Evergreen Falls

by Kimberley Freeman

  “Exactly. Lauren, during this health scare, when I feared the worst, I realized something. If I got sick and died, your mother would make you come back. She wouldn’t rest until you were home, and then you’d never be able to leave again. It plagued me, almost more than fear of my own early death plagued me. My Lauren, just starting to bloom so late. She’d take it all away from you and she would never realize she was doing anything wrong; and you would do as she said because you’re a good girl. Such a good girl.” He dropped his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture I was very familiar with. Then he breathed in, lifted his head, and continued. “Promise me that whatever happens, you’ll never ever come home.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “You can visit, of course. You’re always welcome, but if you do, stay at a hotel. Don’t come back to Tasmania to live, and never ever come back to live in that house with your mother. No matter what happens.”

  What a curious feeling I had then: I was being set free. My move to the Blue Mountains had always felt forbidden, something I was expected to get out of my system so I could return to life with Mum. But now, with Dad’s blessing, the world suddenly seemed lighter, wider.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said, kissing his cheek. “I promise.”

  “Right. Well, I’m going to have to head off late this afternoon to catch my flight home, but I thought we could spend the day sightseeing. You can show me around Evergreen Falls.”

  “Ah . . . that’s kind of awkward. I’m supposed to be home sick. If Penny sees me . . .”

  “How about I smuggle you into my rental car, then, and we’ll head back down the range to Leura?”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “Just let me get dressed.”

  * * *

  Dad dropped me home around four and continued on his way to Sydney. My headache had lifted, and I sat down once again with the old guest register and traced the Honeychurch-Blacks’ stay at the Evergreen Spa for 1926. To my surprise, they stayed for months. Page after page of the register listed their names, next to the same room numbers, and all written in the same thin, sharp handwriting. Samuel and Flora. The register gave me no further information, so I grabbed my phone.

  Google did not return any entries for Samuel and Flora, but I did find the Honeychurch-Black family. Old, old, old money. At one stage they owned so much land in New South Wales that they might have made a claim as the state’s sovereigns. There were still Honeychurch-Blacks in Australia, and they were still very rich. As I was writing down a few names my phone tinged with a text message from Penny.

  Coming by with leftovers. Not taking no for an answer.

  I smiled. My stomach was gurgling with hunger. I hoped she had banana bread.

  “Hey, sickie,” Penny said when I opened the door to her ten minutes later. “I’ve got tabouleh, a turkey-and-cranberry sandwich, and banana bread in here.”

  I took the plastic bag from her. “Thanks so much. Do you want to come in?”

  “No, I’m on my way to the gym. But . . .” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, an order slip from work. “A girl came in today looking for you. The one you chased out the other day. She gave me this to pass on.”

  I unfolded it. It was the order slip on which I’d written Adam’s name, and beneath it were the words Drew Amherst and a phone number in England. “Oh, fantastic. Thanks.” It was her. It was the Drew who had given the photograph to Adam.

  “You feeling better?”

  “Yeah. The headache went away. Sorry about leaving you in the lurch.”

  “No problem. Susie covered your shift. Was pretty quiet anyway.” Penny gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “See you tomorrow, then?”

  “Definitely.”

  I closed the door after her and took the food to the kitchen. The salad and the sandwich went into the fridge for later, but I picked at the banana bread while I made a cup of tea. My phone told me it was a decent hour of the morning in London, so it was safe to call Drew Amherst. I dialed and waited, trying to stop my leg from jiggling.

  “Hello?” She had a small, sweet voice.

  “Hello, may I speak to Drew?”

  “This is Drew.”

  “Drew, this is Lauren Beck, calling from Australia. I think your niece told you about me.”

  “Ah, yes. She said you’re Adam’s sister? Is that right? I haven’t seen Adam in forever. How is he?”

  “He’s . . . um . . . Adam died last year.” I got up and started to pace.

  A shocked silence. Then she said, “I’m really sorry. Was it an accident?”

  “No, an illness. He was sick a long time. And now I’ve inherited his books, and in one of them I found a photograph of him, up in the Blue Mountains. You had written on the back. I know nothing about his time up here and was wondering if you did.”

  “Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t know Adam all that well. We had one mad summer, a bunch of about seven of us, all staying at my grandfather’s house. Granddad was away in Perth, and everyone just started showing up, sleeping on the floor, you know. We were completely feral, ate nothing but cheese sandwiches, went swimming at the Falls for hours every afternoon. It was a crazy time, but then Granddad came back and I got a job in Sydney and I didn’t really see any of them again.”

  I stopped in front of the fridge, in front of the photograph. Maybe that’s what my mother meant by “odd” people. “There’s another boy in the photograph with him. It says on the back his name’s Frogsy.”

  “Yes, I remember him. That wasn’t his real name. What was it? Sorry, my memory’s not great. It was something French, that’s why we called him Frogsy. He and your brother were inseparable. I bet if you could find him, he’d have some better memories to share.”

  French. Would I be reading through the phone book for every French surname I could find?

  “Anton!” she said suddenly. “Anton something-beginning-with-F. Fourtier, perhaps? If you give me your phone number, I’ll let it turn over in my mind a few days. It might come back to me.”

  I already had the phone book open to F, my finger scanning down ahead of my eyes. “Fournier?” I asked. AG Fournier. 78 Fallview Road.

  “Yes, that’s it,” she said. “Nice work. Anton Fournier. Frogsy. He and Adam did everything together.”

  “I’ve got the phone book in front of me. He still lives in Evergreen Falls.”

  “Is that where you’re calling from? Evergreen Falls?”

  “Yes, I came up here because . . . it was the last place Adam was happy before he got sick.”

  Her voice was kind. “Well, I’m certain if you can find Frogsy, he can tell you what made your brother so happy.”

  I thanked her and ended the call, then immediately dialed Anton Fournier. The phone rang and rang, long past when an answering machine might have cut into the line. Finally, I gave up, vowing to try again tomorrow.

  * * *

  After work the next day, my dirty apron stuffed in my bag, I let myself in to the west wing and made my way, bravely, up two flights of stairs and along to the room Samuel Honeychurch-Black had once stayed in. The door was locked, so I gave it a good hard rattle. It was old and half hanging off, but I hadn’t the strength to break it. Which is why I’d brought the screwdriver from home.

  I held my torch between my teeth, feeling a little like a spy as I crouched down to insert the screwdriver in the keyhole. I wasn’t sure what to do next, but I jiggled it with all my might, and to my horror the door handle dropped off with a thud and rolled a little way across the wooden floor.

  Now all I had to do was insert the screwdriver where the handle had been, give the tongue of the lock a poke and . . . click. The door was open. I was aware I’d gone from sneaking where I shouldn’t, to stealing things, to breaking things, and I was surprised by how little guilt I felt. As I climbed to my feet and crossed the threshold I supposed it was good that Tomas was a long way off in Denmark so he wouldn’t be implicated if anyone caught me.

  Of course, the mome
nt I stood inside the room I realized it had been pointless coming here. Many decades had passed; the room had been stripped of furniture, and this was now just another empty room like all the other empty rooms. I walked the floorboards carefully from one end of the room to the other, feeling with the toes of my sneakers for loose ones beneath which love letters might be stashed. I ran my torch and my fingers over the windowsills looking for carved initials and love hearts. I spotted a peeling strip of wallpaper and pulled it loose to check behind for scribbled declarations of love. I even stood in the center of the room and closed my eyes and tried to think the secrets out of the walls, but of course that was fruitless, too.

  I felt deflated and mildly foolish, not to mention guilty for breaking the lock with no good reason. I closed the door behind me, made my way down the stairs and out into the soft evening. The wind was up and roaring through the pines. It smelled like rain was on the way again, and the air was cold. I shoved my hands in my pockets for warmth and headed home to go through the guest register again. I tried not to think about why I was so determined to know the identity of Samuel Honeychurch-Black’s lover. Was I living vicariously through them? Nobody had ever felt for me anything like the mad passion represented in the letters, and I wanted to know what kind of woman aroused such feelings. Would Tomas ever feel that way about me? I couldn’t imagine it. He hadn’t sent love letters, though we had had some lengthy text exchanges. He rarely called me to speak, and I wondered and worried if that was because my conversation didn’t interest him. But then I reminded myself that he spent a good portion of time beside his ex-wife’s hospital bed and probably didn’t want his conversations being overheard.

  Making a liar of me, Tomas phoned me just as I was going to bed, and I told him (without mentioning breaking the lock) about my futile trip to Samuel’s room.

  “Any likely candidates for the love interest?” he asked.

  I pulled my notebook close so I could read my notes. “There were plenty of other guests staying around the same time, but only a handful of women who stayed the whole winter like he did. I’ve checked them out. Lady Powell was here with her husband. She’s quite a well-known writer and she was in her sixties at the time, so I can’t really imagine her being involved in a torrid affair with Samuel Honeychurch-Black.”

  “You never know. Don’t underestimate the silver foxes.”

  “I’m not. It’s just that in one of the letters, Samuel says his sister thinks he’s “far too young” to know what love is. So, I’m thinking he would have been a teenager or in his early twenties. Hardly compatible. That also goes for the opera singer, Cordelia Wright, who was born in 1868 according to Wikipedia. There was Miss Sydney, but he mentions her in the third person in his letters, so they can’t be addressed to her. Then there’s his sister. Obviously not her. The other guests who stayed through winter were all men, and . . . well, you’ve read some of the anatomically correct descriptions of what they did. His lover wasn’t a man.”

  “Not even a man with rosy nipples,” Tomas joked.

  “I guess it could have been somebody who wasn’t there over winter, but it seems unlikely. They needed time to fall in love. My understanding is that people in the twenties didn’t fall into bed with each other quite so readily as . . .” I trailed off, feeling a little embarrassed.

  Tomas didn’t seem to notice. “Maybe it wasn’t a guest, then. Maybe that’s why it was forbidden. Maybe he was in love with one of the staff. Are there staff records in the library?”

  I eyed the folder on the kitchen bench. “There might be. I’d have to go through the library report.” I yawned. “I remember the days when I used to complain I hadn’t enough to do in the evenings.”

  “I’ll let you get off to bed.”

  “Wait. How’s Sabrina?”

  “No change.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said, “I’m sorry.” Then remembering what Lizzie had said, I added, “You’re a good man. Not many men would do what you’re doing.”

  “That’s a generous thing to say, Lauren. I have my reasons for being here, and they make sense to me. I can’t stop to consider what others might think.”

  I wanted to ask him about the reasons, but I didn’t want to sound pushy or jealous. Instead, we said good night, and I took the library report to bed with me.

  Pages and pages went by, and I found no mention of staff records. I was growing more and more frustrated, when a bold heading caught my eye at the top of a page. Honeychurch-Black Map Collection.

  I ran my fingers down the page. Apparently in 1926, Flora Honeychurch-Black had deposited a collection of twenty folio books of maps in the library as a gift to the Evergreen Spa. Maps?

  I couldn’t wait to get back to the library to look at them.

  * * *

  I rang Anton Fournier’s number so many times I knew it by heart. He never answered, and I began to wonder if he was away. Fallview Road was only two blocks from me, so before work the next afternoon I took a stroll past it.

  His house was positioned a long way back on the block, a high-set marvel of glass and wood. Its position told me that Anton Fournier would have an uninterrupted view of the Falls and the cliffs and the valleys, and that he probably had a lot of money.

  I don’t know quite when I decided I would go and knock, but it was possibly when two spotted whippets appeared from around the side of the house to play happily in the front garden, which told me that somebody was home.

  The dogs bounded up to me, barking happily, and he opened the door before I could ring the bell.

  “Can I help you?” he said. I recognized him from the photo, the handsome set of his nose. His dark hair had a few streaks of gray, and he was wiping his hands on a tea towel. The dogs were barking so loudly they drowned out my first attempt to speak, and he shouted, “Romeo, Juliet, down!”

  The dogs came to heel, looking a little ashamed.

  “I’m sorry for dropping in unannounced,” I said, coming up the three front steps to the veranda. “I tried to ring, but—”

  “The landline? I haven’t used it in centuries. Sorry, who are you?”

  “My name’s Lauren. Drew Amherst gave me your name. You knew Adam. Adam Beck.”

  His face softened, and his eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly. “Adam? There’s a name I haven’t heard in . . . He died, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, last year.”

  He exhaled softly.

  “I’m Adam’s sister and I—”

  “Wait. You’re his sister?”

  “Yes, and—”

  His whole mood changed. His hazel eyes grew flinty and his body grew stiff. “I have nothing to say to you or anyone in your family.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Go. Get off my property.” He withdrew into the house. “Go on. Go.” Then he slammed the door, leaving me standing on his porch, wondering what on earth had just happened.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1926

  A frost fell overnight, silvering the fallen leaves and making the grass glisten. Violet made her way to the post office carefully, breathing fog into the cold morning and trying to stay in the patches of sun that lined the way. Her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep. Sam had woken her at four in the morning and urged her back to her own room, but she’d been too stirred up to return to sleep. Over and over in her imagination she replayed their encounter. How she longed to do it again. The time between now and when she might see him again, hold him again, stretched out forever.

  The post office was a small stone building on the main street, and Violet took her place in the queue then dutifully sent her mother a short letter and some money. She was surprised she hadn’t heard from Mama yet, and she hoped her own letters were getting through. She also hoped Mama wasn’t expecting her home for winter.

  “Cold this morning, isn’t it?” said the silver-haired woman behind the counter, eyeing Violet’s scarf. “You’ll be needing something a bit warmer than that soon. First winter up here, I take
it?”

  “Yes. This is the thickest scarf I have.”

  “You ought to start knitting, precious. They’re saying it’ll be one of the coldest on record.”

  Violet grew excited. “Will it snow?”

  “Almost certainly. Last year we just had sleet. We’re due a big snowfall.” The woman counted back Violet’s change for the stamp, and Violet snapped her purse shut and headed out into the street.

  She needed a new coat. A new scarf. Gloves. A hat. She checked her savings, and revised her wish list. Her old coat wasn’t pretty, but it would do; and surely there was nothing in the world warmer than her fur-lined cloche. But scarf and gloves were a must. Maybe even boots. She wandered down the main street, dropping in and out of stores to browse and daydream and spend a little money. Everywhere, people were talking about the frost, the sudden turn towards cold after an unseasonably warm start to winter, about how the last time conditions had been like this the snow had come thick and often throughout July. Violet had never seen snow, and her heart glowed at the idea of having a good job in a snowy place through winter and having Sam to keep her warm. She couldn’t remember ever being this happy. She bought boots, even though she could barely afford them. Perhaps by next winter, she and Sam would be married. Then she could have new boots whenever she wanted. Guiltily, she squashed the thought.

  When she returned to her room, she found a letter Sam had left under her pillow. She unfolded it eagerly and read it with flaming cheeks. He recorded in detail all that he had done to her last night, all that he intended to do to her tonight when she came to him—1 a.m. was the appointed time again—and declared a love for her that weighed more than the moon. Violet carefully folded the letter away in its envelope and tucked it into the back of her gramophone. She could imagine the scandal if Myrtle read it accidentally.

  Somehow she made it through her shifts, tired though she was. Sam’s sister was at dinner, but Sam wasn’t. Violet didn’t mind. Soon she would have him all to herself. She fell into bed at ten, promising herself she would wake up at one.