by Anna Romer
And then I knew. Not by deduction or any process of elimination; but in my heart I knew. I took the photo over to the window.
Please agree to meet me, she’d written. Tonight at our secret place . . . I’ll be the one wearing a big happy smile for you.
‘Aylish,’ I said, disquieted by the realisation. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
I came very close to taking her. But in the end I listened to my conscience. Lies were all very well when you saw good reason for telling them . . . but stealing was just not my thing. The squatter might be residing unlawfully on my land, but I didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to tell me I was trespassing, invading a personal space . . . and that whoever lived here might not be all that pleased to arrive home and find a stranger making off with a treasured keepsake.
I replaced the photo and was about to shut the tallboy, when my attention was drawn to the hanging compartment. Propped against the back panel was a shaft of wood that might have been the handle from an old tool, possibly an axe. One blunt end was stained black, while its weatherworn grip was split and splintered. I wondered why someone would bother to keep an axe handle indoors – especially one that looked ready for the scrapheap. I reached in and ran my fingers along its blackened length –
Smooth as skin. Almost warm.
I pulled away, repulsed.
But as I was closing the tallboy door, I paused again. The wooden box under the photo had grabbed my attention. I’d dismissed it at first as a plinth for the little picture frame, but I saw now that it was carved with leaves and cherry blossoms and obviously had once been valuable. It was so feminine, so pretty and so out of place, that I found myself moving the frame and pulling the box into the light.
Taking it over to the bed, I sat and balanced it on my knees as I lifted the lid. It was full of letters. A bundle of letters, tied with threadbare ribbon. I thought of Glenda Jarman, and wondered if these were the same letters she’d discovered that unlucky afternoon in her father’s shed – the letters I had assumed revealed Luella’s affair with Hobe Miller. But as I picked an envelope off the top of the pile, all thoughts of Glenda went from my mind. The stamps were old. Really old, threepenny stamps mostly, I guessed from the 1940s.
And the handwriting . . . I recognised it immediately.
There might have been thirty or forty envelopes, the majority made of diaphanous airmail paper, brittle with age and wear. I rifled through them and saw that most were from Aylish, addressed to Samuel via the Second A.I.F. Headquarters.
The remaining envelopes bore Aylish’s name and her street, Stump Hill Road. The stamps were Malayan, obliterated beneath heavy black cancellation marks. Other envelopes bore no stamps, just the caption: On Active Service. Each envelope was well-thumbed, the paper soft and crumbly as though they’d been handled frequently and often read.
I ached to start reading, but I knew it was too risky; the squatter might return at any time, and I didn’t want to be caught red-handed – especially since I intended to have him evicted.
A quick peek, then?
Outside, a windy gust blew something across the roof, startling me: a scrape of leaves, twigs? I held my breath, listening . . . but there was just the warbling of currawongs, the drone of cicadas, and the soft hush-hush of a breeze in the dry grass.
Heart thumping, I slid one of Samuel’s envelopes randomly from the pile.
30 November, 1941
Hope you’re well, Dream Girl?
No letters have arrived yet. I’ve spent a ridiculous measure of hours chasing the possibility of lost mail. The handling officer assures me that we are at war (really, mate?) and therefore missing mail is of least concern in the larger picture. But then after I let loose a few choice suggestions as to what he could do with his larger picture, he rushed on to say that such occurrences were rare.
Letters, like fate, eventually find their way to the recipient, no matter how circuitous the route. So I will wait, and I will try to have faith – in the mail system, in the larger picture, and mostly in you, my Aylish – for without faith I fear this sweaty, mosquito-ridden, noisy and erratic existence might very well get the better of me.
10 January, 1942
Love, last night I was terrified to close my eyes in case my memory of your face left me forever. Regrets taunted me, things unspoken rolled around and around in my head until I thought I’d go mad. Why haven’t you written? Have you forgotten me so soon? My heart aches to think you’ve met someone else.
Crazily, I keep thinking about that first day we spent up at the old hut, and how I’d been ranting about the ironbark shingles and boring you with the history of the underground water tank dug by the original settlers. You were more interested in trying to get me to kiss you, remember?
I admit now I was an insufferable egghead, resisting you out of propriety, but – and I beg you’ll forgive my plain-speaking, love – all the while thinking, ‘Lord but this woman is beautiful, it scares me how much I love her,’ and a bit later I privately added: ‘My word, I can’t wait ’til we’re married.’ All unspoken, of course, concealed by my pathetic veneer of gruffness. Now I long for those days when I used to rush up that track to the little hut, knowing you were waiting for me. Sometimes my longing for those happy times is like a physical agony.
Oh my Aylish, this is a letter of confessions, isn’t it? How easy now to jot it all down on paper, even knowing the censor’s eyes will read it first. But love, if one good thing can come from war, it’s that the veils of conceit drop away and you clearly see the one thing that gives your life meaning. For me, that one thing is you.
Sleep well, my wild little sparrow, hold my poor old heart next to yours for safekeeping. Always and forever yours, Samuel.
I stopped reading.
The Samuel emerging from these letters was very different from the man I’d constructed in my mind. He wasn’t – at least not at this stage of the war – a snake or a scoundrel, and he wasn’t damaged and bitter. Judging by the bare emotion of his words, he had loved Aylish. Which told me that what happened between them after the war was less to do with Samuel’s career, and more to do with his fear – brought on by her apparent failure to write – that she might have forgotten him.
I looked through the doorway to the clearing beyond. I’d already been here too long. The sun had climbed a few degrees higher into the sky, and the growling in my stomach told me that breakfast had been and gone and that it was time to head home.
But I couldn’t. Not yet.
I had to read one more . . .
I located another of Samuel’s. It was headed: A.I.F. Abroad, and dated 1 February 1942 – two weeks to the day, I noted grimly, before the fall of Singapore. It must have been Samuel’s last letter before his capture.
My Pretty Sparrow,
No news is good news, they say – although whoever ‘they’ are have never waited four months to hear from their Dream Girl. I’ve still heard no word from you, is everything ship-shape, love? I worry constantly, which I know will make you laugh. At least I hope it does – make you laugh kindly, I mean. I only pray there’s no news you feel reluctant to tell me. Aylish, please understand that it’d be far easier for me to receive a note of rejection than no note at all.
Do you regret our promises, have you reconsidered my proposal? If so, I will try my best to understand, as your happiness is my first priority. Please, sweetheart, put a poor fool out of his misery, a few words will do.
How’s Jacob? Well and spirited, the last I heard from old Mrs Beetleman – and she added that you sang beautifully in church at Christmas. God, how I wish I’d been there to cheer you on – and I would have too, loud and long . . . though I know Pastor Lutz does not encourage heckling from the pews.
If you can be bothered, my Sparrow, send me a full and detailed report of life at home, for which I pine with every fibre of my being. Chin up, Dream Girl, I love you so very much.
A whimper.
I stopped reading. Held my breath to listen. F
or a moment there was only the noise of the bush – the chatter of lorikeets, bush flies droning, and the wind rustling the leaves. But then it came again. A whine sounding every bit like a wordless, drawn-out question.
I shoved the letter I’d been reading back into the envelope, and tried to tell myself it was nothing. A bird or a creaking branch, a false alarm. But then the sound of a dog barking shattered the peaceful quiet, followed by the gruff command of a male voice.
I shot to my feet, upending the box of letters onto the floor. On my knees now, scrabbling them back into the box, crumpling them out of order in my haste. One envelope had skated just out of reach, I lunged for it –
And froze.
A shadow flashed across the doorway, eclipsing the sunlight. I risked a look, but it must have been a bird or wind-bent tree, because there was no sign of anyone. At least, not yet.
Grabbing the errant letter, I shoved it into its box and stowed the whole dusty mess in my satchel, then scanned the room for signs of disturbance. Brushing the wrinkles from the bed edge I’d perched on, I checked the floor for overlooked letters, then went to the door and blinked into the brightness. For a moment, my crashing pulse was all I could hear. Then, from somewhere on the other side of the stillness, came the crunch of footfall. I heard a man’s voice. And a low, cautionary growl that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Racing down the steps and across the clearing, I threw myself into a thicket of tea-tree and shoved my way through. As I ran, my Minolta bumped against my back and the satchel containing the box of letters seemed to catch on every branch. My feet thudded over the uneven ground, and I’d broken out in a sweat of nerves.
Soon I was far enough away to hope that I’d escaped without being detected. I slowed. Risked a look over my shoulder.
Something white flashed across the open expanse of sunlit grass, but that was all I saw. Lurching into a run again, I darted downhill, skidding on loose stones as I fought to put distance between myself and the pale shape coming at me through the trees.
Then I heard a warning growl, and a torpedo rammed into the back of my leg. The pain was instant, shocking in its intensity. I stumbled, lurched forward and fell against a tree, gasping as I twisted back to look at my attacker.
The dog was thickset and dirty-white, its sturdy body rippling with muscle, its square jaw pulled wide. Its lips were bared back and I had a flash of strong white teeth clamping into my denim-clad calf. I kicked out, but the dog bit down harder. Wheezing in shock, I lost my footing and crashed against the tree, smashing my face into the trunk when my leg gave out beneath me.
The dog whined and drove its teeth deeper. The world skewed. The tree dipped away, the stony ground loomed. Somehow my fingers found a knob of branch, curled around it, got a grip. I used the leverage to try and twist away, but the dog grunted and this time I felt the skin above my ankle pop and tear. There was a horrid grating sensation as if my bone was being wrenched from its casing of flesh –
Blind with pain and shaking so hard I could no longer trust my reflexes, I fumbled for my camera strap, tore it off my shoulder and swung the Minolta hard at the dog. I missed, managing to slam my camera into the side of the tree and send myself jarring off balance. I nearly fell, greying out as pain swooped up from my damaged calf, bright as a shard of lightning, reverberating in the nerve response sector of my brain. It was then, in that instant of dizzy confusion, that I sensed rather than saw motion twenty feet away in a patch of sunlight streaming between the trees.
A man stood there. So still, he might have been an apparition from a dream. Tall and big-boned, hunched about the shoulders, watching from a face that was pale as the moon, the skin gleaming –
Then he was gone. Just like that. I blinked, came back to the shadows, the man forgotten as my attention returned to the growling mongrel clamped to my leg.
My second swing was better aimed. The dog yelped as the camera connected with its head. The pressure on my leg eased. I wrenched free, and the dog snarled and lunged, but then shied away as the Minolta made another sweep towards it. I lost my grip on the strap and the camera bumped off over the ground. The dog growled, baring its lips to reveal pink-stained teeth, but it didn’t rush at me again, and I didn’t wait around to see if it was planning to. Clutching my satchel to my chest, I turned and ran.
19
Six stitches and a tetanus shot later, I was feeling duly sorry for myself. I paid my bill at the hospital then limped down the hill to my car. Folding the prescription for painkillers into quarters, then eighths, I delivered it to the abyss at the bottom of my tote and decided to instead apply my own failsafe remedy for dealing with pain: A trip to the baker’s.
It was mid-afternoon. I stood in front of the bakery window, balanced on one foot like an egret, favouring the throbbing lump of agony that had once been my leg. I felt drained and sore after the morning’s misadventure; tormented by questions and eager to get home and huddle in a sunlit window seat and mull over what I’d found.
Who was the man squatting up at the old hut, and why had he made a weird little memorial to Aylish? Because in hindsight, that was what it was. The arrangement of doll heads, the damaged old photo in its tarnished frame, the box of letters . . . they held some sort of meaning for him, but what? Had he known her? Or had he merely discovered the letters and photograph somewhere by chance and taken a fancy to them?
I remembered seeing roses rambling along the rickety verandah at the hut, big red roses. I tried to picture them more clearly in my mind, but they were hazy. At the time I’d been too curious to see inside the hut’s interior. But I’d seen those same roses three times before. Surrounding Samuel in his sultry rose arbour portrait; climbing along the fence in Luella’s back garden; and in a vase of fresh water on Aylish’s grave –
Someone touched my arm. I spun around.
Danny Weingarten handed me a note. What’s wrong with your leg?
I blinked in surprise. ‘What . . . How did you – ?’
His hair stood on end and he wore a tattered flannelette shirt that made me wonder if he’d ransacked Hobe Miller’s wardrobe. In the shade of the baker’s shop canopy, his eyes were deep ocean-green. He frowned at the foot I still had hooked egret-like behind my knee, then scribbled, I can smell antiseptic. What happened?
‘A dog bit me,’ I blurted, still spinning from his sudden appearance.
Reaching out a hand, he touched the side of my face.
Black eye, he spelled with his fingers. Dog do that too?
‘I fell while trying to get away.’
His frown softened. Looks sore. You okay?
I nodded, unable to speak. I wasn’t used to anyone worrying about me, wasn’t used to anyone slipping in past my guard. But the look on Danny’s face – the concern in his eyes, the downward turn of his mouth, the way he was leaning protectively near . . . Suddenly I was limp as a kitten and wanting nothing more than to fall into his arms and weep.
Instead I cleared my throat, shrugged. ‘It’s nothing. I’m okay.’
How did you get bitten?
A moment’s hesitation. Then I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the bakery doorway, checked that the storefront was empty, and shifted so that my face was visible to him alone.
‘There’s a man squatting on my property. Did you know there’s a dwelling on the hillside overlooking the gully?’
Danny narrowed his eyes, an indicator he hadn’t understood.
He passed me his notebook, and I jotted a brief outline of my morning – the walk to the gully, the trek uphill where I’d found the old place, then how I’d ventured inside only to find someone living there . . . though I omitted the part about stealing Aylish and Samuel’s letters.
I know the place, Danny signed, then reclaimed his notebook. A little hut in a clearing, me and Tony used to go there as kids. Happy memories. I went back after he ran away, but it wasn’t the same. I haven’t been there for years. You think someone’s living there now?
I nodded. ‘When the dog attacked, I saw him. It was only a flash . . . he was a tall man, I got the feeling he was maybe in his sixties. Do you know who he might be?’
Danny shook his head and wrote: He let his dog attack you?
I shrugged. ‘I guess he got a shock, finding someone in his space . . . but yeah, he didn’t seem in a hurry to call it off.’
Danny’s eyes darkened. He rumpled the top leaf off his notepad and shoved it in his pocket, then started jotting on the blank sheet. He got as far as, Bloody . . . then stopped, tucked the jotter in his waistband, and began to sketch out a series of signs that were too complex for me to follow. I expected him to slow down, or at least to acknowledge that I’d lost him and realise that maybe it was time to resume his note, but he only seemed to get more caught up in his now-private monologue.
I watched him, awestruck.
His thick hair stuck up as if electrified, and his expressive face made me think of a thundercloud. But it was his eyes that caught me and held me captive – not just green now but emerald fire, brilliant as sunlight on seawater, dark and dangerous and wildly beautiful.
He stopped as abruptly as he’d begun. Signed, Sorry.
I shook my head to let him know his outburst had lost me.
He scribbled out the word Bloody, and wrote instead, I’m angry. I was swearing. I’m going to see this bastard, get him off your land.
‘But . . .’
To my surprise, Danny reached out and gripped my arm, did this rubbing thing with his thumb that was reassuring. Then he scratched off another note.
I’ll go this afternoon, that okay with you?
‘No,’ I said, ‘You don’t have to . . .’ Unable to finish, I looked up into Danny’s face. I wasn’t used to having someone offer to act on my behalf. I wasn’t used to anyone standing up for me. It was a heady feeling, which at first I resisted . . . but at the same time I was drawn into it, like a moth lured by the glow of a bright flame.