Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  Somehow we managed to eat heartily while debating a variety of topics – why vegetarian sausages were ideologically unsound; whether Jade would one day replace Nancy as her father’s vet nurse; at what exact moment had Bronwyn first realised her passion for insects; and wasn’t it exciting that Audrey had agreed to take Corey’s portrait – all the while communicating with a jumbled amalgam of sign, finger spelling, lip reading, and way too many charade-like hand gesticulations.

  Midway through our meal, I found myself wondering why Danny never spoke, why he rarely uttered a sound of any kind – except for the occasional raspy laugh.

  I remembered my deaf friend from art school, Rhonda, the one who’d been so determined to communicate verbally despite never being understood. She always spoke at full volume, snorted and howled at jokes, yelled across the street to her hearing friends, and generally clattered about the place as if she was trying – by the sheer force of her loudness – to crash through the boundaries imposed by her deafness and connect more fully with the rest of the world.

  Danny, on the other hand, seemed to be at home with his silence. Comfortable to converse via notes or lip reading or sign. Not bothered by the occasional misunderstanding. Corey had said he hated to admit his limitations. But perhaps it was more than that – perhaps he didn’t feel the need to crash through any boundaries? Perhaps he was happy with who he was?

  Mad thoughts. How did I know what Danny really thought or felt?

  When the food was gone and the dishes cleared away, we sprawled on deckchairs and passed around the cake tin – which, to my eternal joy and gratitude contained a batch of Danny’s mind-bogglingly delicious chocolate cherries. Corey seized control of the coffeepot and soon the dark bittersweet scent of coffee flavoured the onion-tinged air. The girls were lost somewhere in the garden, probably in Bronwyn’s secret bower under the jacaranda. I could hear their muffled prattling punctuated by occasional giggles.

  ‘Oh, this is bliss,’ Corey declared, stretching back in her chair, swirling the dregs of her coffee as she gazed across the garden. Shadows were shifting, the trees had grown gloomy and mysterious. Mosquitoes tried – without success – to infiltrate my stronghold of citronella candles and mozzie coils. Large floppy moths reeled drunkenly about us, and hordes of tiny black kamikaze beetles bombarded the chocolates, the beer, the table, and embedded themselves in Corey’s hair.

  Danny signed to Corey, his hands moving too quickly for me to catch more than the gist: something about shouting.

  Corey glared at him, then looked over at me, her brow puckered. ‘He always complains that I talk too loudly. Do I, Audrey? Do I shout all the time?’

  She was doing it now, but I’d become so accustomed to her loudness that I barely noticed anymore. Even so, I had to bite my lips to stifle a laugh.

  ‘I wouldn’t say all the time,’ I said, ‘just most of it. But how can Danny tell?’

  She slumped and let out a sigh. ‘He says he can feel the vibrations of my voice from all the way over there, can you believe that guy? He has a hide, considering my volume is his fault.’

  With a grimace at my questioning look, she explained. ‘When we were kids, Danny could hear faint words if we shouted with our lips pressed against his head. Right here – ’ She tapped behind her ear. ‘I guess the habit never left me.’

  Danny slapped his palms and made another rapid sign.

  Corey rolled her eyes. ‘I need to play my music loud,’ she argued, ‘it helps me think. Anyway, there’s no cause for you to be rude, you’re signing way too fast, Audrey’s struggling to keep up. Slow down for goodness sake.’

  Danny looked over at me and signed, Sorry.

  Okay, I gestured smoothly. I’d been practising that one in the mirror. It seemed a good all-rounder, a handy one to fall back on in moments of linguistic uncertainty. It was one of the few signs that now felt second-nature to me.

  Danny’s smile lingered a moment too long. There was a spark in his eyes that made me want to start fidgeting. How could anyone be that gorgeous? One side of his face was shadowed, while the other was burnished by the gold light of a lantern. I went to look away, but then he was signing again, this time with slow precision.

  Her shouting doesn’t bother you?

  I gave him a lopsided grin. ‘My old Aunt Morag was a shouter, on account of her dodgy hearing aid. I guess I’m used to it.’

  Danny looked baffled, but Corey updated him with a series of swift gestures. When understanding came he snorted, the only vocal sound – other than his raspy, wheezy laugh – that I’d ever heard him make. He was signing again, grinning. Dimples appeared, and his eyes glinted. I found myself captivated by the sight of his face, his gesturing hands forgotten.

  Corey launched into another story, something about Danny and Tony finding a haunted cottage.

  ‘It was a hut built by the original settlers,’ she explained for my benefit, ‘yonks ago, 1870s I think. A pretty rugged old outlook hidden away in the bush up there near the national park boundary. Anyway, the boys used to sneak up there sometimes and hide out, and one day Danny came home white-faced, sick with fright. He said that he and Tony had seen a woman’s ghost – ’

  I was interested in hearing the tale, as it provided another glimpse into Tony’s childhood. But the sight of Danny spellbound by his sister’s story, his eyes intense and his mouth so serious, combined with the fluttering gold lantern light on his perfect features . . . and somehow my thoughts were straying again. Back to my college days, and my deaf roommate Rhonda. Near the end of first term she’d snared herself a boyfriend, I recalled. He seemed nice, a good-looking hippyish graduate. I was pleased for her . . . until the boyfriend started staying over. Unable to hear herself, unaware that her ecstatic cries must echo throughout the entire house, Rhonda hadn’t been bothered by the thin walls. I, on the other hand, had cursed them. In the adjoining bedroom, I’d been forced to smother my head under the pillow, equally appalled and awestruck by the noise emanating from the room next door.

  Danny was slumped forward watching his sister, his hands clasped between his knees. The semi-gloom seemed to exaggerate that rumpled, half-wild look he had about him. Maybe it was the windswept hair, or the brooding mouth that could at any moment flash a killer smile. Maybe it was the fact that he never spoke, that my conversations with him always left me feeling out of my depth. Or maybe it was just that in the five years since Tony left, I’d had so little to do with men – and certainly none as dangerously fascinating as Danny Weingarten.

  My traitorous thoughts rushed back to the hay barn, but this time it was me there with him – me brushing straw off his arms, his broad back; me reaching up to smooth my fingers over that untameable hair –

  Of course, Danny picked that exact moment to look at me.

  I felt the heat rush to my cheeks and pretended interest in the label of my beer bottle, which I’d already half shredded off, meanwhile thinking how lucky it was that the verandah was so dark, and that the lanterns cast such patchy light . . .

  When his attention drifted back to his sister, I looked away across the garden. The sun was plunging lower, deepening the eastern horizon to indigo, painting it pink in the west. The hills were turning from purple-grey to deep rose, a scene straight from one of Tony’s watercolours.

  Out of the blue, Corey remembered an urgent phone call she had to make, which I suspected was a ploy to leave me and Danny alone. As her voice drifted from the kitchen, Danny’s green gaze remained on my face – as though observing someone without comment was the most natural thing in the world.

  At first, it unnerved me. I shredded the label off my beer bottle while I ran through possible conversation starters: Had Thornwood changed much since he was here as a kid? Had he and Tony spent much time swimming in the creek? Did he ever get the urge to pursue a career as a city vet? It all sounded so trite, so far removed from what I truly wanted to ask: Are you and Nancy an item? Why won’t you speak? Are you really the enigma you appear to be? I cl
amped my teeth together, then tried on a smile. When that didn’t fit, I simply stared back at him.

  He didn’t seem embarrassed or bothered by our silence. I imagined he was used to it; for him, the world was always silent. I remembered what he’d said in the church yesterday, about not all silence being equal. I was beginning to understand. A lull hung between us now, devoid of talk, empty of conversation, punctuated by the chirp of cicadas and the pop of beetles against Bronwyn’s paper lanterns, by Corey’s muffled phone talk. And yet my awareness of him was acute, making it impossible for me to turn my attention elsewhere.

  His hands began to move. Can you hear the girls?

  I nodded, pointing in the direction of the jacaranda. I resorted to finger-spelling, stumbling on Bronwyn’s name, forgetting the crosshatched fingers of the W, making a botch of it.

  Bronwyn’s . . . secret place.

  Danny nodded. Thornwood’s full of them.

  My fingers tangled over themselves. Easy to get lost.

  You like it here?

  This brought a genuine smile. ‘Love it,’ I said, pulsing my fingers outwards from my heart. I drew my hand up from belly to chest, then made a diving motion with my fingers. ‘It feels like home.’

  His gaze left my lips and he smiled into my eyes.

  Do you have a secret place?

  Maybe it was the beer I’d consumed, or perhaps the afterglow of all those chocolates. Or the heat, or vague exhaustion after a long emotional day, or even the unaccustomed pleasure of having company. Whatever the reason, I found myself getting to my feet, beckoning Danny to follow. We went down the stairs, through the jungle of hydrangeas and along the path that led into the front garden. The Millers had done a beautiful job. In the dim light, the grass was a green carpet. The trees had been shorn of their wayward limbs and now stood in the shadows, their fallen leaves whispering under our feet as we passed.

  When we reached the rose arbour, I turned to Danny.

  ‘Not all that secret . . . but easily my favourite.’

  He frowned as he looked around, no doubt taking in the tangled mess of leafless branches and gnarled trunks, the half-rotted flower brackets and desiccated rosehips. He ambled over to the bench inside the arbour and sat heavily. Reaching up, he snapped a hip from an overhanging bracket. Crumbling the dried pod in his fingers, he let it sift onto the ground, then looked across at me. I knew he was wondering – just as Hobe had wondered – why I didn’t dig out all the old rose trees and plant something else here instead.

  So I had my excuses ready: I’m waiting for winter before I replant; I’m still browsing bare-rooted stock catalogues; I’ve been distracted by other things, what with the move and everything . . .

  But the question never came. Instead, Danny patted the bench beside him, motioning for me to sit down. Taking out his notebook, he scribbled a line, his words barely decipherable in the gloom.

  I can see why you like it here.

  ‘You can?’

  Great view.

  ‘Oh . . . sure.’ I fumbled around a moment before perching on the furthest end of the bench, then followed his gaze across the valley.

  The sun had swan-dived out of sight behind the faraway volcanic remnants. The sky was black, darkness had eaten up the garden. It was a glorious night, the air was restful and warm, tinged with the lingering after-scent of our feast. The girls were quieter now, but their disembodied voices floated in the stillness, a muffled counterpoint to the echo of Corey’s erratic loudness somewhere in the house.

  Fingers closed around my wrist. Danny playfully tugged until I gave in and inched closer to him. He opened my hand and began to trace his fingers across my palm. Goosebumps shot up my arm and into my scalp, I had tingles. Something radiated from him, not heat exactly, but a raw sort of energy that made me feel all weird and goosy, not quite myself.

  He tapped his fingers on my wrist. I looked down.

  Then understood what he was doing. He drew the letter ‘Y’, then an ‘O’. I smiled. He’d abandoned his notebook in preference to my hand. I watched the words unfold.

  You need new roses.

  I laughed. Giggled, actually. Like a smitten fool. With every letter he drew, more tingles raced over my palm and up my forearm, shooting through my nervous system, turning my resistance to jelly. Butterfly wings fluttered up the back of my neck and into my hair. I tried to pull away, but Danny’s strong fingers held me captive.

  I’ll plant them for you.

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  Yes, I’ll even buy the roses. What’s your favourite colour, pink?

  With the drawn-out curl of his question mark, I had discovered a ridiculous thing about myself: I was ticklish.

  ‘No,’ I nearly yelled, yanking my hand out of his grasp. ‘It’s green.’

  Danny sat back. He was looking into my face, his eyes shadowed by the darkness. Plucking another twig from the bracket near his head, he snapped it into bits, tossed the shreds onto the ground at his feet. He rubbed a circle on his chest and tapped his chin.

  I like this secret place.

  I smiled. I liked it too.

  ‘Look at them,’ Corey said later as we lingered on the front verandah, watching the girls dart about on the midnight grass below. ‘Silly as a pair of wet hens.’

  The potent cocktail of too much excitement, too many chocolates, and excessive giggling combined with the lateness of the hour had turned two mostly normal pre-teen girls into a couple of disorderly twits. Danny was trying to herd them towards his Toyota to entrap Jade within and get home, but they kept shrieking and dashing off, garbling something about being chased by a mob of ghosts.

  ‘I should never have told them the story about Samuel’s haunted cottage,’ Corey said regretfully. ‘I seem to recall it had a similar effect on me and Glenda.’

  I watched the moonlit shapes rushing about on the lawn. ‘Yeah, that old settlers’ hut sounds pretty creepy.’

  ‘I hope I haven’t given Bronwyn nightmares.’

  I looked at her. ‘You said the same to me, the first time we met.’

  She shrugged. ‘I know, but Samuel’s story was real. The cottage isn’t really haunted . . . although,’ she added with a mischievous lift of her eyebrows, ‘it does exist . . . and if you ever find it, look out . . .’ She waggled her fingers and made a hooty ghost sound.

  I gave her a playful shove with my shoulder, then turned my focus back to the figures below. Danny had abandoned trying to lure Jade into the car, no doubt deciding the only sensible course of action was to wait until the girls ran out of steam. He wandered a little way down the slope, standing with his back to us, gazing into the gloomy trough of the valley, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched as if against a chill.

  Corey nudged me with her elbow. ‘Thanks, kiddo.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘We had fun. Even Danny enjoyed himself . . . for a change.’

  I returned my attention to the man down at the edge of the garden. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because he stayed. Usually he slumps off home in a mood before the festivities have even begun.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Not everyone bothers with signing, Audrey. Not everyone makes an effort. Many do, of course – but then Danny’s not always the easiest person to have around. He’s hopeless with small talk, says it’s a waste of energy, then gets pissed off when people ignore him. He’s always been that way, even as a little boy.’

  ‘I take it he wasn’t born deaf?’

  ‘No, he had meningitis when he was a baby – although I suspect he’d have been just as difficult with full hearing. The early days were the worst, of course, when he was learning to sign, and Mum and Dad were still trying to remodel their lives around how best to raise a deaf child. Things were slow to improve; he was always so frustrated when he couldn’t make us understand. Trouble was, his tantrums weren’t vocal, the way most kids’ are. Things would start flying around the room . . . plates, spoons, shoes. Once – to Mum’s eterna
l horror – he pitched the glass containing Grandad’s false teeth at her.’

  ‘He seems . . . I don’t know, wary. Aloof. One minute we were laughing like loons, the next he’d gone all broody. I hope I didn’t offend him in some way?’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Corey frowned at her brother’s silhouette. ‘There must be a storm coming.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He can always tell, even when it’s miles away. He can smell it or feel it, or – my personal theory – he senses the change in air pressure. Whatever it is, he’s never wrong.’

  ‘He doesn’t cope with storms?’

  Corey shook her head. ‘Six years ago his wife Marci died in a storm. She ran out after her dog who’d taken fright, and a tree branch came down on her. It was one of those huge gnarly angophoras – in the days of logging, they were known as widow-makers. Corky wood, but heavy as all hell when it gets wet. Marci was deaf, too, so she didn’t hear the branch crack loose. Danny found her pinned there, but by the time he’d rushed back to the house for the chainsaw and cut away the branch, she was gone. He blames himself, reckons he should have stopped her going after the dog, should have got the branch off her sooner. He’s never forgiven himself.’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. But he’s a stubborn son of a gun. We get a lot of storms this time of year, too. Poor old Danny’s in for a rocky ride.’

  ‘Why won’t he speak?’

  Corey stared down the dark slope at her brother. Her features softened. In the dusky glow of the verandah light, her eyes were no longer milk-chocolate. They’d lightened, turned warm and gold as honey.

  ‘I suppose he does it to be contrary. And possibly to make a stand, in some warped way that only he can fathom. The one thing he hates more than being pigeonholed, is being considered weak. In a hearing world, being deaf is a disability, but Danny won’t tolerate anyone implying he’s disabled. If he can’t speak as clearly as a fully-hearing person, then he’d rather not speak at all.’

  ‘Wouldn’t his life be easier if he tried?’