Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  Meanwhile, here at the Jarmans’ we are drifting along, mostly content. Although the other night Ellen let it slip that, in the unfortunate event of something happening to me – not that it will of course, she hastened to add – then she and Klaus would like to adopt Lulu. She seemed nervous when she said this, and I had the feeling that she wasn’t telling me everything.

  I hid my distress by bringing out your mother’s beautiful ring and explaining that the moment you were back from service, we were going to be married. At this news, Ellen shed a tear and congratulated me . . . but again I sensed that her reaction was only the tip of the iceberg. It’s hard to explain, but I started remembering other little comments she’s made. ‘How young you are, Aylish,’ she says, affecting a frown of concern. ‘Only nineteen, and all alone. Why, it seems you’re barely more than a child yourself.’ Most recently she confessed that ‘Our dear little Lulu is a ray of sunshine in my otherwise overcast life.’

  I do try to remember how kind she’s been, and how she saved me that day from the Bureau inspectors and their endless questions and forms. And I try to remember that, without my employment at the Jarmans’, I would be a defenceless target for the men who come with their pale sorry faces and Bible talk and official reasoning, and then drag away your children.

  7 December, 1943

  Dearest, I’ve been restless of late, driven by a strange feeling that time is running out. Ellen keeps telling me to slow down, to pace myself before exhaustion sets in – but I can’t.

  I spring out of bed at piccaninny light, bathe and dress Lulu and get her fed – I’m lucky, she loves her food and never refuses a scrap of what I offer. It seems I’m always rushing around like a headless chook until it’s time to flop – cleaning up or polishing or sweeping or picking vegies, or mopping up spills or kissing skinned knees, or cooking huge pots of food or baking bread for the growing ranks of people staying with the Jarmans.

  I never sit still. Even if I could, by some miracle, find a moment to put my feet up, I wouldn’t bother. There’s a time-bomb inside me ticking down the hours, counting off the seconds – to what end, I have no idea. I keep thinking back to that night at the settlers’ cabin, to our last night together. Samuel, do you remember how upset I was when I saw that pale face in the window? A ghost, I kept insisting. But I knew in my heart even then what I’d seen.

  I’d seen death, Samuel. And death had seen me.

  Ellen says it’s the war. Death and loss are always close. We laugh and sing and natter to each other, chirpy as wattlebirds, but beneath the veneer of cheerfulness flows an undercurrent of dread. Sometimes at night I lie awake and fancy I can hear the world groaning on its axis and quietly weeping. Whenever I shut my eyes, all I see is newsprint: page after page of names – the dead and missing, all those boys and so many women, never to return. Ellen’s right – the war has changed us all, and not always for the better.

  This afternoon I left Lulu with Ellen and, hoping to dispel my dark mood, I rode my bike out to Stump Hill Road and climbed the hill to the gully. The day was warm and I found my feet taking me along the track to the homestead. The poor old house was overgrown with lantana and blackberry. It feels neglected since your father went to stay with his relatives in Warwick.

  I’d planned to sneak up to the window and peer through, perhaps even take the spare key from the washhouse and let myself in. Remember, Samuel, how you always stalled whenever I asked to see inside the house? You said I belonged in the sun and shadows of the garden, a dark butterfly too delicate and wild to be trapped within the stifling confines of a great dusty old house . . .

  A lot of old rot, now that I think back. What were you hiding from me, I wonder now? Or, perhaps it was me you were wanting to hide – in case your father arrived unannounced, or some society lady paid a surprise visit – ?

  Forgive me, dearest, that was harsh. But I’m racked by loneliness, made bitter by your continuing silence. Horrid scenarios play over and over in my mind ’til I’m quite sure I’ve gone mad. Meanwhile, you’re far away and unable to defend yourself. If you were here . . . oh, Samuel, if only you were here!

  Of course, I never made it into the house. The old arbour called to me, and I ran along the path to answer. I could have wept (I did weep, in fact) to see the state of it. The lovely old rose canes were infested with water shoots and choked by weeds, the bushes scabby with dead flowers, the precious hips (which we once brewed by the handful into sweet pink tea, do you remember?) now withered and turned black in the sun.

  I lay in the arbour’s heart, sunk into the grass among the brittle deadfall of petals and thorny twigs. I shut my eyes against the brilliant sun, and you came to me then, behind my closed lids, and I swear you were standing right there before me, in the archway, every bit as real as you were the day I took your portrait.

  Remember, it was soon after war broke out in ’39? Your father had hosted a Red Cross picnic in Thornwood’s rambling garden one sunny afternoon. I lugged Poppa’s Argus Rangefinder up the hill, taking portraits for a shilling donation to the War Fund. You slipped me a crisp pound note and beckoned me to the arbour, insisting that you be my first customer.

  You looked so alive, smiling that crooked way you have, eyes only for me. And me feeling the first giddy threads of love beginning to tighten around my heart. How I loved you that day, Samuel . . . how I love you still.

  Do you ever think of me, darling? Are there roses where you are – or is it all mud and darkness, blood and dread? Perhaps I’ll sing them to you anyway – fragrant buds and big heavy blooms, sweet-tasting hips, all bursting with tenderness and desire – and I’ll pray that if nothing else, at least they (and I) will be there in your dreams.

  4 May, 1944

  Darling Samuel,

  This morning I woke late to find Lulu’s crib empty. I suffered a split second of giddy terror – as if that time-bomb had stopped ticking, with me poised in the silent lull before detonation – but then I heard her sweet giggling drifting from the kitchen.

  I went out to find Ellen at the breakfast table with Lulu on her lap, and Cleve sitting beside them sharing a huge dish of scrambled eggs and fingers of buttery toast.

  Ellen’s face was glowing, and Lulu’s too . . . but the most extraordinary thing of all was the transformation which had come over young Cleve. While I stood unseen in the doorway, Ellen extended her thin hand and stroked Cleve’s cheek. The boy visibly melted, his eyes went huge as a puppy’s, gazing at his mother with a sort of astonished gratitude. Of course, Ellen’s attention went back to Lulu, who was cramming great fistfuls of egg into her mouth, spilling most of it on her pretty frock – but Cleve . . . well, Cleve’s gaze remained transfixed on his mother.

  I swear, Samuel, I’ve never seen such a look of pure, wild, hopeful love. I felt embarrassed to be witnessing such a thing. It seemed private, and Cleve’s response to his mother’s brief kindness was heart-rending. It was one of those tiny, deceptively trifling moments that a much older Cleve might look back on and remember as being a turning point in his life.

  I should have been glad for him, but a feeling of desolation washed over me. My position in life had shifted. What I’d thought was real and solid became, in an eye-blink, as flimsy as spiderweb. Ellen and Cleve and my own precious Lulu were the picture of a happy, tight-knit little family sharing their moment of cosy togetherness; while I was the solitary outsider.

  2 March, 1945

  Samuel love, at last I have some good news to relate. Poppa is coming home! I had a letter from him yesterday, he says he’ll arrive in Magpie Creek at the end of June. Of course, I wanted to rush back to Stump Hill Road and start preparing the house for him, but June is still a way off and so I must be patient.

  Last night I showed Poppa’s letter to Ellen and told her my plan to return home. At first she acted pleased, but I could tell she was put out. She kept stalking about the room, throwing worried glances at me, asking Klaus over and over if Poppa’s letter sounded strange to him, and if
the poor old soul (Poppa would be outraged to hear himself called that!) might in fact be too ill to return to Stump Hill Road after his ordeal in the internment camp, and too frail to tolerate the carryings on in the house of a rowdy three-year-old.

  Lulu is lively, but she’d be no burden on Poppa – quite the opposite, I expect. Poppa always rambles happily about her in his letters, excited at the prospect of playing the doting Opa and spoiling her rotten. I’m sure her sparkle will cheer him rather than send him to an early grave as Ellen seems to think.

  Later that night, when Ellen had retired to her room and the lights were out and the house creaking, I thought I heard her crying. My own heart sank, my joy over Poppa’s letter dried up. Why is joy always so short-lived? Why is it always overshadowed by guilt or fearfulness? For a long time after Ellen’s weeping got lost in the noises of the night and was replaced by Klaus’s soft snores, I lay awake.

  I understood why Ellen was sad. It had nothing to do with worrying about Poppa’s welfare – it was that she’d miss Lulu.

  At midnight I wandered downstairs to fetch myself a cup of Horlick’s. Who should I find slumped at the table in the dark, but young Cleve. He startled when I pulled the cord and flooded the kitchen with light, and swiped at his face, but not before I saw that it was shiny with tears.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he muttered, and sprang out of his chair, filling the kettle with water and setting it to boil on the hob. He reclaimed his chair, slumped again and avoided my eyes.

  ‘Cleve, are you sick?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Why were you sitting here alone in the dark? You have school tomorrow, it’s very late.’

  Still he said nothing, and I grew worried. He’s turned into a large, lumpish boy, thirteen this year and somehow cumbersome in his own skin. Compared to other children I know, he seems already an old man, his bristly fair hair cropped close to his large head, a crease between his pale brows, and wide blue eyes where anxiety and worry swim continuously around and around like goldfish in a bowl.

  ‘Cleve?’

  Again he swiped at his face. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  Only then did I twig. A dozen memories poured in – Cleve and his mother at the breakfast table, the way they were always cosseting Lulu, the three of them the very picture of a happy family; countless cosy evenings around the wireless, Cleve playing with Lulu at his mother’s feet; Cleve and his mother taking turns to read in funny voices from one of Lulu’s story books before bedtime.

  Cleve and his mother.

  ‘We can’t stay here forever, you know,’ I told him.

  Cleve nodded, but then he lifted his eyes and looked at me. A chill took hold. Stupid, I must have been very tired – but I thought I saw something else in those blue fishbowl eyes, something that troubled me. Resentment, maybe. Even hatred. Samuel, I know it sounds strange, but what I felt at that moment was very much akin to fear.

  The moment passed. Cleve hung his head, and I doubted what I’d seen. Brushing off my misgivings, I hauled the spluttering kettle from the stovetop and made two cups of Horlick’s. Any other time I might have sat by the boy, patted his podgy shoulder, offered words of comfort. Not last night. As soon as I’d set his cup before him, I muttered a hasty ‘Goodnight’ and made a beeline for my room.

  16 March, 1945

  Oh Samuel, I’ve fallen into such a dark mood.

  An hour after tea tonight, as we were settling around the wireless for the seven o’clock broadcast, Lulu, who I’d just kissed goodnight and tucked into bed, started shrieking. I flew out to our room and snatched her up, sickened to discover that blood was streaming from her poor tiny arm. Ellen discovered a piece of brown glass in the cot. She glared at me as if I was the worst mother in the world, which I now fear to be true.

  The wound wasn’t deep, but nevertheless we flapped around in a panic, spilling iodine and Solyptol ointment all over ourselves and scattering bandages and cottonwool and rolls of gauze until the room resembled a camp hospital – but Lulu soon settled, quite the brave little trouper.

  I swear, Samuel, I’ve no idea how glass could have found its way into my baby’s crib – I’ve got hawk-eyes when it comes to her safety. Cleve was lurking in the doorway, watching the goings-on with a sullen smirk on his face. I remember thinking unkindly, Where’s your blasted bottle of mercurochrome now?

  24 March, 1945

  Samuel, I’m about to burden you again with my woes, forgive me darling, I have no one else to turn to and I know you’ll understand.

  Late last night I overheard Ellen talking on the telephone . . . she didn’t mention any names, but several times I heard her say ‘the child’, and ‘the little girl’, and then, ‘the whole situation is most unsatisfactory’.

  I lay awake after that, listening to the house creak and groan, my tears turning cold on my cheeks. This morning I waited until breakfast was out of the way before approaching Ellen. I told her that I was taking Lulu back to Stump Hill Road earlier than planned, so we could get the house ready for Poppa.

  Of course we argued. I hadn’t been expecting her to be quite so upset. She left the room crying, and I felt wrenched apart. With every fibre of my soul I wished I hadn’t said anything to her. But Samuel, after overhearing her telephone call last night, how could I not?

  I slumped at the table. Cleve hovered in the doorway, watching me.

  ‘What?’ I said, more harshly than I’d intended. ‘What are you staring at?’

  He didn’t reply at first. Again I had the sense that he was older – far older – than his thirteen years. In the past twelve months Cleve has grown quite tall, nearly as tall as his father and certainly as thickly built. I hadn’t noticed until now . . . I suppose I’ve picked up his mother’s habitual tendency to ignore him.

  ‘You can go,’ he said heatedly. ‘No one will miss you. But Lulu belongs with us now.’

  ‘How can you say that, Cleve? She’s my daughter. The only person she belongs with is me.’

  ‘Mum says you’re not fit to be a mother.’

  I stared, speechless. It took a few moments to find my voice, and when I did it was barely more than a whisper.

  ‘Then she’s wrong.’

  But Cleve had gone, I could hear him clomping down the hall to his room, whistling in that tuneless way he did, a sign that he was well pleased.

  I sat at the table for a long time. Shaking. Holding onto my tears. Lulu started to cry and Ellen went to her, but I couldn’t move. I just sat there thinking about the men in the grey suits with their clipboards full of forms and their black motorcar with its windows wound up . . . and for the first time since the war began, I felt afraid. Not for myself, but for our little girl. She’s my life, Samuel – her sweet smile, her chirpy little voice, her sunny presence – she is more vital to me than food or water or air. If she was taken, how would I go on?

  25 May, 1945

  My Dearest, as you can see by the address, I’m still at the Jarmans’. Ellen made me promise to stay on until she finds another housekeeper – as if that’s all I was to them, hired help!

  Anyway, a while ago I mentioned how busy we’ve been bottling fruit and chutney for the upcoming Red Cross stall, another benefit for the Comforts Fund. Ellen still hasn’t found a housekeeper to replace me, so I had resigned myself to staying longer, trapped in this awkward sort of purgatory, biding my time until some other poor victim arrived to take my place.

  Oh but Samuel, that’s all changed. After this afternoon’s debacle, I can’t stay.

  Ellen had taken Lulu to her Red Cross meeting (where, no doubt, the lot of them would make a right old fuss over the little imp) and so I’d taken the opportunity to bottle up the last of the tomatoes.

  Cleve came into the kitchen and began skulking around, fiddling with the chopping knife, accidentally (on purpose) knocking tomato skins onto the floor, dithering back and forth between the sink and the table.

  A huge pot of to
mato lava was bubbling away on the stove, and as I started ladling the brew into sterilised bottles, Cleve shuffled past and jogged my elbow.

  Scalding sauce splashed my arm. I jerked back in shock and pain, and my foot came down on the trodden-in tomato skins that Cleve had neglected, despite my nagging, to pick off the floor. I skidded, almost losing my balance but somehow catching myself on the table edge. The ladle flew from my grasp and crashed onto the floor.

  Cleve screamed.

  I spun around. The first thing I saw was a blood-red splatter on his school shirt. In my jostled state I thought he must have cut himself with the chopping knife. He was buckled over clutching his face, bellowing like a wounded bullock. Then I understood. The blistering hot contents of my ladle had splashed him.

  I tried to drag him over to the sink to douse him in water and see how bad his scalds were, but he fought me off and ran.

  The matron at the hospital said he’ll be all right, though the burns are quite nasty and his poor face may be scarred.

  Samuel, I can’t quite describe how low I feel about this. It must seem to you a trivial injury in light of the horrors you are no doubt treating in Malaya – or wherever it is you are. But Cleve is a child, and because of me he will now be marked for life.

  I thought it best to return to Stump Hill Road. Despite my promise to Ellen, I can’t bear to stay here a minute longer. I’m a terrible coward to run away, but what else can I do? Events here seem to be conspiring to prove me a wretch of a mother. I’m scared to be alone and at the mercy of the inspectors . . . but I’m more scared of staying here.

  3 September, 1945

  Samuel, our repatriated troops from Singapore have been trickling home for some weeks now, and I’m getting worried. Where are you, love?

  No one has heard from you, no one remembers seeing you after Singapore’s capture in ’42. I’ve written to the Red Cross, but as yet have had no replies. I’ve even gone to Brisbane on the train and walked out to the wharf and watched the wounded pouring off the hospital ships. I’ve cadged lifts to Toowoomba, and back to Brisbane, even Enoggera – to haunt the wards of the repatriation hospitals there – all to no avail.