‘Did you get something for Daddy?’
‘Not this year. Not yet. There has been so much … We can send something from here, if you like?’ A lump returns to my throat.
Ellie nods.
‘I’ve just remembered something else you’ll like out in the garden,’ I say, clearing my throat and not wanting to cry in front of her again. ‘I bet they’re ripe!’
Outside, I pull my dressing gown tight around my waist in anticipation of more cold, probing air, but there’s already just enough warmth from the sun for me to relax the gown and allow the day to greet my face and neck with a morning kiss.
I think of Ian waking up with Sylvia and Ben and have to again consciously slow my breathing. Ellie is staring at me from the back door, still in her fairy costume and slippers.
‘Come on,’ I tell her, holding out my hand. ‘Don’t worry about the slippers.’ I make a mental note to buy her some gumboots. In a strip of garden at the side of the cottage, craning its branches above more overgrown elderflower bushes and fraternising with a neighbouring greengage, is an apple tree heavy with fruit. There are two varieties at different stages of ripeness, grafted onto the one old tree.
‘That one is called Lady in the Snow,’ I tell Ellie. ‘And that one there is a Geeveston Fanny.’ I laugh out loud at the mischievousness of the names, and think of the orchardists down in the Huon Valley taking the fruit in their calloused hands and testing it for firmness. I see them smelling the blushing, earthy sweetness of a Geeveston Fanny, and breaking the blood-red skins of Ladies in the Snow with their teeth.
I hand a ripe apple to Ellie and realise with some shame that, apart from the mango tree in our Brisbane garden, Ellie hasn’t ever picked fruit from a tree.
‘We’ll pick some more after breakfast. Okay?’
She nods and smiles before taking a bite of the apple.
I have only six months left of my university contract, but there is a chance it will be renewed. I am a single mother now, I remind myself. Ellie needs security. I watch her eating the apple. Enjoying every bite. Hang caution, I tell myself. I’ll find work. Nina arrived with less.
‘Can my friends pick apples, too, when they visit?’ Ellie asks.
‘Of course.’ I stroke the silky crown of her head, thanking God or Nina, or whoever is pulling the strings, for Ellie’s apparent willingness to consider relocating. I was not so flexible as a child. When Helena sent a letter for my twelfth birthday, inviting me to visit her in Sydney for a week, I didn’t sleep for days. Nina finally phoned my mother and told her that it was all too unsettling. It had always felt strained the few times Helena visited Hobart, not at all sisterly, and although learning she was my mother had made sense of that, I still couldn’t bridge the divide between us. If anything, it was worse knowing that Helena had abandoned me – her daughter.
Back inside, Ellie asks me to take more photos for Ian of herself in the fairy dress. I do as she asks, then put her art pad and pencils beside her breakfast place and pour her a bowl of cereal. She takes out the pencils and starts drawing happy-looking people and herself as a flying fairy above their heads. I smile and take a moment to look at the news on my phone. I open the first item and read:
A suicide bomber has crashed an explosives-laden vehicle into a bus in Akhtarabad area, Quetta city, Balochistan province, Pakistan.
The bus was transporting Shiite pilgrims from Iran to their homes. In addition to the assailant, at least two people were killed and 31 others were injured in the blast.
‘Bloody hell,’ I say aloud, not meaning to. I think of the refugees in Pontville, many of them Shiite Muslims, no doubt fearing for their families.
Ellie looks up at me.
‘Sorry. Just something I read on the news.’
‘What?’
‘Doesn’t matter. It was something that happened very, very far away.’ Another world, I think. Almost another planet. I must believe this, to not let it under my skin, or how can I be joyful with Ellie on this of all days? She deserves to be happy, whatever else is happening in the world. I remember Nina telling me of her parents singing while they skied with her and her sister and brother to school, despite the horrors of Stalinist Russia.
Ellie’s phone beeps and she shows me Ian’s message. I point to the word for her to read with me.
‘Beaut-i-ful!’ we say. He’s speaking of the picture of Ellie in the dress.
I’m pleased for the distraction from the news piece, but the relief is short lived. Ian and I used to argue about whether Ellie should be allowed to watch the television news and it occurs to me that I will no longer have any say over what she sees and does when she is staying with him.
‘Eat up. We’re going to go for a big walk in a minute,’ I say. I go to the fridge and take out the small ham I bought yesterday, two bread rolls and a charity Christmas cake. Our Christmas picnic is ready in five minutes. Joy to the world.
We pick two more apples from the tree and I stow them in my backpack before we set out along the gravel path and towards the back gate. My shoe slides on stones slippery with luminous moss and I land against the old iron gate, which collapses spectacularly from its hinges with my sudden weight. The barrier between home and bush, tamed and untamed, is no more. I catch my breath and see that Ellie has her hand over her mouth, but her eyes are smiling. She starts to giggle.
‘Whoops,’ I say from the ground. I go to stand but slip again on the rocks. My attempts make Ellie laugh harder, and I laugh along with her. She takes a photograph of me with her phone and I don’t protest. She can send it to Ian for all I care. She holds out her hand to me and, once I am finally on my feet, we embrace and I am genuinely happy in that moment.
We pick our way across the rocks that dot the rivulet, a mere trickle of the stream that used to run through here, and clamber our way up the ragged mountain track. Ellie prances excitedly ahead, rising to the challenge of the ascending, winding path where the leathery tongues of blechnum ferns lick our legs and flame-red waratahs light our way.
After an hour, we stop at a small waterfall shrouded by alpine water ferns, their new fronds scaling the lichen-encrusted boulders like miniature, lime-green ladders. Moss clings to the banks, sending up delicate periscopes of spores. Spider webs cling to ancient tree ferns, catching the mist in concentric jewelled necklaces. Ellie leans over the rivulet to launch fleets of gum-leaf gondolas. I used to do the same thing.
I had been dreading this Christmas, but it is becoming one of my favourites. I think of all those slaving over hot ovens and want to shout with delight. In silence, I take the two apples from my pack and hand one to Ellie as blue wrens flit about us in the shadows.
Further down the track, there’s a loud crack, a branch being broken, and I hear approaching footsteps.
‘Do you want to head back, sweetie?’
‘No. It’s nice here.’
A young man walks towards us. He is using a dead branch, splintered at the end, as a walking cane. He registers us and, in the brief moment that I see his face, before he looks down again, I am immediately at ease. I say hello as he approaches and he looks at us again, his face lighting up in a smile.
‘Beautiful day for a walk,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ he replies, stopping to fill his water bottle from the stream. He has an accent and I try to discern his nationality.
‘Sometimes the water here is unsafe,’ I tell him.
He looks at me, not understanding.
I point to the water, hold my stomach and pull a deathly face. ‘Giardia.’
He laughs. ‘The water is good here,’ he says, capping his drink bottle. He puts it in his small pack and crouches at the stream to drink from cupped hands. He splashes water on his face before standing again. ‘Have a nice day.’ He walks on, his trousers rolled up with the heat, exposing brown-skinned calves. There is a deep, old scar on the back of his right leg.
Ellie finishes her piece of fruit and gives the spent core to me. She watches him leave.
‘How did he hurt his leg?’
‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’ The young man turns a corner on the track and is gone. ‘Here.’ I pass Ellie a ham sandwich and a piece of Christmas cake.
7
We are nearing the end of our three-week Tasmanian holiday and Ellie is making her daily pilgrimage to the apple tree, inspecting the fruit for ripeness. She picks an apple and stows it in her pocket.
‘The year I was born,’ I tell her, ‘a big fire burned down lots of the houses in this street. But not this one.’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘That was lucky.’
I nod. ‘Nina said that the apples on this tree cooked in their skins. Imagine that!’
In this street alone, the ’67 fires claimed three people, including Reginald Forster across the road. Nina said she would never forget the newspaper photograph of an army truck making its way down the mountain with its silent human cargo covered with a sheet. Or word that two members of the Hydro camp community had braved the flames to put out embers around her cottage when the street’s residents had fled. She was living in Sydney with Helena, waiting out the pregnancy while Helena finished school and started university. When Nina returned to Hobart with me, the houses were still blackened and the charcoaled forest stumps just starting to sprout green foliage.
But, in truth, Nina didn’t escape the fires. The fact that her cottage remained standing fuelled her neighbours’ dislike of her. ‘Evelyn Forster called me a witch,’ Nina told me when I was a teenager. It didn’t surprise me. There was an unsettling, bitter air to Mrs Forster. Whenever Nina’s Hydro camp friends visited, Mrs Forster could be heard muttering ‘communist’ and ‘speak English’ under her breath as she exited her rebuilt home and fruitlessly checked her mailbox. Nina continued, ‘She said there was no other explanation for why her house burned down, killing her husband, and mine didn’t. And there I was with a baby, at my age.’ Nina, to my knowledge, never told anyone outside the family that I wasn’t hers. Helena didn’t even breastfeed me, as far as I know, and simply returned to her books. She became president of the University of Sydney student union and advocated for women’s rights. She won university medals. She did all of it without me. And, I think, without my father knowing I even existed.
‘Remember, you have to twist it,’ I tell Ellie. She is pulling at another apple, but it’s not yet ready to release itself from the tree. I show her again the way Nina taught me, rolling my hand up and over. ‘And if it isn’t ready, leave it for another day.’
She leaves it and follows me around the side of the house to the front gate.
‘We need to get a few groceries for lunch.’ I catch myself rushing, as if we are still in Brisbane with deadlines and after-school activities to get to, and I try to let go of the habit.
‘Can we buy an ice cream?’
‘Sure.’
Ellie beams, skipping all the way to the front gate, an apple bouncing merrily in her jacket pocket, shining itself silly.
Out on the street, I peel off my cotton jacket and tie it around my waist, enjoying the intense heat of the Hobart sun on my bare arms. We cross the street and I see Michael Forster. His body looks tense and stiff as he weeds his tidy rectangle of lawn. I have seen the light on in his workshop at night as he hunches over the picture frames he is making to sell, and have watched him crossing back and forth from the workshop to the house.
‘Mr Forster?’
He nods briskly, and, up close, I’m shocked at the depth of the frown lines that life has etched into his long face. I think of his father dying in the bushfire, on this very same plot of land. In Nina’s cottage, on the wall beside the front door, there is a photograph of the blackened ruins of the Forsters’ house. Nina used to look at the picture and say it was God’s will. The wrought-iron fence had been the only thing left standing. I question, for the first time, why my grandmother decided to put such an image on display. Was it to remind herself how lucky she was to have escaped? Mr Forster looks back down towards his soiled hands.
‘Hello,’ I offer. Perhaps time has softened him. ‘I’m Sara Barsova.’
‘No. You’re Sara Rose,’ Ellie says, appearing upset.
‘Yes.’ I kiss the top of her head. ‘But I used to be Sara Barsova before I married Daddy. I’ve got two surnames now.’
Michael Forster looks up again, sweat on his pale brow, and squints. His fingers strangle a small dandelion, bitter-smelling in the warm air. No, he is just the same: aloof and silent. ‘He comes from a miserable family,’ Nina used to say. ‘Don’t talk to him.’
But I can’t walk away yet, and can’t help but feel somewhat sorry for the frail man, living here on his own. He is not his father. If we are to be neighbours, I have to at least be civil.
Perhaps he doesn’t recognise me. I turn away for a moment, noticing two framed pictures propped in the shelter of the workshop awning, ready for collection. The outward-facing photograph is of a smiling family of four. There is a wide slot in the workshop door, and a sign above it that says ‘Orders and Payments Here. Don’t Ring.’
‘I’m Nina Barsova’s …’ I point back at the cottage. ‘Sara. Remember?’
I see a muscle in his cheek flinch.
He tears more dandelions from the lawn, faster now, and I see the burns on his wrists that I had forgotten about. It shocked me as a young girl when I saw him for the first time in a short-sleeved shirt and realised that the burns went right the way up to his elbows. Nina explained that he had gone into their burning house to rescue his father, and had, as a reminder, arms like overcooked chicken skin, all shiny and melted. I was terrified of him as a child. I take Ellie’s hand.
Michael Forster clenches his pointed jaw.
I look down and focus on my engagement ring, which I now wear on the little finger of my right hand, although it is a bit loose. I turn it around because it gives me something to do. I smile at Ellie.
‘We’re thinking of moving here.’ I spin the ring, the diamond flashing on each rotation.
Our neighbour gives a dismissive nod, then mutters, ‘It wasn’t true what she said.’
‘Pardon?’
‘She lied.’
‘Who?’
He looks me in the eye. ‘Nina.’ His eyes are faded and grey. ‘She was wrong. She never should have …’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He throws another bruised dandelion onto the wilting pile beside him. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Can I have those flowers?’ Ellie asks, reaching through the fence for the pile of weeds our neighbour has discarded, but he doesn’t hear or chooses not to answer.
‘We need to keep going,’ I say.
Michael Forster turns from us, goes with a stilted gait in the direction of a small, brick incinerator, the yellow heads of the dandelions hanging limp from his hand.
Ellie looks over her shoulder as we walk away. ‘They were pretty.’
‘Yes.’
She keeps looking behind her and I pull her onwards. ‘Can I have chocolate ice cream?’ she asks.
What was he alluding to about Nina?
Ellie trips. ‘Mum, can I have –’
‘You can have whatever you like.’
I release my hand and roll my shoulders, letting go of our neighbour’s bad vibes. Nina was right. I shouldn’t talk to him. My mobile phone rings, and I stop to pull it out of my backpack. Ian’s name glares back at me.
‘Yep,’ I say. I wave Ellie on, ahead of me.
‘Hi. Listen, I’ve found someone who’s interested in the house.’
I go cold at the idea of our family home being sold.
‘You don’t muck about, do you?’
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, about moving back. If I can have Ellie for decent amounts of time in the holidays and come down to see her a couple of weekends a term, maybe it can work. Maybe I’ll get a small rental there. I’m still thinking it over.’
‘So, Sylvia doesn’t want
her half the time, I’m guessing. It’d be a relief to her if I move away?’
‘Sara …’
‘Ian …’
‘The guy doesn’t want to move in for six months, so there’s no hurry.’
‘Oh Christ! Go ahead and sell it. I don’t care anymore.’ I hang up.
Ellie is already pushing open the grocery shop door. There’s a jangle of bells. Inside, she goes straight to the ice-cream freezer, wiping at the frosted glass with the sleeve of her jacket. I take a red plastic basket from beside the front counter and load it with milk and bread, cheese, a bag of carrots, rice crackers and a container of hummus. Ellie has found what she is after and holds up a ‘Have a Heart’ heroically.
‘Take a picture of that and send it to Daddy,’ I say. ‘Tell him it’s a message from me.’
‘What?’
‘Doesn’t matter. You’d better grab me one, too.’
She grins again, delving deep into the freezer once more. Her feet come off the floor.
At the counter, a young woman with a nose piercing and henna tattoos on the back of her hand takes my money and smiles at Ellie.
‘It’s a beautiful design,’ I remark about the henna.
‘Ta. I got it done by a woman at the markets. Doesn’t last long, but.’
‘Did it hurt?’ Ellie asks.
The girl laughs. ‘No. It’s just paint. It was a fundraiser.’
‘Cool,’ I say, and Ellie looks at me strangely. Since when do I say ‘cool’?
Ellie and I cross the road to a small park, which has a bench seat with a view of the Derwent River. Another mother and her young daughter are sitting on a picnic rug nearby. The mother lies back on her blanket and sighs loudly. Yachts puff along the river like little half-moons, and I show Ellie how to throw ‘helicopter’ seeds, which are numerous on the lawn, just as they were when I was young. She tosses the winged seeds high overhead and watches them spin to the ground while she eats her ice cream. I sit on the bench, place the grocery bag between my feet and unwrap my ‘Have a Heart’. As I bite off the outer skin of hard chocolate I find myself thinking of the layered matryoshka doll that Nina gave me as a girl. She said it was carved from a single piece of wood by an old man from Sergiev Posad, outside Moscow. His wife painted the clothes and the faces.
Matryoshka Page 6