Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  I changed gears and eased the Celica up to ninety.

  I’d once shared student digs with a deaf girl – years ago, pre-Tony, at the start of my first year of art college – and her loud, garbled sentences had taken ages to decode. It occurred to me at the time to learn a few phrases of Auslan, but despite my efforts she was determined to speak rather than sign, even though it meant endlessly repeating herself. Danny Weingarten was the opposite; judging by the notes, and by his daughter’s easy role as translator, it seemed he was equally determined to remain silent.

  ‘You and Jade certainly covered a lot of ground in one day,’ I told Bronwyn. ‘I’m glad you’ve made a new friend.’

  ‘Not in one day, Mum. One afternoon. We didn’t even sit together at lunch . . . I was having a bit of a bad morning,’ she added quietly.

  I looked at her. ‘Why?’

  Bronwyn twisted her schoolbag strap. ‘Oh, you know . . . first day at a new school and all that.’

  She looked small, vulnerable. My heart tightened.

  ‘I hated first days,’ I confided. ‘Every time Aunt Morag got itchy feet, I was thrown into a different school, and the kids weren’t cool like they are now, and the teachers – well, let’s just say they’d have been right at home in a Charles Dickens’ novel . . . My life was a veritable nightmare,’ I concluded mock-gloomily.

  Bronwyn giggled. ‘Mum, you’re such a drama queen.’

  I grinned. ‘You were telling me about Jade.’

  ‘Well, she found me in the library. She’d just come back from lunch with her Aunty Corey, who’d told her they were coming over to our place on Saturday. Jade and I hit it off straight away. Then later, in class, she put her hand up when the teacher asked if someone would like to volunteer as my buddy.’

  ‘Buddy?’

  ‘You know, because I’m new – a buddy is someone who shows the new kid where the toilets are, where to line up for assembly, that sort of thing.’

  I’d reached the turn-off. If I hooked left, the road would veer west towards Thornwood. Driving straight through the intersection would take me north to the airfield and from there – if I continued past the landing fields – I’d reach William Road.

  I flicked the indicator and slowed to turn toward home . . . but then kept going straight. The Celica rattled as the tarmac gave way to gravel, and the crack in the windscreen inched off on another tangent. The trees along the verge grew thicker, so tall they appeared to join with the low-hanging stormclouds, crowding out the last shreds of colourless daylight. Was it really only four o’clock? It looked more like midnight.

  Bronwyn noticed we weren’t on our way home. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I want to show you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a secret. You’ll see.’

  ‘A secret?’ She pondered this morsel, her brows pinched. ‘You do like him, then? Jade’s dad, I mean?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘When have I ever liked anyone?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, I’ve no intention of starting now.’

  ‘You said we came to Magpie Creek to make a new life.’

  ‘We did, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to lose my head over the first guy who comes along.’

  ‘Did you really see him half-naked?’

  ‘He was just washing the blood off his arms after whelping the old man’s dog.’

  ‘Did he have nice muscles?’

  ‘Bron!’ I actually growled.

  ‘Well, did he?’

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I responded frostily. ‘Anyway, that’s beside the point. Your dad was the only man for me. I could never love anyone else.’

  Bronwyn affected a theatrical eye-roll. ‘So you keep saying.’ Unzipping her bag, she retrieved her drink bottle, took a noisy swig, then palmed shut the sipper top. ‘So what’s this secret? If it’s not your mad crush on Jade’s dad, then what is it?’

  There were only two dwellings on William Road: one was a small boarded-up shanty that was obviously abandoned. The other – which came into view now – was a beautiful highset Queenslander sitting in the midst of an overgrown garden. Slowing the car, I pulled onto the verge opposite and cut the motor.

  ‘I found a couple of photos.’

  ‘What – that’s your big secret?’

  ‘Have a look in the glove box.’

  Bronwyn yanked open the compartment and withdrew the envelope. She examined each photo carefully, her head bent nearly to her knees.

  For a long while we sat in the steamy silence – me listening to the patter of raindrops on the roof, and Bronwyn scrutinising the photos as though they held long-sought answers to her life’s most puzzling questions. When she thought to flip the larger photo over, the sight of the handwritten inscription made her gasp.

  ‘I knew it,’ she said excitedly, ‘it’s Dad as a boy. Who are the other kids? That blonde-haired girl looks like me.’

  ‘That’s your father’s sister, Glenda, who died. And the redheaded girl is Jade’s Aunty Corey . . . The other little boy is Jade’s dad. They all grew up together.’

  ‘Jade told me her dad and my dad were friends when they were kids.’ She considered the photo for a long time. ‘I wish Dad was still here. I miss him.’

  I let my gaze fall on the dark-haired boy in the photo, seeing in my mind’s eye the man he would later become – attractive, intelligent, sexy and wickedly funny, a brilliant artist . . .

  ‘I miss him, too.’

  The Celica’s cooling engine ticked noisily. Steam rose off the water-slicked hood. The rain was so light now that I could hear individual drops pattering on the roof. Bronwyn’s attention drifted to the window, focused on the house across from where we’d parked.

  It was much like other houses I’d seen in Magpie Creek – the weatherboards could have done with a coat of paint, and the guttering was flecked with rust – but its period features were intact: decorative iron lace, stained-glass windowpanes, a leafy verandah and wide stairs. Pink roses frothed along the front gate, shadowed by tall poincianas that partly obscured the house from the road. On either side of the boundary fence was bushland, thickening behind the house as it escaped uphill. A massive black bunya pine towered over the rooftop, its great arms jabbing the sky. The pine hadn’t changed much since the photo of Tony and Glenda and their mother had been taken beneath it, and its curiously contorted trunk was unmistakable.

  Bronwyn’s gaze lingered on the tree, then darted back to the photo. When her mind made the connection, she shot a questioning look at me.

  ‘It’s the same tree,’ she said. ‘Is it Dad’s old house?’

  ‘Your dad grew up there, but it’s your grandmother’s house.’

  ‘I have a grandmother?’ Bronwyn’s eyes went wide. ‘A grandfather, too?’

  ‘Honey, I’m sorry . . . your grandfather Cleve died a long time ago.’

  She latched her gaze back on the house. ‘Oh, Mum, does my grandma know we’re here? Have you spoken to her? What’s she like? When can I meet her?’

  ‘Well, this is the secret bit, Bronny. Your grandma – Luella – never leaves her house. Apparently she’s a bit of a hermit. And now, after what happened to your dad, I’m worried she might be too upset to see anyone.’

  Bronwyn looked thoughtful. ‘She’ll want to see us, though, won’t she, Mum? I mean, we’re family.’

  ‘I don’t know, Bronny. I hope so.’

  ‘Can we go in? Do you think she’s home?’

  ‘It’s a bit late in the day. Why don’t we come back on the weekend, bring her something special?’

  ‘Flowers, you mean?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Maybe a box of chocolates.’ Bronwyn studied the house, her eyes alight with curiosity and longing. ‘I’ll make her a card, too. Oh, Mum, I can’t believe I’ve got a grandmother!’

  Her excitement infected me. My heart rate picked up. My hands grew damp. Questions began to tumble through my mind. Then, one question in part
icular. And though I knew I had no right to ask it, and knew as well that the time when I might broach the topic was a long way off – it niggled like a thorn in my psyche, sharp and all-consuming.

  Luella, what really happened the night your mother died?

  As I examined the lovely old house with its boisterous garden and daisy-sprinkled lawn, I sensed that even if did win Luella’s trust enough to ask, the odds were that she would have no answers.

  Her cosy nest of a house seemed to be hiding beneath the protective arms of the great bunya pine. I imagined her inside, pottering in her darkened rooms, trapped for the past twenty years in a self-imposed prison of sorrow and loneliness. Did she have other family? Or was she – like me and Bronwyn – adrift without relatives, a solitary unit forced by circumstance to stand alone?

  As the old Celica rocketed back along William Road in the direction of town, Corey’s words echoed in my ears.

  It’s not worth the heartache . . . Not for you, not for Bronwyn –

  But Corey was wrong. Bronwyn and I had weathered heartache before and survived it. If it came to that, we would survive it again.

  After a dinner of pizza and salad and shared jam lamington, we flopped on the couch in front of the TV and channel-surfed for a while before bedtime.

  Bronwyn wandered off to her room, Harry Potter tucked under her arm. When I checked on her later, she was curled on her bed, hugging her book like a ragdoll, lost to the world.

  In the watery moonlight, she might have been a princess from a fairytale – her hair fanned across the pillow, kinked by the heat, and her features were serene as an ice carving. Her eyes moved under their lids, as though following the antics of some astonishing dream-spectacle.

  I marvelled over how much she’d changed in the last twelve months. She’d shed her baby-faced plumpness, grown taller and leaner. There was more of the teenager about her, less of the child. Yet so subtle was her transformation, that if I hadn’t been observing her I’d have missed it.

  It seemed I wasn’t the only one taking notice. After what I’d learned today, Tony’s withdrawal from his daughter’s life made sense. For so long I’d feared that he was distancing himself from Bronwyn to punish me. Or worse, that he was pulling away from both of us, letting us fade into the past, just as he’d let his early life fade.

  How wrong I’d been.

  Tony hadn’t been withdrawing from Bronwyn . . . but from the memory of his dead sister. Bronwyn’s resemblance to Glenda had been there all along, of course, but Tony must have noticed the likeness growing stronger with each passing year, until he’d been unable to bear it. Which made me wonder if there was any truth to what Corey had told me. Had Tony argued with his sister the day she died; could he have pushed her? Is that why he’d run away from home – to escape the guilt and horror of what he’d done? Was it also why, twenty years later, he’d found it necessary to withdraw from Bronwyn’s life, unable to endure the sight of her face? It pained me that I’d never know.

  Adjusting the sheet across Bron’s narrow shoulders, I kissed the top of her head and then crept back to the kitchen.

  This part of the house still smelled pleasantly of onions and tomato, and I found it comfortingly ordinary. As I washed and dried the dishes, stacked them in neat piles in the cupboard and folded our pizza boxes into the recycle bin, I tried to pretend that nothing existed beyond these familiar domestic tasks. For a while it worked. There was just the quiet run of the tap, the clink of dishes, the soft call of a boobook from the dark garden outside.

  I had a quick shower to cool down, got into singlet and undies and brushed my teeth. Switching off the lights, I padded down the hallway to my room, climbed into bed. Then tossed and turned, cursing the infernal heat that glued the sheets to my legs and back. My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, but whenever I tried to close them they kept snapping open to re-check the bedside clock.

  Was it really only midnight?

  For the first time since arriving at Thornwood I found myself missing the hum of city traffic, the blare of car horns and sirens, the rattle of trams, and the reassuring blaze of streetlamps. Noise, glare, distraction; was that why people flocked to the city? Not for jobs, not for lifestyle . . . not even for the anonymous crowds to lose themselves among – but for the constant never-ending distraction?

  Wrestling the sheet off my legs, I flopped back on the mattress. A heat rash burned on my neck and I felt the urge to scratch until I drew blood. Instead, I tried to meditate . . . only to snap awake minutes later, more impossibly strung-out than before.

  Finally the dam broke.

  Images poured into my mind – a child’s bathing pool full of sky; four small faces crumpled in laughter; a girl with white-blonde plaits and a skinny dark-haired boy with too-large eyes. A tall woman with a kindly face trapped inside the prison of her own house. Human bones dredged from a dam, and rocks sliding down a deadly precipice. People I’d never met began to murmur their secrets. The dead rose up – pleading, cajoling, calling me to listen to stories that I had no desire to hear.

  Only one voice was absent.

  ‘Samuel,’ I whispered into the darkness. ‘Where are you? Why won’t you talk to me?’

  The room was stuffy, the air like a furnace. Despite the cool shower, my blood felt on fire. Rolling out of bed, I groped for my slippers and tiptoed down the hall.

  The instant I crossed the threshold to the back bedroom, I felt calmer. The voices in my head fell quiet, the dream-rush of images ebbed away. I told myself it had nothing to do with being near the photo of Samuel Riordan; nothing to do with the way his solid presence soothed me . . . and nothing to do with the lonely ache in my ribcage that made me want to wrap myself around a large warm body and forget, just for a little while, that I was alone.

  I fell heavily into the sheets. Sneezed a couple of times, curled in a ball and dragged the pillow over my head. When nothing happened, I threw the pillow on the floor and rolled onto my stomach, burying my face in the mattress. I’d wake up with wrinkles, but I didn’t care. Sleep was what I wanted . . . sleep, and the sweet silence of oblivion.

  A splinter of awareness in the back of my brain told me I was dreaming, yet in my drowsy state I could have sworn that the man lying beside me in the bed was real.

  At first I thought it was Tony; dreams often resurrect the dead. He was sobbing, which is what made me think of Tony. There had been so many nights broken by his nightmares . . . so many nights pieced back together with calming words, cups of tea, back rubs.

  But this wasn’t Tony. Tony had been skinny, bony, disarmingly boyish. The man beside me was a solid weight, fleshy, big-boned. And somehow I understood that he wasn’t anguished because he was waking out of a nightmare, but because he had just fallen into one.

  ‘Samuel . . . ?’

  Wrapping my arms around him, I drew him tight, just as I’d once done with Tony, pressing my lips to the top of his head, murmuring comfort. His hair smelled of sunlight and sweat, his skin felt hot.

  A coil of my hair fell across his face. The strand was very long, kinked by soft waves that gleamed in the moonlight. I brushed the lock away, letting my fingers linger on his cheek and trail down the side of his neck into the hollow at the base of his throat.

  Samuel shivered. ‘Aylish.’

  ‘I’m here,’ I whispered. The voice wasn’t my own. Or rather it was, but it sounded raspy, as though much time had passed since I’d used it.

  Samuel didn’t appear to hear.

  I tightened my stranglehold. The heat of him burned like fever against my breasts, scalding the inside of my arms, my belly, my thighs. Yet he shivered, as though a cold wind swept over him . . . as though my touch was made of ice.

  The moon slid down the sky. Cicadas sent up their first tremulous chorus, then fell again to silence. Soon dawn would come and that knowledge filled me with dread.

  He was slipping away.

  Or perhaps it was me, retreating into the place my mother had called the Alcherin
ga, the Dreaming. I clung tighter, but my arms felt scrawny around his shoulders, slender vines encircling the trunk of a vast river gum. I held him with more force, sending tendrils of myself around him, drawing him near, binding his flesh to me, twining his heart and soul to mine.

  ‘Aylish,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m here, Samuel. I’m here.’

  Yet even as I spoke I felt the substance of my body begin to dissolve, like a night mist melting in the sun. I felt my core respond to the pull of something greater and vastly more eternal than either of us; something I could not – dared not – resist.

  I clutched him with sudden desperation, fearful of letting go. Fearful that this moment might be our last. A tremor flew across his big body and with a jerking motion he curled away from me, wrapping his arms around his chest as if to close me out. I pressed from behind, draping my arms over his shoulders, resting my cheek against his back, but it only seemed to make him shiver all the harder.

  Night was escaping.

  The moonlight faded and I could hear the scratch of leaves against the window. Birds began to chirp awake, serenading the approach of another piccaninny dawn. I drifted mournfully, no longer able to feel the bed beneath me, or the heat radiating from the body of the man beside me. Soon he would become invisible to me . . . as I already was to him.

  I nestled closer, one last attempt to cradle him against the tremors, to ease his sorrow. I thought he must be asleep, but then his voice entered the stillness.

  ‘What have I done?’ he murmured, his voice coloured by an emotion I didn’t understand. ‘God forgive me, what have I done?’

  8

  Still dark. The night outside, silent. A delicate breeze wafted in the window, cool and delicious with the scent of lilac. I reached across the bed, my palm smoothing over the sheet, seeking but not finding.