked at him. Couldn’t speak, so signed,
No
.
Not okay.

Danny’s eyes were dark, reflecting my own bewildered longing, my confusion . . . but I couldn’t have ventured back to him had my life depended on it. My brain was slamming down on what had just happened, pinching off sensation and warmth in a bid to recover what remained of my protective shell. I wanted to curse myself. I should have seen the signs: the Auslan books and DVDs, the smitten giggling in the rose arbour, the interest with which I’d listened to Corey relate stories about him. Worse, the silk blouse . . . and heaven help me, the perfume.

I had to turn away, and it seemed the only direction to go from here was down. But I took the uphill track, cutting across the stony plateau and pushing through tea-trees and straggly brigalow, heading blindly and inevitably into the scorching sun.

By the time we entered the settlers’ hut clearing, my fear had dissipated, leaving in its wake a burning sense of embarrassment. I could hear Danny’s footfall crunching through the dry grass behind me, and I wanted to turn around and explain that I was scared of losing myself again, falling into a love trap that would most certainly – for me, at least – end in more heartache. But I’d made such a botch of things already that I decided it was best just to move on.

As we neared the old hut, I noticed how empty it seemed.

The battered cane chair was still propped at one end of the verandah, and the door hung ajar as it had the day I’d come here alone, but the place no longer had the feel of being inhabited. I stopped at the foot of the steps and let Danny go ahead of me, already knowing what we’d find inside.

The derelict furniture remained, but the squatter had removed all other evidence that anyone had been living here. The mattress was bare of its army blanket, and the meat safe was no longer home to mouldy bread and jam. The candles, books, enamel cups and plates were all gone. Only the fusty smell of earth and stale body odour lingered. Leaves and twigs and bush detritus littered the floor and there was a dustiness to the place, as if the hut door had hung ajar for years inviting in the calling cards of windstorms, gales, cyclones; as if no one but possums and birds and the occasional lizard had set foot here for decades.

I stood in the doorway, watching Danny look around. He rattled open the tallboy, empty now of its shrine, the hanging compartment cleared of its gruesome memento. The squatter
had surely noticed the box of letters missing, and I wondered how he was feeling about that. Annoyed, that someone had taken them . . . or just glad to have escaped his unlawful occupation of my property without confrontation?

I wondered if he’d known that Samuel and Aylish had used the hut as a secret trysting place – then amended that thought; of course he had, he would have gleaned that from their letters. I looked around with fresh eyes. Would Aylish recognise the hut now? How would she have felt to know that sixty years after her death, someone lived here . . . worse, that he’d been in possession of her private letters and the photograph she’d once given to Samuel?

I could only speculate about how the letters had come to be at the hut. A young Cleve might have stashed them here after Aylish died, fearing they’d be found in his possession . . . and probably guessing that Samuel would shun the place for the memories it held for him. For years the letters had lain here, gathering dust in some hidden nook, only seeing the light of day when the unsuspecting squatter had discovered them.

Yet something niggled. What about the roses? Was my gut feeling totally haywire, or was I right in thinking that the luscious red blooms twining up the verandah rails at the front of the hut were the same as the ones on Aylish’s grave?

I went outside and down the steps. The roses had withered in the harsh sun, but I bent to sniff one anyway. The scent was dusty and faded, and yet unmistakable. A dark red perfume with a hint of cinnamon.

Danny thudded down the stairs and stood beside me, writing in his notebook.

Your friend has flown the coop. Covered his tracks. Wants us to think he was never here.

‘Why?’

Maybe on the run from law. Or maybe an old bushie who likes to leave no trace.

He wasn’t meeting my eyes. He seemed wary of me now. No longer flirty, but serious, almost businesslike. Not that I blamed him. I’d been giving him the signs – learning his language, digging out my prettiest blouse for the barbecue. Perhaps even, in my clumsy manner, attempting to flirt back. But the moment things got interesting, I’d run for the hills.

He touched my arm to get my attention, and crooked his finger for me to follow. I trailed him around to the back of the hut, past the water tank. The forty-four-gallon drum was upended, the woodpile cleared. The ground around it looked swept.

He was here a while
, Danny signed.

‘How can you tell?’

He indicated where the old guttering had been patched with a piece of tin, and then gestured at the roof where I could just make out the lighter shingles.

‘He’s done repairs,’ I realised.

Danny nodded, then busied himself with further investigations, examining the water tank tap and then going over to look at a mound of tangled vines. I wondered if he was thinking about Tony, and their childhood exploits together. Tony had been a loner, happy to escape into his artwork, but I was patching together a picture of his friendship with Danny. They’d been like brothers, Corey had said. Joined at the hip, always in trouble. I could see them clearly, Tony with his saucer eyes, and Danny with his unruly mop of hair. Warmth crept in. My heartbreak over Tony had been severe, almost crippling at times . . . but I’d survived it. And my survival proved that I was now stronger – didn’t it? I recalled how easy it’d been to melt into Danny’s arms up at the rocky plateau, and how his embrace had felt so deliciously right, so tempting . . .

I turned away, retreating to the perimeter of the clearing, heading off in search of my Minolta. The old camera was no doubt damaged beyond help, but it had been a faithful old friend and I wanted it back.

Ducking into the tea-tree thicket I’d stumbled through before, I picked my way across the rocky ground until I located the smooth-skinned red gum I’d clung to during the attack. Walking in ever-widening circles, I searched outwards, lifting clumps of lomandra and toeing root hollows, scanning the leaf-litter and wandering downhill a way, all to no avail.

Back at the hut, I found Danny still poking around out back. He’d pulled aside the mound of vines to reveal a low circular structure that looked like the top few feet of a buried water tank. Rather than corrugated iron, the tank’s walls were made of timber, thick planks set vertically in a deep round hole. It was topped by a huge flat lid constructed from thick boards bolted to a circular frame.

Danny was writing in his notebook.

It’s the original water catchment, very old. The early settlers dug straight down into the soil, lined it with timber like a well. Me and Tony used to drag the cover off, climb down inside. Heaps of fun, but if rain came, it filled fast. Our parents would’ve had a fit if they’d known.

I smiled at this. Feeling brave, I touched Danny’s arm to draw his attention. ‘I’m sorry about before.’

He looked at me for a long time. I started to think he hadn’t understood what I’d said, and that perhaps I should take his notepad and write it down for him, though of course that would lack the apologetic warmth I’d tried to convey in my smile . . .

Danny cupped the side of my face with his fingers, pressing his thumb ever so lightly against my lips. He didn’t quite smile, but dimples appeared and he winked – which made the blood flutter through my veins and my knees go to jelly. Then, without another word, he headed off across the clearing.

I stared after him. Wondering, all over again, why he always left me feeling so dangerously, so excitingly, out of my depth.

T
he following afternoon, dosed up on Panadol to calm my throbbing leg, I pulled up outside the school gates to wait for Bronwyn. I spied Danny’s black Toyota truck parked further up the hill beneath a poinciana tree, adorned with fallen crimson flowers . . . but I slid lower in my seat, content to hide out. Our botched kiss at the rocky plateau had stirred feelings that I was still trying to untangle, and I wasn’t yet ready to face him again.

Bronwyn appeared through the crowd of students and teachers. She hugged Jade and said goodbye to a group of other kids, then hurried towards the car. She waved happily when she saw me, and I had to swallow a lump of sudden emotion. Flinging open the car door, she deposited her rucksack on the back seat, and gave me a quick peck. She was tired and dusty and her clothes were muddy and grass-stained . . . but her face glowed and she was brimming with stories.

Rather than our usual dinner in front of the telly, we sat at the table and, in between hungry mouthfuls of tacos and salad, she related a blow-by-blow description of her week. The great swimming holes they’d explored, the bush tucker lessons, the night excursions armed with torches to spot possums and wallabies and quolls. She rolled her eyes over the squashed tent she’d shared with Jade and two other girls, and
raved about the prize-winning damper they’d made in a traditional bush oven.

‘Mr O’Malley knows all about the bush,’ she’d gushed. ‘Jade and I reckon he’s like that guy on telly who goes off into the wild eating grubs and stuff.’

‘I thought you couldn’t stand him?’

‘Oh, but he’s turned out to be really cool! He showed us how to make a flying fox and get across the river. And one night he told us these funny stories about Dad and Aunty Glenda, and Jade’s dad and Aunty Corey, all the crazy things they got up to when they were kids. Mum, he’s so funny, you wouldn’t believe half the things he says.’ She sighed happily. ‘What did you get up to while I was gone?’

I recalled my trek into the hills; my discovery of the old settlers’ hut and consequent encounter with the squatter’s dog; I remembered Aylish’s letters and their shocking disclosure about Cleve and the stolen axe handle; I thought about my return to the hut a few days later with Danny Weingarten, and our botched almost-kiss at the rocky plateau . . . And decided that some stories were best left untold.

So I just shrugged. ‘Not much.’

‘What happened to your leg?’

‘A dog bit me.’

‘Mum! How on earth did you manage that?’

I cut us both another slice of mudcake. ‘Just careless, I suppose.’

The Sunday after Bronwyn returned from camp, I drove her over to William Road to spend the day with Luella.

‘I won’t come in,’ I told her as I dropped her off at the gate. ‘Say hello to Grandy for me, won’t you? Be good, and I’ll pick you up at four.’

‘Okay.’ She pecked me on the cheek, grabbed her carryall – today crammed with photos of the school camp – then hurried
along the path and up the front stairs to where Luella waited in the doorway. I gave them both a wave, then threw a U-turn and headed back in the direction of town.

It was cowardly, but I just couldn’t face Luella.

I needed time to absorb what I’d learnt about Cleve; time to prepare myself to look into Luella’s gentle green eyes and hide what I knew. And I needed time to steel myself against the awfulness of it, against the taint that was now seeping through the cracks of Thornwood. I couldn’t even enjoy knowing that I’d been right about Samuel, and right about his true feelings for Aylish.

All I could think about were the empty packing cartons stored under the house, and how much easier it would be just to uproot again and find somewhere else to live.

Somewhere with a little less history.