by Cathryn Hein
Sophie dug into her memory, probing it for signs that what her father said was true. Her parents had argued. She knew that. Slamming doors, the harsh whispers of a couple trying to hide their altercation from their child, her mother’s puffy eyes and blotched skin. She remembered those things but they were hazy, faded, like gauze curtains that had seen too much sun. As soon as she touched them, they broke into a thousand threads and were gone.
She frowned. ‘I remember arguments. Is that why she did it? Because you’d had a fight?’
He looked tired, his face collapsing as her words touched him. ‘She threatened to kill herself all the time, Sophie. I couldn’t stay and I couldn’t leave. She had me trapped.’
Her question remained unanswered, but then she hadn’t expected an honest response. Evading the truth was a Dixon speciality.
‘Did you love her?’ She watched her father’s face closely. ‘The truth, Dad.’
‘If it’s truth you want so badly, then I’ll give it to you. Yes, I loved your mother, but she wore me down. In the end, I hated her. It’s not something I’m proud of, but that’s what happened.’
The implication of his words hit her like a blow. In his eyes she was no different to her mother. Unstable, depressed, needy and attention-seeking.
‘Is that what I did to you? Wore you down until you learned to hate me?’
He stared at her as though she were mad. ‘For God’s sake, Sophie. I don’t hate you.’
‘But you don’t like me.’
He shook his head, his eyes closing momentarily as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘That’s just not true.’
Anger gave her breath. ‘Oh, come off it, Dad. You resent me. You have since Mum died. You might have tried to be a father at the start but that didn’t last long. First chance you had you escaped to Canberra to tend your all-important career. I was left to grieve on my own and I didn’t know how. No wonder I was screwed up. As for now, I may as well not exist. I had the biggest win of my career and you didn’t even ring to congratulate me.’
‘I told you, I didn’t receive your message.’
‘Don’t lie to me! I’m sick of it. I’m not one of your cronies, I’m your daughter!’
Her father’s palms slapped down on the granite bench. ‘And I’m a father who loves you!’ He sat back, and Sophie could see the effort he was taking to calm himself, to put the politician’s mask back where it belonged. ‘I’m worried about you. So is Tess.’
She gave a derisive sniff. ‘The only thing you care about is your career.’
‘That’s not true. I do care a great deal about my career, but believe it or not, I also care a great deal about you.’
Sophie closed her eyes as tiredness overwhelmed her. She was so sick of this. A tear slipped from her eye. She wiped it away with her hand. ‘Then why don’t you ever show it?’
His mobile rang. He looked at the screen and then back to her. ‘I must take this.’
She looked at the ceiling, her eyes watering and her throat aching. After a pause, he picked up the phone and began speaking quietly to the caller.
For something to do, she switched on the kettle again and stared at the teabags still hanging dryly in the mugs.
Your mother was not a saint.
Of course she wasn‘t, but she was very sweet and very loving. Everyone knew that. Even Aaron had said so. Aaron. They hadn’t even started on him and Sophie was positive Aaron was the very reason her father was sitting in her kitchen.
The kettle boiled. She poured the water and waited.
Her father ended the call, closed the lid of his laptop and started shoving it into its bag.
‘You made it quite clear how you felt about me when you were fifteen,’ he said. ‘Your suicide note said it all. I have only complied with your wishes and kept out of your way, but I’m very sorry that you haven’t recognised the actions of a loving father.’ He zipped the laptop bag closed and began walking to the door. ‘l’ll leave you in peace.’
‘Don’t you want to talk to me about Aaron? After all, it’s what you’re here for.’
He stopped, caught her gaze for a moment and shook his head. ‘No. I can see now that whatever I say won’t make any difference. You’ll have to learn from your own mistakes.’
‘He’s a good man.’
‘No, Sophie, he’s not. He’ll hurt you, and you’re going to let him. And to my shame, there’s not a damn thing I can do to prevent it.’
Sophie worked her way through the marble and granite graves dominating the upper tiers of the old section of Harrington cemetery, where only descendants of the pioneering families still owned plots. She didn’t need to count the headstones or orient herself with a crumbling angel or towering monument. She’d trodden this path hundreds of times, although this was her first visit in weeks.
For Harrington’s dead, the town’s forefathers had, with unrealised irony, selected a resting place with a panorama the interred would never appreciate. The cemetery lay to the south of the town on the slope of a north-facing hill and sported magnificent views over the township and landscape beyond. In the late afternoon sun, the vista glowed, but Sophie didn’t notice. She was on a mission.
Toward the end of a long row of neglected graves, next to her paternal grandparents’ ostentatious black and gold double plot, she stopped, crossed her arms, and studied her mother’s memorial. Though in better condition than those around it, the normally polished white marble appeared dirty, dull and unloved. Pine needles and small cones from the trees lining the cemetery perimeter littered the surface, and dust and sap had sunk into the headstone’s deeply carved gold letters, blunting their lustre. On an adjacent slab, someone had left a posy of white paper daisies and Sophie realised that, for the first time she could remember, she hadn’t brought flowers from Vanaheim’s garden. The realisation roused no guilt. Her mother didn’t deserve them.
She scraped away the needles and sat on the slab, letting its cold hardness seep into her bones. She needed it to cool her anger. Fiona Dixon had deserted her and now, when Sophie desperately needed her guidance, she hated her for it.
Her mouth thin, she swivelled away from her mother’s name and focused on the view. To the north, past the town, sprawled a patchwork quilt of paddocks. Dark pine forests broke the vibrant greens and browns of pasture, and several new plantations of bluegums added a hazy grey to the landscape. As her gaze swept to the east, Sophie picked out Vanaheim, easily discernable by the majestic plane trees lining the front boundary.
She couldn’t remember the funeral – grief or horror had somehow razed it from memory – but the day afterward remained clear in Sophie’s mind. In the last act of kindness she could recall from him, Ian Dixon had taken his distraught daughter’s hand, walked her out into Vanaheim’s highest paddock and pointed to the south. ‘See, Sophie? She might be gone but she’ll always look over you.’
The idea had given her comfort but now she wasn’t so sure. Her father knew how unhappy his wife was at Vanaheim, so why bury her where she could see it?
Sophie shook her head. What did it matter? Her mother was dead. She couldn’t see anything. Not Vanaheim, not her daughter.
She lowered her eyes to the cemetery, gazing at the weeping stone angels, crosses and towering obelisks. This was a peaceful place, yet Sophie felt restless. No matter how she tried to shed them her father’s words clung.
Your mother was not a saint.
No, but in Sophie’s mind she was kind and gentle, not difficult, and certainly not the sort of person you could end up hating. She tried to remember the parental fights she knew were locked in her memory but couldn’t – not the details, only fragments. Her mother turning away to hide her tears, the bitter words she sometimes uttered about her husband, the look on her face when Vanaheim’s enchanted tunnel of love ended and she pulled into the yard. Sophie remembered these things, but they seemed incongruous to the woman she knew and loved.
And it wasn’t just her mother she didn’t
understand. Today she’d learned her father wasn’t the man she thought either. She’d written terrible things in her suicide note. How much she hated him, how she wished he’d died instead of her mother. Afterwards, when her pain seemed incurable and he distanced himself even further, she’d deemed him cold and unloving, and herself as unlovable. Yet all he’d done was follow her wishes.
Even Tess, who she’d thought had no aim but to make Sophie’s life difficult, was driven by a need so desperate she was willing to suffer for years in a place she hated.
Then there was Aaron, a man she thought she knew. A man she thought might love her, who’d once said her name like it was precious, but who held a secret he believed was so terrible that its revelation would result in her hating him.
She spread her fingers across the cold stone slab, tired and overwhelmed with doubt. ‘Have I judged everybody wrong?’
But Fiona Dixon’s grave remained mute. Though she strained, Sophie heard only the breeze through the pines. Nothing called, no icy fingers caressed her skin, no presence whispered from the beyond. The dead, as always, refused to speak.
Her mission had failed. She’d just have to muddle through on her own.
Fourteen
Aaron eyed Sophie from the safety of the verandah as she said farewell to Rowdy. The urge to cross the yard and gather her to his chest was huge. Since her father’s visit, Sophie had been distant and quiet, and he didn’t know what that meant. She hadn’t even admitted to seeing Ian, which worried him even more. Her father could have told her any number of lies.
She still arrived each morning with a smile and laughed when the horses did something funny, but it lacked the joy he adored. And several times he’d caught her looking at him with a frown, as though she was trying to work out what was in his head.
But after his talk with Ian Dixon, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d reveal that.
Aaron had been sitting on the verandah step with a cup of tea and the local paper, warming himself in the fading Tuesday afternoon sun, when Ian pulled in the drive. He’d stepped out and looked around with an expression that made Aaron ball his fists. Finally, when he’d made his disdain clear, Ian approached the house. Aaron placed his mug down carefully and stood.
‘What do you want?’
‘Your mother sends her love,’ replied Ian.
‘She wouldn’t know the meaning of it.’
Ian’s mouth thinned. ‘Still like your father, I see.’
Aaron said nothing, but he reached for the verandah post and wrapped his hand around the timber. Even after all this time, his loathing for Ian Dixon hadn’t faded.
‘I’m worried about Sophie,’ said Ian.
‘That’d be a first.’
Ian’s grey eyes, so like Sophie’s, narrowed. ‘I didn’t come here to argue. I came here to talk about my daughter.’
‘She’s fine.’
‘No, she’s not.’ He looked toward Vanaheim and shook his head, and to Aaron’s surprise he caught a glimpse of genuine worry on Ian’s face. ‘You have no idea how vulnerable she is. If she finds out about me and Carol …’
The sentence hung. Instinctively, Aaron followed Ian’s gaze to the west even though all they could see of Vanaheim from Hakea Lodge was a flush of green. Christ, he hoped Sophie was all right.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you’re worried about me telling her, forget it. Believe me, I’m not in any hurry to spill that dirty little secret, but you won’t be able to keep it from her forever. Better she hears it from you than anyone else.’
‘She won’t cope. It’ll be like before.’
‘Then you don’t know your daughter very well.’
Ian threw him a sharp glance. ‘And I suppose you think you do.’
‘I know her a damn sight better than you do.’
For a long moment, they regarded one another, anger festering. The yard moved with restless horses, attuned to the tension. In his box, Rowdy snorted and stomped. Psycho let out a whinny.
Ian opened his coat and reached into his jacket pocket. ‘I under-stand you and Sophie made some sort of a deal about a horse.’
‘Not that it’s any of your business.’
Ian flipped open a chequebook and clicked on a pen. ‘I’ll pay you double whatever the horse is worth.’
‘In exchange for what?’
‘In exchange for keeping away from Sophie.’
Though they burned, Aaron managed to say the words he didn’t mean. ‘Save your money. I’m not interested in Sophie.’
‘That’s not what Tess says.’
‘Tess is a drunk.’
Ian kept his hand poised over his chequebook, eyeing him.
‘Put it away, Ian. I’m not for sale. I made a deal with Sophie and I’ll keep it. As soon as Danny’s back I’ll have no need of her.’ Aaron held his gaze. ‘And that’s where this will end.’
Though Ian’s face betrayed his disbelief, he’d been left no choice but to retreat.
Yet now, as Aaron watched Sophie fondly tugging Rowdy’s ears, his heart aching, he wondered if it would ever end. Since Ian’s visit he’d stopped calling her at night, unable to kid himself any longer that he did it for altruistic reasons. When she asked, he made the excuse it was because he needed sleep, but without her comforting voice he found sleep near impossible. Instead, he lay awake in the darkness, racked with over-tiredness and torturing himself with visions of Sophie, of them together, enjoying a life where the past never existed.
Shoulders low, he walked back into the house. He’d get over it. He had to. For Sophie’s sake.
As if Aaron didn’t have enough to worry about, the following day the Land Cruiser chugged to a standstill and no amount of swearing, kicking or tinkering would make it go again. The timing was appalling. Not only did he have a pile of overdue bills sitting on the kitchen table, but Saturday was the Harrington Gold Cup. He had three runners in the lead-up races, including Costa Motza, and he desperately wanted to make Sophie’s first race as an owner special. To make matters worse, Rowdy, who’d been due to race in a hurdle the following week with good prospects of winning, had picked up a stone bruise during morning exercise and was likely to be out of work for several days.
The mechanic let out a whistle. ‘Expensive, mate.’
Aaron’s heart sank. ‘How expensive?’
Leaning against the front fender, the mechanic pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one out and lit it, sucking smoke into his lungs. ‘A fair bit. Transmission’s gone.’
Aaron stared at Rowdy. The horse was hanging over the half door of the stable, his tongue dangling out like the village idiot. So much centred on him. Rowdy was good enough to win the major steeplechase of the season, the Springbank Cup, held every year in the first week of August and worth one hundred thousand dollars in prize money. One hundred thousand dollars would wipe out Hakea Lodge’s debts and allow him to make the improvements owners expected in a successful yard. But Rowdy winning was a dream, and dreams didn’t solve real-life problems.
The Land Cruiser would have to stay dead. He’d call in some favours, tap some of the old-timers who had known and loved his father, ring anyone who could lend him a suitable vehicle. He’d even phone his mother if it came to that. Pride could take second place. The yard had to keep going. The memory of his father demanded it.
‘Leave it,’ he said to the puffing mechanic. ‘I’ lI make do without.’
‘Yup, you can always use horsepower.’
The mechanic was still chuckling when he stepped into his van. Aaron wanted to punch the laughter straight back down his throat.
As the van left, Sophie pulled into the yard. He cast her a grim smile, then slammed the Land Cruiser’s bonnet down and leaned on it.
‘What’s the problem?’ she said, coming to stand next to him.
‘Apparently the transmission’s buggered.’
‘Oh. Anything I can do?’
‘No, it’s okay. I’ll work something out. You go and s
addle up Costa Motza.’
She placed a warm hand over his and rubbed her thumb over his knuckles, grey eyes wide with concern. The gesture was so intimate, so loving, that he wanted to bury his face in her neck and cry hot tears of self-reproach.
‘Aaron, I know things are tough. I can help.’
He stared at their hands – hers fine and clean, his large and dirty with grease – and wished he could tangle them together forever.
Gently, he slid his fingers from beneath hers and, crossing his arms, turned to prop his bum against the car. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Sophie’s hurt expression before she quickly hid it. He jammed his hands hard into his armpits to stop himself from touching her.
‘You can borrow the farm ute,’ she said, and though she tried to sound normal the hollowness in her voice was unmistakable. ‘It’s not great, but it goes and and it’ll pull your float no worries. I can drop it off this afternoon.’
He stared at his worn boots, the frayed cuffs of his jeans. He knew she was only being kind but all her offer reminded him of was Ian and his chequebook. ‘I’m not a charity case,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s not charity, Aaron. It’s friendship. Just like you wanted. Anyway, you’ll be doing me a favour.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Oh, yeah? How?’
She smiled, delighting him with a bit of her old Sophie spark. ‘By keeping it out of Tess’s reach. She nearly drove it through the back of the shed yesterday. Trust me, it’ll be much safer here than at Vanaheim.’
Harrington Racecourse sat adjacent to the showgrounds, three blocks off the main street, surrounded by a ring of aging pines that every year the council threatened to cut down yet never seemed to find the budget to do. The close proximity to the town meant that, unlike so many other provincial race clubs located on the outer edges or even further out of the townships, the club was positioned at the centre of Harrington social life. Even autumn and winter meetings attracted good crowds, who were well cared for with gas heaters to warm them against the cold, an undercover bookies’ ring and on-course tote, and, most importantly, a well-stocked bar.