Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  Quiet sounds floated on the still air. The clink of Luella’s teacup, the sing-song murmur of her voice. Bronwyn’s chirping giggle. The roar of cicadas, and the scratch of Gruffy’s claws on the decking as he chased rabbits in his sleep.

  I reached for the doorknob, peered in. It was a lovely room, all pale pinks and florals and white walls, though disappointing in its ordinariness. A double bed sat centre stage, overlaid with a mint-green chenille bedspread. It was a cosy, pretty room, but unremarkable. Even more regrettable was the obvious lack of photographs. None of Tony or Glenda, nor any of Luella’s late husband Cleve. Not even a single snapshot of Luella, and none of Samuel.

  The next room was sparer. A single bed was pushed against the far wall, its blue eiderdown freshly laundered, its pillow propped against the headboard. There was a flimsy desk crammed at the foot of the bed, topped by a solitary atlas. The only extraordinary thing about the room were the drawings tacked to every wall: butterflies, blossoms, frogs and caterpillars – tiny pencil sketches, a few of them washed with fading watercolour.

  Tony’s room.

  Despite the obvious care in its upkeep, a mood of sorrow and loneliness seeped from every corner. Feeling like the intruder I was, I retreated along the hall to the next room.

  Like Tony’s, it was preserved exactly as it had been when Glenda lived here. Wallpapered with yellow roses, it was light and airy as a dream. The bed was freshly made, the pillows plumped. On the window seat sat a scattering of well-loved teddy bears and a knitted ragdoll. There were signs of the sixteen-year-old, too: a David Bowie poster tacked opposite the door, a make-up box, a pile of dog-eared Dolly magazines and a school jumper draped over the back of a vanity chair.

  The next room looked like an office, though judging by the dust it hadn’t been cleaned for some time. There was no bed, just a desk and a large leather recliner with an antique lamp standing to attention beside it. Bookshelves groaned under the weight of hundreds of books – dusty old Penguin classics, cookbooks and gardening books, rows of well-thumbed paperbacks perched along the upper shelves like roosting pigeons.

  The only evidence that this might have once been a bedroom was a wardrobe tucked like an afterthought behind the door. It looked to have once belonged to a child; painted blue, with a model ship perched on top.

  The murmur of voices from the verandah reminded me that I’d been gone too long . . . but I couldn’t resist.

  Crossing to the wardrobe, I opened the door.

  The smell of mothballs puffed out. On one side was a hanging space, empty but for a scattering of dry moth bodies. The other side held shallow drawers, the kind for keeping underwear. The top drawer contained a jumble of paperwork: house deeds, rate notices, defunct utility bills. In the next drawer was a skipping rope, a cigar box of dried roses converted to dust, and a collection of pastille tins crammed with rusty hairpins and pearl buttons. In the bottom drawer I found a large photo album, its spilling pages held intact between the covers with black ribbon. Untying the ribbon, I opened the book and turned the flyleaf.

  According to the handwritten legend, the first photos had been taken in 1931, and those that followed were in chronological order. They were all of the Jarman clan. Mostly matchbox-sized, they portrayed groups of people whose faces had blurred over time. Children on horseback, men shouldering rifles with dogs at their feet, women holding babies. I searched for names I recognised, but it wasn’t until I’d flipped through half a dozen pages that things got interesting.

  Above the caption, ‘Cleve, 1939, age seven’, was an empty space; the photo had been removed. A page later were more gaps where other snapshots should have been: young Cleve and his father fishing in 1940; Cleve outside the post office in 1942. Several pages on, I came to another blank space; this one was labelled: ‘Cleve and Luella, just married, 1968.’ I flipped through the album, bypassing snaps of Tony and Glenda as kids, early ones of Luella looking trim and serious. But then the empty gaps became more frequent than images. It was plain to see that every photograph of Cleve had been removed – from childhood snaps to those taken later as an adult. Not even family pictures had been spared. If, according to the caption, Cleve had been present, the photo was missing.

  I recalled what Corey had told me about the Jarmans, and how they’d been such a tight-knit fun-loving family. But then hadn’t she also said that Luella had asked Cleve for a divorce? Hmmm, I thought. Just goes to show that what you see is not always what you get. Pondering this, I retied the ribbon and replaced the album in its drawer.

  As I was shutting the wardrobe, a frenzy of barking erupted from the verandah.

  I spun around, dashed into the hallway, then forced myself to linger a moment while my heartbeat stabilised.

  That was when I saw the little painting.

  Tony’s of course – his confident lines and vibrant colours were unmistakable, even in this earlier rendering. It was one of his smaller offerings, not much bigger than a page taken from a paperback, restrained behind the glass of an oversized frame that exaggerated the painting’s delicate beauty. It was a botanical study, a native sundew with golden tentacles and sticky crimson hairs. There was even a tiny fly trapped on one glistening pad. As I studied it – breath held, gaze trapped as surely as the little fly – a memory surfaced.

  It had happened one summer, clear in my mind because I’d been pregnant with Bronwyn, hideously uncomfortable yet glowing with a joy I’d never before known. Tony and I had been strolling the garden of our new Albert Park house when he’d spied a tiny cabbage moth snared in a spiderweb. The moth was twitching feebly by the time we found it, its body gummed by sticky strands, a big golden orb spider rubbing its legs at the web’s perimeter. Tony insisted on stopping and it took him the best part of ten minutes to free the sad little moth, which fell into the grass and was lost, no doubt to perish anyway.

  Tony was depressed afterwards. I remembered wondering if all artists harboured such peculiarities. That was in the early days, of course, before I came to know that Tony was pretty much one of a kind.

  A string of yelping barks shattered the memory. I hurried back to the verandah. I’d been gone too long, I could feel the guilty flush creeping into my throat. Luella would guess I’d been snooping. To cover myself, I came up with a lie and measured it against my tongue so that it’d sound natural: You see, I followed Bronwyn’s example and took a peek at Tony’s paintings, I do hope you don’t mind, they’re rather lovely aren’t they . . .

  I needn’t have bothered.

  Luella was teasing the dog with an iced biscuit. She was smiling, her cheeks aglow and her skin dewy with perspiration. Gone was the timid, hesitant woman who’d opened the door to us a couple of hours ago. In her place stood someone who had blossomed to life.

  ‘There you are, dear,’ Luella said when she saw me. ‘Poor old Gruffy was just doing a little dance for Bronwyn. I think it might have been a bit much for him.’

  Bronwyn giggled. ‘Mum, you should have seen him, he got up on his hind legs and hopped around, just like a tubby little man.’

  ‘Why’s he panting like that?’ I asked, thankful that Gruffy had stolen the limelight. ‘Is he all right?’

  Luella patted the dog’s head. ‘He’s not as young as he used to be . . . but look at his little face! He’s positively beaming – why, the dear old boy hasn’t had this much fun in years.’

  Bronwyn studied her grandmother, her face alight with open adulation. ‘You look different to the photo,’ she commented out of the blue.

  For the first time since I’d met her, Luella’s reserve slipped. Her bright smile sank away and her face fell. In that moment she looked old, and I glimpsed the frightened, lonely woman behind her meticulously made-up mask.

  ‘What photo?’

  ‘The one of you and Dad and Aunty Glenda, out on the back lawn. Mum found it at the house. Dad’s about ten, he’s standing near a little blow-up pool, and you and Aunty Glenda are hanging washing on the clothesline.’

 
‘Just the three of us?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Luella reached forward and touched Bronwyn’s face. ‘I can’t say I remember that snap, pet. Perhaps you could bring it over next time you visit, I’d so love to see it.’

  Bronwyn looked at me for consent, and I nodded. ‘We’ll make copies of our other photos as well,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure your Gran would love to have those baby shots, and your first years at school. And what about the studio ones of you and Dad . . . we could put them all into a little album?’

  Bronwyn beamed, and we both looked at Luella.

  She was sitting back in her chair, her pudgy hands clasped on her lap, twisting the ring she wore on her pinky. Tears quivered like raindrops on her lashes.

  ‘Bronny, I think your gran’s a little overwhelmed. Why don’t you go and explore the yard for a while, let her have a bit of a rest?’

  Bronwyn looked concerned, but got up and turned to make her way to the verandah stairs. Before she reached them, she darted back to Luella’s side and planted a kiss on the older woman’s cheek. Then she raced down the steps and across the yard, into the shadows of the bunya pine. A yelp broke the silence as Gruffy dragged himself out from under Luella’s chair and lumbered after her.

  ‘Luella, we should leave. We’ve overstayed ourselves.’

  ‘Oh no! No, dear . . . please. I’m just a bit teary from the excitement. I’ll be all right in a tick.’

  ‘We must have given you quite a shock, I am sorry.’

  Luella smudged away her tears. ‘No need to apologise, Audrey. Bronwyn’s a delightful girl, I’m so pleased you brought her to see me. It’s been an emotional day and I suppose it won’t hit me until after you’ve gone. But you will come again, won’t you? How long are you staying in town? I’m afraid I’ve been so absorbed in the moment that I forgot to ask.’

  I hesitated, then said softly, ‘Actually, Luella, we live here now. In Magpie Creek. We’ve been here since December. We’re living at Thornwood.’

  Luella blinked. For the briefest of moments she looked stunned, but then her face lit up. ‘Oh, my dear. That’s just wonderful. Wonderful! But how . . . ?’

  ‘Tony left the property to me in his will. We were together for eight years, but we never got married. It didn’t work out between us. We separated when Bronwyn was six, although they had frequent contact. He was always good to her, a brilliant father. The best. Giving us Thornwood, I suppose, was his way of making sure Bronwyn would always be secure.’

  Luella nodded. I saw the curiosity in her eyes, sensed her need to hear more about Tony’s adult life, to fill in the gaps between his leaving home at fourteen and his death a few months ago. But like me, she was too polite, or perhaps too wary, to ask.

  Instead she said, ‘It must have been hard for you, Audrey, raising a little daughter on your own. You’ve done an admirable job. She’s a credit to you.’

  ‘It was easy,’ I admitted. ‘Bronwyn’s so bright. Mature for her age, she always has been. Sometimes I feel as though she’s light years ahead of me, almost as if I’m the child and she’s the adult.’

  My comment was intended to perk up the mood, but Luella’s face grew sorrowful. Her chair creaked as she shifted her weight.

  ‘Tony was a bit like that,’ she said. ‘But he was also an odd lad. While the other boys were kicking a football around the oval, or dashing around the place on their bikes, Tony was off by himself in the bush, collecting seed pods and wildflowers to draw. He was a friendly boy, funny and intelligent . . . but there was a dark side to his nature. A side that made you oftentimes wonder what he was really capable of.’

  Her words had been spoken kindly, but they left me feeling damaged somehow, as though I’d fallen against something sharp, lost a layer of skin, been wounded in a subtle part of myself that I couldn’t quite locate.

  I reached for words to defend Tony, to explain that he’d been a good father despite his often lengthy absences from our lives; that he’d been a kind-hearted man, a good man despite his many failings. But the words wouldn’t come.

  Instead, I had a flash of Tony in the yard as a boy. Standing where Bronwyn now stood in the shade of the bunya pine. His dark head bent over a drawing, absorbed . . . then looking up in surprise as his father’s shadow fell on the page. Angry words; then, the hunting knife, the hot dusty ride in the Holden; and finally the terrifying, devastating attack that he and Glenda were forced to witness.

  At that moment, I felt the keen opening up somewhere inside me of a breach; a gap, a chasm – as though I had overlooked something vital, but no matter how I probed, it remained just beyond my grasp.

  14

  Bronwyn insisted we decorate the back verandah with paper lanterns and fairy lights, and I had to admit the touch of whimsy lifted my spirits.

  Our visit to Luella had been a roaring success. Bronwyn raved about her grandmother all the way home, unable to contain her admiration. She’d already made plans with Luella to visit again tomorrow, Sunday. I was happy for her, I really was . . . but underneath the gladness lurked a darker emotion. Despite my own esteem for Luella, I couldn’t deny that her bond with my daughter had tweaked a green nerve of envy.

  Reaching up, I adjusted a lantern that had fallen awry, then ducked into the kitchen to collect another tray of food. When I returned to the verandah, Bronwyn was hovering at one end of the picnic table, peeling foil off the potato salad. As I balanced the loaded tray on my hip and offloaded another couple of foil-covered dishes, she wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Pooh, what’s that smell?’

  ‘I don’t smell anything out of the ordinary. Onions . . . beetroot maybe?’

  She made a performance of sniffing the air. ‘Mum, it’s you! You’re wearing perfume!’

  I sighed. ‘And that’s a crime now, is it?’

  She stopped peeling foil and stared at me incredulously. ‘But why?’

  ‘So I feel nice.’

  Her eyes went wide as if I’d just replied in an alien tongue. ‘You’ve never wanted to feel nice before. Why now?’

  ‘I just do.’

  Rolling her discarded tinfoil into a wad, she narrowed her eyes at me. ‘It’s for him, isn’t it?’

  At my blank non-reaction, she elaborated. ‘Jade’s dad. I knew it, I was right. You do like him, after all.’

  Candles fluttered in hurricane jars, and one of my favourite tracks came on the stereo, a haunting song with an undertone of funk. Dusting my hands on my jeans, I tried to escape back into the kitchen but Bronwyn trailed me like a bloodhound.

  ‘No point ignoring me, Mum. Perfume’s one thing, but that blouse is a dead giveaway.’

  I stalled at the sink and gazed at my top in dismay. Silk, tied at the waist, the neckline softened by a narrow ruffle. I’d thought it looked okay, which had inspired me to supplement the effect with a light mist of scent. Vanilla Musk, a fragrant oil I’d bought as a single-and-loving-it present to cheer my flagging spirits after Tony left. It hadn’t worked, of course, so I’d stashed the perfume away as a reminder never to go there again.

  ‘What’s wrong with the blouse?’ I queried, feeling foolish. ‘You always complain that I never make an effort.’

  Bronwyn’s hand went to her hip as she considered this.

  ‘Well, there’s effort . . . and then there’s effort. And Mum, I have to say that you look really good. For a change,’ she added pointedly.

  ‘So my appearance meets with your approval?’

  ‘Sure.’ She dunked her wadded foil ball into the bin and wafted out, gloating triumphantly to herself.

  ‘Wow, thanks,’ I muttered, regretting that sarcasm was wasted on an eleven-year-old. Whipping off the tea towel I’d tucked into my jeans waistband as an impromptu apron, I stalked through to the lounge room window and peered out.

  No dust cloud. No sign of a car.

  The kitchen clock said three forty-seven. I toyed with the idea of steaming open a couple of diary pages and catching up with Glenda. Her world had come
vividly alive for me since visiting the house she’d grown up in: the sunny kitchen with its loud clock and lingering cake aromas, the leafy verandah, and the girly bedroom at the end of the hall wallpapered with yellow roses. I was coming to understand her far more intimately than I’d ever have been able to through second-hand accounts from Tony. Her thoughts, her private longings, her fears. Part of me felt like the worst kind of criminal for reading her diary, but it was too late now to give in to any flimsy sense of remorse – Glenda’s story had become too compelling.

  A car horn honked. An instant later Corey’s leaf-green Mercedes roared through the eucalypts at the edge of the service road, dragging with it a blustery swirl of dust.

  Bronwyn beat me to the front verandah and was already racing down the stairs. She shrieked when she saw Jade spill from the car, and tore down the slope to greet her. They hugged like long lost relatives, then ran off around the side of the house, laughing and talking and shouting all at once.

  I helped Corey drag a cooler bag of what I suspected were lentil burgers and soy snags from the boot. She’d brought beer, too – twin six-packs of Crown Lager. Just as I suspected, Corey was a girl after my own heart.

  ‘Danny’s running late,’ she informed me, hoisting the beer into her arms, her hair burnished like bronze wire by the afternoon light. Wrangling a crumpled note from her pocket, she thrust it into my hand.

  ‘He said to give you this.’

  I read the now-familiar handwriting: Audrey, gone to see a sick lamb, will be there soon, cheers Dan.

  ‘He had an emergency callout,’ Corey explained, ‘and had to arrange for his nurse to go with him.’

  Oh, hello. ‘Nurse?’

  ‘He suspects his little woolly patient might have a heart murmur, and part of the test for that is to listen to the heartbeat via a stethoscope. It’s unavoidable, as it’s the only way to know for certain in this case if something’s wrong. Danny has an arsenal of whiz-bang gadgets designed to monitor pulse and breath and guage blood oxygen, but once in a while he needs to listen. Since for him listening is a dual impossibility – typical man that he is, as well as being stone deaf – he employs the assistance of a vet nurse. Danny hates to admit his limitations, but there are things he can’t risk overlooking. Hence, Nancy.’