Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  I sighed. From past experience I knew that if I was late for an aerial shoot, I’d be flustered. If I was flustered, my hands would shake. If my hands shook, the photos would be useless. Worse, I’d be unfocused and miss all the good angles. In a plane you have to be quick – not just with your fingers, not just with your eyes, but quick of mind. You become the camera, dislocate yourself from everything but the images fleeing past the lens. You forget your flesh-and-bone body and attune to the nuances: form, space, colour – and most importantly, light. Everything depends on judging the precise instant to release the shutter.

  ‘Bron, we have to go.’

  ‘You won’t be gone long, you said so yourself. I’ll be fine here. I can read, make my lists. Get ready for school next week.’

  ‘You know I don’t like leaving you by yourself. It makes me nervous.’

  ‘Mum, I’m eleven. I’ll be all right.’

  I hesitated. It was tempting. It was easier. Best of all it meant avoiding an argument. I calculated that with travel time to and from the airfield, flight time, plus mucking around with forms, I’d probably be back here in less than two hours.

  ‘Mum, you once said you spent heaps of time alone as a kid.’

  ‘Life was different back then.’

  She pulled a face. ‘All the way back in the dark ages?’

  ‘Bronwyn, I don’t have time to stand here arguing.’

  ‘Then go.’

  She was doing it deliberately. Punishing me. Getting even for all the slights and misdemeanours that I had committed as a mother in the eleven-year history of our association. I let out a defeated sigh.

  ‘All right! On one condition. You have to stay inside the house.’

  ‘But Mum . . . !’

  ‘Then grab your things and hop in the car.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll stay inside.’

  ‘Keep the door locked.’

  She grumbled under her breath. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Bronwyn?’

  ‘Mum, if a burglar wants to break in they’d only have to climb through the broken bathroom window. That bit of cardboard you tacked over it isn’t going to fool anyone.’

  I jangled the car keys threateningly.

  She sighed. ‘All right, I’ll lock the stupid door.’

  ‘Make sure you do.’ I hovered, still reluctant to leave her. ‘It’s only for two hours, hopefully less. And stay inside!’

  Ignoring me, Bronwyn flopped on the nearest lounge chair, snatched up the remote, and flicked on the TV. Crossing her arms defiantly over her bony ribcage, she glared at the screen. When I called goodbye from the entryway, her only response was to creep up the volume.

  Twenty minutes later I was pulling the Celica into the car park at Magpie Creek Airfield.

  It was a typical small aircraft operation. Lots of wide-open space, windsocks fluttering half-heartedly from their poles at the far end of the runway. Miles of airstrip and brown grass, several sheds clustered around a huge corrugated iron hangar, and a flat-roofed bungalow serving as headquarters.

  A shrill caterwauling accompanied me along the narrow concrete gangway that led to the office. As I approached, the noise gathered itself into a more restrained shape, and I was able to identify the recorded voice of a woman singing opera. The orchestra thrashed out the closing bars, then succumbed to silence.

  Inside the office, a tall red-haired woman stood at a cluttered workbench, removing a record from an ancient gramophone.

  ‘Right on time,’ she boomed cheerfully, offering her large hand. ‘You must be Audrey. Hello there, I’m Corey Weingarten.’

  She wore a beat-up leather bomber jacket, snug jeans, dusty work boots. A glorious spray of honey-red curls framed her tanned face and cascaded out of sight over her shoulders.

  ‘Here, sign this will you?’ She placed a flight form on a bare corner of desk and handed me a pen. ‘It’s all filled out. Run your eye over the charges, let me know if anything’s amiss.’

  ‘All looks fine,’ I told her, scribbling on the dotted line.

  Without further fuss, we made our way back along the concrete path in the direction of the runway.

  ‘So,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘you’re Cossart’s new shooter? Hope they’re paying you enough?’

  ‘Pretty fair,’ I admitted.

  Corey hummed under her breath as she led me out to the plane. We passed several tidy maintenance sheds, and the yawning iron whale-body that served as a hangar. The plane waited on a concrete strip, adjacent to the causeway. It was a gleaming Cessna, three seater, probably about thirty years old.

  We buckled in, and the engine gave a wheezy roar as it spluttered to life. Corey scanned the instrument panel, her fingers flying delicately over the knobs and dials as though reading them by touch alone. She twisted her hair out of her face so that it sat octopus-like across her shoulders, then she began to coast the plane in a wide arc. A moment later we were trundling towards the runway. The windows rattled in their casings and the wings groaned as though impatient to take flight.

  Corey smiled. ‘Been taking photos long?’

  ‘As long as I can remember. My aunt left me an old Brownie camera when she died,’ I explained. ‘At the start, I was just curious. The first few photos I took were horrendous – people’s heads cut off, blurred mystery objects, total black. But I was hooked. From then on all I wanted to do was go around snapping pictures. I spent solid chunks of my life in darkrooms, until everything went digital. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking I can smell developer.’ I looked at Corey. ‘What about you? Been flying long?’

  ‘Same as you.’ She grinned at me and her cheeks dimpled. ‘Dad used to keep an old crop duster on our farm when I was a kid. It’d gone to rust, abandoned since Dad went organic in the seventies. I was intrigued by the old plane, used to play under it, draw it, tell stories about it until I sent the whole family around the twist. Finally, Dad let me sit in the cockpit and pretend to steer the column. I had lessons when I was seventeen – worked every weekend at the Swan for two years to pay for them. I was a hopeless waitress, but once I got in the air . . .’ She beamed. ‘Well then, let’s get going, shall we?’

  She twiddled more dials, then adjusted the steering column. The Cessna lurched into speed, rattling and groaning as the tarmac fled away beneath us. The little aircraft nosed the sky, gave a brief shudder as its wheels retracted, then lifted into the air. An icy breeze whined through the open passenger window, smelling of grass and diesel.

  ‘You’re new to Magpie Creek, aren’t you?’ Corey yelled. She peered over and delivered another broad smile. Her teeth were movie-star white, the corners of her eyes crinkled with interest.

  I had to shout to be heard over the engine noise. ‘My daughter and I moved up six weeks ago from Melbourne.’

  ‘So you’re the one who bought Thornwood?’ She laughed at my surprise. ‘Nothing escapes the bush telegraph, Audrey. You’ll find out soon enough. What made you come to Magpie Creek, anyway? It’s a bit off the beaten track for most people. I expect you got wind of our scintillating nightlife?’

  I locked the heavy telephoto lens onto the body of my camera, enjoying her good-natured curiosity. I wished I could spin an amusing tale about how fate, or whimsy, or just plain fluky happenstance had led me here. I could have lied, of course. Made things easier. But I liked Corey, found myself wanting to trust her.

  ‘I’d never heard of Magpie Creek until a few months ago,’ I admitted. ‘Thornwood came to me as an inheritance. I flew up here to put it on the market, but took one look and fell in love with the place.’

  Corey’s smile faltered. ‘Inherited? Then you . . . you knew Tony?’

  ‘We were together for a while. Before he got married.’

  ‘And he left you Thornwood?’

  I nodded. Cold air and noise rushed through the window. The collar of my thin jacket flapped against my neck. I knew Corey was waiting for me to elaborate but I was lost for words. How to explain the ta
ngled nest of lies and broken promises that had constituted my years with Tony? How to describe an obsession that was fuelled more by loneliness than by true affection? How to admit to a stranger that I had once made a mistake, and that my fear of being alone had made me keep making it . . . and that the one good thing to come of it was my daughter?

  Corey saved me the trouble. ‘No one’s lived at Thornwood for twenty-five years,’ she shouted over the Cessna’s grumbling drone. She wriggled in her seat, made fractional adjustments to a dial on the instrument panel, then shot a curious look in my direction. ‘I expect you had quite a mess to clean up before you moved in?’

  I eased my throttlehold from the neck of the telephoto lens. ‘Well, the dust and cobwebs had gone berserk, and a few of the old windowpanes were broken, but otherwise the house was in surprisingly good nick. It took a few weeks of dusting and mopping and polishing but it’s lovely now. I could use the services of a handyman around the place, though . . . No one I’ve called so far can spare the time. I don’t suppose you know anyone – ?’

  Corey was already patting her pockets. With a magician’s flourish she produced a dog-eared business card.

  ‘Hobart Miller,’ I read. ‘Farm maintenance, tree lopping, general repairs, no job too small.’

  ‘I can recommend him personally,’ Corey called over the noise. ‘He’s trustworthy, punctual, and does a thorough job. He’s not a glazier, but knowing old Hobe he’ll insist on fixing your windows himself . . . and anything else you might want doing. He cuts grass, traps possums, builds the sturdiest chook pens this side of the black stump. Last year one of my gum trees split down the middle after a storm – Hobe drilled a coach bolt through the divide and winched the trunk back together. You can’t even see the bolt now, the bark grew back over it. He’s a treasure. I’ll give him advance warning if you like, I’m seeing him this afternoon.’

  ‘He’s a friend of yours?’

  ‘You might say that. He’s lived in Magpie Creek forever. An eccentric old fella, but don’t let his scruffy appearance put you off. He’s smart, knows everything there is to know about anything. A walking encyclopaedia, Dad calls him.’

  That got my attention. ‘I wonder how much he knows about Thornwood?’

  ‘Probably its entire history, right down to the type of timber used in the house construction.’

  I tucked the card into my pocket, thoughtful. ‘Corey, how did you know Tony?’

  She looked wary. ‘We grew up together – we used to hang out after school, muck about on holidays, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Did you see him before he died?’

  ‘No –’ She looked across at me. ‘Gosh, Audrey, losing him must have been dreadful for you . . . It was bad enough for me, and I hadn’t seen him since we were kids.’

  ‘It was a shock. Tony and I were together for eight years. Then he married someone else . . . but we have a daughter, Bronwyn. She’s only eleven, his death hit her pretty hard.’

  Corey did a double-take, her freckles dancing like golden tealeaves on her tanned skin. ‘Poor kid,’ she said. ‘She must be devastated.’

  ‘She misses him,’ I agreed. ‘She was six when Tony left, but they stayed close. Every Sunday they went on outings together, and he always made a fuss over birthdays and Christmas. He was a great dad. Until recently,’ I amended.

  Corey raised a brow. ‘Oh?’

  ‘About nine months ago he went cold. Started phoning to cancel outings, or just not showing up, that sort of thing. I got the impression he was avoiding Bronwyn.’

  ‘Did he ever say why?’

  ‘That’s the sad part. Every time I confronted him about it, he shut me out. Refused to listen. Just carried on talking over me, as if he hadn’t heard. Bronwyn put on a brave face, but I knew she was hurt.’

  Corey muttered something that might have been ‘bloody Tony’, but her words were eaten by the Cessna’s rowdy engine. Gathering her hair, she twisted it distractedly into a knot at the nape of her neck and stared out at the sky. The hair sat restlessly on her shoulders for a few seconds then, strand by strand, began to reach out exploring tentacles and resume its forward migration.

  ‘She’s lucky to have you,’ she said at last. ‘A girl needs her mum, there’s no better shoulder to cry on. I don’t know how I’d have gotten through adolescence without my mum, bless her.’

  It was a kind thing to say, but it stirred a rush of guilt. I tried to smile, but my face felt stiff and masklike.

  ‘Things are a bit strained between us at the moment,’ I said over the engine. ‘Bronwyn rarely cries about her father – not in front of me, anyway. She hides in her room, as if grieving is something to be ashamed of. Some days I think she’s okay, then other times I worry.’

  ‘We all grieve in our own way,’ Corey said, with a sideways glance. ‘I don’t have kids of my own, not yet anyway, so I’m no authority – but give her time, Audrey . . . my guess is she’ll be fine.’

  Far below, the Cessna’s shadow raced beneath us, a small dart-like ghost rippling over hills and valleys, jumping brown dams, and weaving across a patchwork of green and gold paddocks sewn together by post-and-wire fencing. It skipped across yellow dots of baled hay, teasing the cattle that browsed in their quiet fields.

  Corey tapped the windscreen.

  ‘First property’s coming up on the right. We’re approaching from the south-west, that line of trees marks the northern boundary. In a moment, we’ll swing east, then hook back around and approach from the north-east boundary so the sun’s at our back. I can make a second pass if you want.’

  I leaned on the passenger door, balancing the base of the camera against the outer window rim, cushioning it with the heel of my hand as I squinted into the viewfinder.

  Rust-coloured soil showed beneath a worn carpet of golden grass, and the corrugated farmhouse roof tossed up shards of fractured sunlight.

  Steadying the camera, I switched to manual focus and began shooting before the property had filled my lens. Distractedly, I thought: Corey’s a good pilot. These’ll be first-rate shots. We’re riding smooth despite the hard wind I can feel buffeting my face from below.

  We progressed over the heart of the property, the Cessna’s groaning engine keeping pace with the metronome whirr of my camera. The farm’s gravel driveway looped back on itself and then shot eastwards, towards a stretch of tarmac that joined the highway. A heartbeat later, the property slid away and we were coasting over a darkly treed mountain ridge.

  ‘You need a second pass?’ Corey yelled above the din.

  ‘No, that was great.’

  ‘All right, we’ll go north-west now. The second property’s not far.’

  Somehow Corey managed to keep the sun at my back, which made my job a breeze. It seemed no time passed before all four of Cossart’s farm holdings lay behind us.

  As Corey manoeuvred the Cessna into a wide turn, I began snapping random shots. A ragged circle of peaked hills curved beneath us, green and lush, crosshatched by gullies and shadowy ravines. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. From up here the world looked peaceful, and yet it was easy to imagine this colossal ring of extinct volcanic remnants as a one-time chaotic furnace of ash and lava.

  ‘Look down there,’ Corey called, pointing to my window.

  As the plane swung westward, the pilot-side wing tilted straight up while mine dipped almost vertically beneath me. The ground rose sharply and for one dizzying moment I imagined reaching out my hand to touch the treetops.

  Then I realised what Corey was doing.

  ‘That’s Thornwood.’ I couldn’t keep the laugh out of my voice. ‘I recognise that hill at the back of the homestead, and that crescent-shaped rock-face. It’s all so leafy, so beautiful . . .’

  I twisted off my lens cap and began shooting again, feeling a thrill as I reminded myself that the rolling landscape below belonged to me. My camera captured the forested hills and valley pastures, the rocky outcrops and steep-walled gullies. It caught the darker g
reen of the garden, and the silver rooftop beneath which my daughter was enjoying her me-time unawares.

  The icy gale roaring through the tiny window had frozen my face and fingers and the first threads of airsickness were climbing the base of my spine. My throat was raw from shouting, and my hearing was dulled by the engine’s constant hammering . . . yet I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this happy.

  ‘It’s a magnificent property,’ Corey shouted. ‘I’m glad it went to someone who values it. There’s nothing sadder than seeing a place like that fall apart from neglect.’

  ‘Do you know the property well?’

  ‘I grew up on one of the adjoining farms, but my parents sold up in the early nineties. See that green swathe of hills down there? That’s our old boundary.’

  We peered down at the rugged landscape where the Cessna’s shadow bumped over hills and dipped into verdant valleys.

  ‘I have fond memories of Thornwood,’ Corey yelled above the engine. ‘We used to play there as kids. It was wild and overgrown – infinitely more magical than the Weingarten organic fruit and vegetable farm. Bunyips in the creek, trolls under every hill, that sort of thing. We had a blast – feasting on limes, bananas, mangoes . . . cracking open macadamias, hiding in tree branches, skinny-dipping in the creek. Even after the old man died, no amount of warnings would keep us away.’

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly over the noise. ‘Warnings?’

  Corey reached back and slid her window shut, then indicated I do the same. I’d finished shooting, so it was a relief to stop the rush of freezing wind. The noise dimmed dramatically too. The Cessna’s roar was muted now, the cockpit a bubble of calm.

  ‘What do you mean, warnings?’ I prompted.

  Corey gazed into the horizon of blue nothingness. ‘Our parents didn’t want us going there, I suppose because of how Tony’s grandfather died. Anyway, it only made the place more attractive. We pretended it was a haunted house, and made up stories about a secret room full of human skeletons. We used to dare each other to spend a night there, but none of us ever did.’ She cast me a sideways look. ‘Don’t worry, Audrey, the stories aren’t true.’