Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  ‘You’d have to go to a new school,’ I warned.

  She pulled away and buckled back into her seat, laughing happily. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘You’d be leaving behind all your friends.’

  ‘I’ll make new ones.’

  ‘What about netball?’

  She gave me a quizzical look. ‘They’ll have netball up here.’

  ‘What about – ?’

  She dazzled me with a two-thousand-watt smile and rapped her knuckles on the dashboard. ‘Come on, Mum. Let’s go. The sooner we’re back in Melbourne packing our things, the sooner we can get back here.’

  3

  By early December, we’d wound up our life in Melbourne: cancelled subscriptions and utilities, packed a cargo of boxes and organised the removals, filled out Bronwyn’s emancipation papers from one school and enrolled her in another for the new year, attended our going-away parties, and eaten farewell lunches in all our favourite cafes.

  I’d expected to be overwhelmed with regret over leaving Albert Park, but as we crammed the last of our belongings into the old Celica and backed out of the drive, all I felt was relief . . . and a thrill of anticipation that rivalled my daughter’s.

  For three days we drove. The Newell Highway ran mostly straight, like a tattered black ribbon with no beginning and no end. Summer heat billowed through the windows; the atmosphere seemed ablaze, but we barely noticed. As we sped northwards, the landscape morphed from lush farms and sparse bushland to desiccated flat wastelands, and then to rolling haze-blue hills and thickly treed eucalypt forests. We navigated through dusty towns, bunking down at night in caravan park cabins, then setting out again at dawn.

  When we finally crossed the Queensland border, Bronwyn let out a whoop of joy. At Goondiwindi we joined the Cunningham Highway and veered north-east across the Great Dividing Range. Soon we were surrounded by thick forests where tropical palm trees swayed among the red gums and ironbarks, and huge bracken ferns ran amok in the understorey. The road climbed one dizzying hairpin bend after another. When we passed through the Main Range National Park we wound down the windows, delighting in the chiming song of a million bellbirds.

  We arrived at Thornwood hot and dusty and wilted, but the sight of our new home was like a blood transfusion. We screamed, we danced, we cavorted through the airy rooms like a pair of mad things. It was simply too good to be true. After a lifetime of squats and rentals and wishful daydreaming, we were finally home.

  We spent the following weeks restoring the old house to its former glory, vacuuming dust, swirling up cobwebs, washing the floorboards, scouring bathroom tiles, buffing the lovely old brass taps back to a golden shine, and polishing the windows with vinegar and newsprint until they sparkled. Once our belongings arrived from Melbourne, we set about unpacking. I couldn’t decide what to do with the existing furniture – it was far too beautiful to sell or give away – so I simply crammed my own art deco pieces in around it.

  We celebrated a traditionally Aunt Morag-style Christmas – presents in the morning, then a huge lunch. Crispy baked potatoes, honey-glazed onions and carrots, roast chicken with herb seasoning, beer gravy, green salad . . . Followed by plum pudding complete with embedded sixpence, and lashings of vanilla ice-cream topped with cream. Afterwards we blobbed out on the lounge, reading magazines and nibbling chocolates, then later enjoyed a leisurely walk through the garden.

  We barely noticed the new year drift in. Bronwyn was counting the days of freedom left to her before school began – twenty-one – while I had started putting my feelers out for freelance photographic work. We were happy to float along, clearing away the empty packing cartons, picnicking on the lawn, and finding perfect places for our eclectic treasures. The final effect was – for us, at least – dazzling. The tribal masks Aunt Morag had acquired during her childhood in New Guinea hung on the walls beside Bronwyn’s exuberant butterfly paintings. Her miscellany of birds’ nests, shells, crystal geodes, and tall Vacola jars crammed with deceased beetles were all somehow jostled among my rainbow-hued art-glass vases, brightly woven dilly-bags, historic teacups, and antique camera paraphernalia. Vintage patchwork cushions brightened the deep leather armchairs, and I replaced the moth-eaten floor rug with a vibrant kilim. By the first weekend in January, the sad old house was transformed into a home; our home.

  There was only one small fly in the ointment of my otherwise considerable pleasure: since arriving at Thornwood four weeks ago, sleep had eluded me. Each night, while my daughter slumbered peacefully in her bed, I stalked the house like a poltergeist – opening drawers, peering into cupboards, digging through dusty cartons as if searching for something – what, exactly, I had no idea.

  As my state of weariness grew, I became forgetful, absentminded. Clumsy, too – knocking into furniture until my arms and legs were blotched with bruises. I fumbled constantly, causing accidental breakages, and – weirdest of all – I began to catch glimpses of strange shadows from the corner of my eye. Birds, lizards. And once, a willowy dark-haired girl. In the larger scheme of things, this was no big deal; probably just a stress-response to the upheaval of the move. So I pumped my system full of caffeine to get through the day, and tried to convince myself it would pass.

  One sleepless night in early January I lingered in the doorway of the back bedroom, swallowing a yawn.

  Despite my careful cleaning, the room had the atmosphere of a time capsule. I’d swept the floor, replaced the bed sheets and washed the old quilt, and carefully wiped away the gritty detritus of neglect from all the furniture – but otherwise the room was just as Tony’s grandfather had left it.

  The yawn finally got me and I stepped blearily into the room. The sleigh bed looked inviting, despite the sunken mattress and faded old patchwork quilt. A full moon shone through the windows, throwing gauzy curtains of light over the walls. The old homestead creaked and groaned in its sleep, and outside in the garden an owl hooted a love-song to its mate.

  Going over to the elegant old rosewood dressing table, I ran my fingers across its arrangement of objects – the brush and comb set, the little Bible still flocked with ancient dust, the silver tray containing cufflinks, and a gold signet ring inscribed with the initials S.R.

  Tony’s grandfather, Samuel Riordan. I’d seen his name on the deed of the house and until now it had been just that, a name. But now, as I stood in his room in the moonlight, I felt his presence brush against me, every bit as tangible as that of a flesh and blood man. A shiver sped across my skin, but it wasn’t from fear; more, a sense of expectancy – though for what exactly, I had no idea.

  The dressing table had only one drawer. I tugged on the knob but the drawer refused to budge. Thinking it jammed, I gave it a sharp jiggle but only succeeded in making the cufflinks rattle in their silver dish, and the mirror lurch wildly, throwing demented shards of moonlight over the walls.

  Then I saw the keyhole. For a while I searched, running my fingers under the mirror, examining the floor around the dresser’s legs – but failed to turn up a key. I pondered grabbing a screwdriver and forcing the drawer open, but that seemed too destructive . . . Besides, it was probably just full of moth-eaten old socks and undies. They could wait.

  When I could put it off no longer, I went to the bedside and switched on the lamp, then stood in front of the photo. On another sleepless night I’d spent an hour obsessively polishing the tarnished frame, buffing the glass. The better to see him, I suppose.

  Samuel would have been in his mid-twenties when the snap was taken. His close-cropped dark hair accentuated a high forehead and winged brows that swooped over intense eyes. His shirt strained across a broad chest, the sleeves snug around muscular arms. He was gazing intently at the camera, a smouldering half-smile touching his lips, his eyes curiously alight. Again, I had the niggling sense that I knew him.

  I searched his features for echoes of Tony – but Tony’s face had been bony and angular, open and amiable – vastly different to the brooding dark-eyed man staring out of
the photo.

  I went over to the window.

  The sky had lightened. Dawn was less than an hour away. Once again I’d spent a sleepless night, and the cobwebby mechanisms of my brain had wound down to a sluggish torpor. My eyelids kept drifting shut, I felt drugged. I pondered the sunken mattress with its lovely old quilt. Surely a quick snooze wouldn’t hurt? Five minutes, just until I mustered enough energy to go back to my own room.

  Flicking off the lamp, I settled on the bed. My limbs grew heavy. Tension melted away. After a while, the room around me receded into the gloom and my thoughts began to unravel.

  Samuel. I rolled the name around my mind. As though responding to my summons, he appeared in the darkness behind my eyes, an apparition of such lifelike detail – his rumpled white shirt, his spectacular face with those brooding green eyes, that seductive smile – so vibrant it took my breath away. Nearer he came, so close now I could reach out and touch him. His skin was warm from standing in the sunny arbour, lightly freckled and velvety soft, the muscles firm beneath. If I stretched out on the bed, he might hold me while I slept, and I would dream of sunshine and newly planted rose trees, and a lilting voice whispering close to my ear, a single word, over and over, a word that sounded like . . .

  Eyelash –

  I snapped awake and shot to my feet. Swayed there as my pulse tripped erratically, my head reeling as if I’d just stepped off a rollercoaster. Sleep was way overdue, I realised. When my imagination went haywire like that, tripping out, scaring me, I knew it was time to stop dallying around in the dark and go back to bed.

  But my own room seemed very far. I sat down again. Wriggling back, I leaned my shoulders against the headboard, then somehow sank down onto the pillow.

  My eyes drifted half-mast.

  The rafters creaked. A family of bats twittered in the trees outside. Leaves scratched the windowpane. Somewhere in the distance, a lonely dog was barking. The night settled like a heavy blanket and the darkness tucked me in.

  Then somehow, I found sleep.

  I woke a while later. At least, it felt like waking. Tangy sweetness drifted in the air: eucalyptus leaves, stringybark blossoms. From somewhere overhead came the cry of a tawny frogmouth, then the soft flurry of wings as it took flight. The outside world seemed very close. I tried to recall if I’d fallen asleep directly beneath the window – but as my vision adjusted, lofty treelike shadows emerged around me and I understood that I was lying on damp ground out in the open.

  Something was wrong.

  Stones dug into my spine, my bones screamed in pain; my head was thrown back at an unnatural angle and my lungs felt unyielding, the air solidified in them. I tried to call out, but my mouth was full of warm wetness.

  A heavy feeling of foreboding throbbed in me. Had I fallen, hurt myself? I couldn’t quite remember –

  Dim shapes and jumbled sensations flitted through my mind. There’d been shouting. An arm had raised up, then came down again and again. Something hard struck my shoulder, my upthrust hands, my head. There was the ugly sound of cracking bone.

  Blinking, I tried to struggle awake. The darkness shifted. Far above me, between the leaves, the sky was growing lighter. I wanted to move, but my arms and legs refused to obey; they were skewed under me, useless. A funny smell lifted off my skin, a repulsive coppery odour that frightened me . . . and somehow I knew I had good cause to be afraid.

  I pricked my ears. There was the trickling murmur of a creek, the chirp of frogs, the soft groan of wind in the branches.

  And then, footsteps.

  A voice began to cry through the gloom.

  Eyelash . . . Eyelash.

  I tried to cringe away, fearing that my attacker had returned to finish me, but no more able to move than I had been before; all I could do was lie helpless on the damp gravel and wait . . . wait for death or oblivion – whichever came first – to find me.

  I woke again, this time for real. The acid glow of moonlight filtered into the room, and as I sat up and gazed about, formless shapes became apparent, materialising slowly from the dimness. The rosewood dressing table, the bulging armoire, the dark doorway, and the faintly luminous window.

  It was not yet dawn, the sky outside still mostly black. The only trees I could see now were those in the garden – fig and mango, avocado and poinciana, all of them muted in the setting moonlight, hazy as ghosts.

  I’d been dreaming, but couldn’t remember why my dream had made me feel so heartsick. I only recalled shadows swaying and bowing above me – a windblown tree one moment, a murderous apparition the next.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and toed my feet into my slippers. Shuffling to the door, I hovered a moment, trying to rationalise. The fear you feel right now is nothing more than the residue of a nightmare . . . For heaven’s sake, forget it and go back to sleep.

  But old habits die hard. Tiptoeing down the hall to my daughter’s room, I pushed open the door and went in. Her cheeks were overly flushed in sleep from the stifling heat, and her eyes twitched beneath their diaphanous lids – but she was breathing, alive. Safe. Unable to help myself, I smoothed an invisible lock of hair off her brow and stooped to plant a kiss on her damp scalp. Then, satisfied, I wandered half-unconsciously back to my own bed.

  4

  ‘I don’t want to wait in the car,’ Bronwyn grumbled.

  She was slouched against the kitchen sink, mopping raspberry jam off her plate with a corner of toast, washing down mouthfuls with chocolate milk from a carton. She wore her regular uniform of cut-off jeans and tank top, and her hair hung over her shoulders in twin braids.

  ‘The flight won’t last long,’ I reassured her. ‘Thirty minutes at most. We can do something fun afterwards if you like . . . Go into town for ice-cream?’

  Placing the coffeepot on the stove, I raced around collecting my camera bag and spare lenses. A few days ago I’d secured some freelance photographic work with a local real estate agent – my first assignment was to take aerial shots of newly listed farm holdings. The flight was scheduled for ten-thirty that morning.

  Cramming my telephoto lens into its case, I zipped up – then noticed the silence. I looked at Bronwyn. She was frowning down at her unfinished crusts of toast, a pink smear of jam on her chin. The countdown to school had reached the four-day mark, and I knew she was getting edgy.

  ‘Aren’t you scared of going up?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve done dozens of flyovers. I might get little queasy sometimes, but never scared.’

  The coffeepot began to gurgle. I filled my cup, dumped in two sugars and a squirt of milk, winced as it scalded my tongue on the way down.

  ‘But Mum, it’s different this time.’ Bronwyn abandoned her plate on the sink and tossed her carton in the recycle bin. Then she went to the window and peered worriedly out at the sky. ‘We’re in a new place, you don’t know the pilot. He might be careless. He might not check his equipment properly. Something might go wrong.’

  ‘Nothing’ll go wrong. I’ve been up so many times I reckon I could fly a Cessna myself.’

  ‘I want to come with you,’ she blurted. ‘Up in the plane, I mean.’

  ‘It’ll be boring.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘Bronny, you can’t come up – the insurance doesn’t cover passengers. Besides, I feel happier knowing you’re safe on the ground.’

  Her head whipped around. Suddenly she was all eyes. ‘It’s not safe, then, is it?’

  ‘I didn’t mean – ’

  ‘Mum, what if something happens? What if the plane crashes? What if the pilot flies into a mountain? What if he turns out to be a crackpot, like those ones in America?’

  ‘The plane won’t crash. Flying in a small aircraft is safer than travelling by car, even safer than crossing a city street.’

  I had wanted to sound reassuring, but there was a catch in my voice. Dream images flashed through my mind. Dim shapes and tree-shadows, someone shouting. A hazy figure with its arm raised up. Darknes
s and fear, pain. And a sense that unseen danger lurked just ahead . . .

  I shook off the irrational feelings. ‘Nothing’s going to happen, Bron. I promise.’

  Bronwyn fixed me with a worried look. ‘If you died,’ she said at last, her voice high and quivery, ‘what would happen to me? There’s just the two of us now, Mum. If one of us died, the other one would be alone. I don’t have an Aunty Morag to fall back on, like you did. I’d have no one.’

  My head reeled from coffee overkill, and maybe just a little from the sudden pang of concern her words had inspired. Soon after Tony died I’d spoken to the counsellor at Bronwyn’s old school, who said to expect anxiety, tears, tantrums and atypical behaviour. Children’s grief responses were varied and unpredictable. The only remedy was lots of reassurance . . . and time.

  ‘Oh, Bron,’ I said gently. ‘No one’s going to die.’ I went over and thumbed the smear of jam off her chin, then moved to give her a hug, but she dodged me and escaped to the lounge room. Slinging my camera case over my shoulder, I followed her, deciding not to force the issue. Instead, I got busy collecting the rest of my equipment: Lenses, extra photo-cards, shutter release cable. Lens cloth, spare battery. I glanced at my wrist, then looked around for the wall clock I couldn’t remember unpacking.

  ‘Honey, what’s the time?’

  Bronwyn lifted her forearm ridiculously close to her face and squinted at her watch.

  ‘Ten-oh-five. In the morning.’

  I grabbed an apple from the bowl to eat on the way, another for Bronwyn. ‘Come on, I’m not going to be late on my first day.’

  ‘Why can’t I stay here?’

  ‘Just because.’

  ‘But I don’t want to wait in the car.’

  A twinge of annoyance. ‘Too bad.’

  ‘I’ll be all right, Mum. I won’t open the door.’ She was standing tall, hands on hips, which meant she was marshalling forces to dig in her heels and argue.