Thornwood House (52 page)

A man’s watch. A set of keys, a wallet embossed with the initials S.R.

‘They were his grandfather’s,’ Hobe said. ‘Old Samuel had them on him when he died. The police gave them to Luella, but she didn’t want them. She gave them to Tony, and – apart from his paints and papers – those old relics were his pride and joy.’

Thumbing the rusty clasp on the wallet, I let it fall open. My heart nearly stopped when I saw the photo. It was a faded black
and white snapshot of a young woman. She would have been about sixteen, achingly pretty, her oval face framed by long dark hair, her almond eyes alight with mischief.

I knew her. I’d seen another portrait of her just over a week ago, locked inside the dark cavity of the tallboy in the old settlers’ hut.

‘Aylish,’ I breathed.

Hobe peered over my shoulder. ‘No, lass,’ he said. ‘That’s Luella.’

Understanding dawned. ‘Samuel carried her photo in his wallet. To the day he died.’

‘So he did.’

‘He must have loved her, after all.’

Hobe had picked up Tony’s sketchbook and was examining a tiny blue kingfisher vibrantly rendered in pen and ink wash.

‘How could he not love her, lass?’ he said softly. ‘How could anyone not love her? She’s one in a million.’

L
uella was in her garden, a massive sunhat shading her face, her hands swamped in canvas gloves. She waved when she saw my car, met me at the gate, ushered me through, absurdly pleased.

‘Why, Audrey! What a lovely surprise, I was just thinking about you and Bronwyn, wondering when I’d see you again – ’ She frowned. ‘What is it, love? You look peaky.’

‘I’ve just come from the Millers’ place,’ I began, then floundered. On the drive over I’d planned my inquisition; there was so much I needed to know, so many questions aching to be asked. But seeing her concerned smile, catching the glimmer of worry in her eyes, knowing that just beneath the surface lurked the constant threat of more bad news . . . I found myself groping around for an easier, gentler way to confront her.

My voice was tight. ‘Hobe has quite a collection of Tony’s artwork, doesn’t he?’

Luella’s smile faltered. ‘Oh, indeed . . . ?’

Insane, I felt the prick of tears behind my eyes. Then a sudden rush of anger – at myself, at Luella . . . and bafflingly, at Tony.

‘Why didn’t you tell me Tony was Hobe’s son?’ My voice came out all wrong, a twisted sharp thing that I didn’t recognise as my own. ‘Didn’t you think Bronwyn ought to know her own
grandfather? I’ve treated Hobe appallingly, thinking his interest in my daughter was inappropriate, maybe even perverse . . . I’ve just found out that it was because he knew all along that she was his granddaughter, and now I’ve made a terrible mess of the whole thing. How could you, Luella? How could you keep it from us?’

My outburst stunned me, but Luella didn’t seem all that perturbed. With studied care she placed her secateurs on the rim of a birdbath and took off her gloves. Her hands were small and pink, damp. She gave my arm a firm squeeze.

‘I’m sorry, pet. I really am. Every time I’ve seen you and Bronwyn I’ve tried to drum up the courage to tell you both about Hobe. And every time I’ve failed.’

I slumped, the anger gone as quickly as it had come.

‘I was so mean to him, Luella. You should have seen his poor old face.’

‘He’ll get over it.’

‘He told me everything. About how you met when you were young, and he went off to Vietnam then came back half-insane, and how Samuel influenced you to marry Cleve. Then the letters in the tree, and your plan to run away and sell chutney in spite of you being a terrible cook, which I can’t believe because your cakes are just so . . . so – ’ My outburst stalled. Tears pricked my eyes and I had to rub them away.

Luella dug in her sleeve and withdrew a pressed hanky, handed it to me. ‘You and Hobe had quite a morning.’

‘Yeah. I guess we did.’

She sighed, then turned and went along the path towards the house. When she reached the steps, she looked back.

‘Come on,’ she said huskily. ‘I think we need a good strong drink. And I’m not talking about lime cordial.’

Luella poured sherry into tiny frosted glasses. I drained the sickly brew in one gulp, then dipped into my tote and removed
the letter. Passing it across to Luella, I said a silent prayer that she’d understand.

She eyed the crumpled note with suspicion.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s from your mother. She wrote it to Samuel after he returned from the war.’

Luella took the letter, but didn’t unfold it right away. She turned it this way and that, obviously mystified.

‘I found it at the homestead,’ I explained, fumbling to find the right words. ‘Samuel had hidden it behind an old picture frame. I guess he didn’t . . . It was – oh hell, Luella. Please, just read it.’

She studied my face for ages, then got to her feet. I followed her down the stairs and into the shade of a rangy old plum tree, where we sat on a garden seat. The peppery scent of crushed nasturtiums rose around us. Somewhere high in the branches overhead an insect screamed, a prolonged cry that made me shiver.

Luella’s face was pale. She smoothed the note on her knees and began to read.

Silence edged around us, punctuated only by the rollicking melody of a butcher-bird high in the bunya, and the soft creak of the clothesline. The day was balmy, and the sherry had thinned my blood. If my heart hadn’t been skating around so erratically, if my mind hadn’t been whirling, I might have curled up in the warm grass and drifted into a weary daze.

Luella folded the letter and sat back. ‘It’s dated the day of her death.’

‘Yes.’

‘She said she was taking someone to meet him – someone special. Do you think she meant . . .’ She gave a dry cough. ‘She meant me, didn’t she.’

‘I believe so.’

Tipping back her head, she peered at the sky. Her plump throat was satiny smooth and her face composed. I could tell – by
the tremor of her lips, and the pink in her cheeks – that she was hovering in the eye of an inner storm.

‘I don’t remember her,’ she said. ‘Not well, at any rate. After she died, I used to pretend that little Lulu had gone to heaven with her, and that I was a different child. I even insisted that Poppa start calling me Luella, rather than . . . oh – ’

The storm broke. Luella’s face crumpled and tears began to rain. I hesitated . . . but only for an instant. Gathering her against me, I held her while she sobbed. She was a large woman, tall as well as fleshy – but there in the shade beneath the plum tree she felt frail and insubstantial, a small girl weeping inconsolable tears for her lost mother. I held her close, patting her back, soothing her as best I could with wordless sounds, the way I used to soothe my own child.

She pulled away, gave me a watery smile.

‘You know, when I said before that I don’t remember her, it wasn’t quite true. I suppose it’s safer to store my memories away, lock them where they can’t hurt me. But Audrey, there are glimpses. Flashes here and there, like bits of a dream. I remember being in this leafy clearing, a fairytale place where the trees were full of birds. And Mumma reciting all their names – whistlers and butcher-birds, scrub wrens, flycatchers. And I remember that she always seemed sad. I don’t mean depressed, but there was often a shadow behind her smile. Except for this one time when she glowed with happiness.’ Luella looked into my eyes and tried to smile, but a tear rolled over her lash. ‘It was the night she died.’

Something uncoiled in me, a dark sort of hope. ‘You remember that night?’

She nodded. ‘It’s hazy, but it’s always haunted me. We’d gone out late, walking along a dark track. I was scared at first, but then Mumma started singing and her voice reassured me. I just remember that she was beaming all the while, as if she was keeping a secret from me. We walked a long way. I never
knew where we were going. I realise now that she was taking me to meet . . . to meet Samuel.’ She peered at me through damp lashes. ‘One part of the memory is even hazier, but it’s the part that haunts me most. You see, I saw a face in the trees that night. A big pale face, like a ghost. It scared me . . . and I ran away.’

In the stillness, the insect in the branches above us shrieked again. I found myself remembering Bronwyn’s story about the cicada hunter. Right then I felt like an ill-fated cicada at the mercy of a hunter-wasp; ridden along by the force of my curiosity, unable to help myself yet dreading where it must lead.

‘Luella, did you recognise the face? Was it someone you knew, a friend of your mother’s?’

She gave a strangled laugh. ‘Lord, no. It was horrible, a nightmarish thing like a goblin or a ghost. Mumma used to sing songs about ghosts and bush spirits and tall white devils that came out at night with their firesticks. She was part-Aboriginal, you see. Poppa had established a little mission up near Townsville, after the first war. It had started out as a school but grew from there. My grandmother was his oldest student, very bright, she used to help with the younger kids. She and Poppa fell in love. They wanted to get married but the church said no. So they lived together in secret until my grandmother’s death from scarlet fever in 1933. Much later, after we lost Mumma, there were those in the town who were cruel enough to suggest that her death was God’s way of punishing Poppa for his sins . . . although how anyone could consider love a sin is beyond me.’

I nodded distractedly. The face Luella had described was haunting me. The face of a goblin or a ghost, she’d said. A childhood memory that had sprung into being decades before I was born . . . So why did I feel as though
I’d
been the little girl in the bush that night? As though I’d been the one startled by the monster? And why could I conjure so clearly the image of a big pale face haunting
my
dreams?

Ridiculous.

And yet I
had
seen that nightmarish face. Not buried in the distant past where it belonged, but recently. Just over a week ago. Peering through the trees, dappled by morning sunlight, pale and moonlike, almost gleaming . . . And it hadn’t been a ghost; the man at the settlers’ hut had been very much flesh-and-blood.

The breach, the chasm I’d been feeling, the sense that I’d overlooked something – shuddered and began to close. I thought about the stolen letters I’d found inside the tallboy at the hut, with its shrine of doll heads and the photograph of Aylish. I called to mind the splintered old axe handle propped inside the hanging compartment, a memento once burgled from a woodshed. I thought of the dark red roses scrambling along the hut’s verandah rails . . . and how they so perfectly matched the ones on Aylish’s grave.

Someone
did
remember her.

And as the gap in my understanding closed further, I realised who that someone must be. But if Cleve Jarman was alive, wouldn’t he have contacted Luella, let her know he was all right?

Unless, of course, he’d been unable to.

Or unwilling.

Spider fingers crawled up my spine. ‘Luella, do you have any photos of Cleve?’

‘I burnt them. Why?’

‘A couple of weeks ago I went up to the old settlers’ hut. Someone was living there. A man. I didn’t get a good look at him, just a glimpse. He was unkempt, as if he’d been living rough for years.’

Luella brushed at her skirt. ‘I don’t quite follow, pet.’

‘I’m wondering if it was Cleve.’

‘It can’t have been Cleve. He died twenty years ago.’

I’d been prepared for her denial, I’d even been prepared to weather another spate of tears. After all, the subject of her husband was surely a sensitive one. I wasn’t prepared, however, for the quiet steel in her voice . . . or for the determined mask
that now shuttered her face. Her eyes gave her away. Below their watery depths I saw a shadow move, a dark shape that might have been panic pushing upwards trying to tear loose.

‘The body they found in the dam could have been anyone’s. Just because police forensics said it’d been submerged from around the time Cleve disappeared, it doesn’t prove it was him.’

Luella blinked. I prayed she wasn’t on the verge of losing it. I was in no frame of mind to give reassurance right now; it was taking every grain of self-control to maintain my own equilibrium.

‘Seeing someone up at Dad’s hut must have been a shock,’ she said gently, as if talking to a child. ‘But this man, this squatter . . . he’s gone now, didn’t you say? Oh Audrey, people come and go around here all the time. Seasonal workers, campers, conservationists – he might have just been a poor old bushie taking shelter for a few months.’

‘There was something about his face,’ I blurted. ‘Parts of his skin seemed to gleam unnaturally in the sunlight.’

A pause. ‘Gleam?’

My heart was sliding about, my palms were moist. I was labouring the point, but I couldn’t stop, not now. ‘Cleve’s face was scarred, wasn’t it?’

‘Cleve did have scarring, but it was barely noticeable, even if you’d been standing up close. Trust me, Audrey – it wasn’t Cleve you saw up at the hut.’ She smiled kindly and patted my arm, then got to her feet. ‘I’ve spooked you with my little ghost story, haven’t I? Oh Audrey, it was a long time ago, nothing more than a childish imagining. Now, come along inside. I’ve got some cheesecake for you to take home for Bronwyn, I know how she loves her after-school treats.’