Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  ‘Luella, did you recognise the face? Was it someone you knew, a friend of your mother’s?’

  She gave a strangled laugh. ‘Lord, no. It was horrible, a nightmarish thing like a goblin or a ghost. Mumma used to sing songs about ghosts and bush spirits and tall white devils that came out at night with their firesticks. She was part-Aboriginal, you see. Poppa had established a little mission up near Townsville, after the first war. It had started out as a school but grew from there. My grandmother was his oldest student, very bright, she used to help with the younger kids. She and Poppa fell in love. They wanted to get married but the church said no. So they lived together in secret until my grandmother’s death from scarlet fever in 1933. Much later, after we lost Mumma, there were those in the town who were cruel enough to suggest that her death was God’s way of punishing Poppa for his sins . . . although how anyone could consider love a sin is beyond me.’

  I nodded distractedly. The face Luella had described was haunting me. The face of a goblin or a ghost, she’d said. A childhood memory that had sprung into being decades before I was born . . . So why did I feel as though I’d been the little girl in the bush that night? As though I’d been the one startled by the monster? And why could I conjure so clearly the image of a big pale face haunting my dreams?

  Ridiculous.

  And yet I had seen that nightmarish face. Not buried in the distant past where it belonged, but recently. Just over a week ago. Peering through the trees, dappled by morning sunlight, pale and moonlike, almost gleaming . . . And it hadn’t been a ghost; the man at the settlers’ hut had been very much flesh-and-blood.

  The breach, the chasm I’d been feeling, the sense that I’d overlooked something – shuddered and began to close. I thought about the stolen letters I’d found inside the tallboy at the hut, with its shrine of doll heads and the photograph of Aylish. I called to mind the splintered old axe handle propped inside the hanging compartment, a memento once burgled from a woodshed. I thought of the dark red roses scrambling along the hut’s verandah rails . . . and how they so perfectly matched the ones on Aylish’s grave.

  Someone did remember her.

  And as the gap in my understanding closed further, I realised who that someone must be. But if Cleve Jarman was alive, wouldn’t he have contacted Luella, let her know he was all right?

  Unless, of course, he’d been unable to.

  Or unwilling.

  Spider fingers crawled up my spine. ‘Luella, do you have any photos of Cleve?’

  ‘I burnt them. Why?’

  ‘A couple of weeks ago I went up to the old settlers’ hut. Someone was living there. A man. I didn’t get a good look at him, just a glimpse. He was unkempt, as if he’d been living rough for years.’

  Luella brushed at her skirt. ‘I don’t quite follow, pet.’

  ‘I’m wondering if it was Cleve.’

  ‘It can’t have been Cleve. He died twenty years ago.’

  I’d been prepared for her denial, I’d even been prepared to weather another spate of tears. After all, the subject of her husband was surely a sensitive one. I wasn’t prepared, however, for the quiet steel in her voice . . . or for the determined mask that now shuttered her face. Her eyes gave her away. Below their watery depths I saw a shadow move, a dark shape that might have been panic pushing upwards trying to tear loose.

  ‘The body they found in the dam could have been anyone’s. Just because police forensics said it’d been submerged from around the time Cleve disappeared, it doesn’t prove it was him.’

  Luella blinked. I prayed she wasn’t on the verge of losing it. I was in no frame of mind to give reassurance right now; it was taking every grain of self-control to maintain my own equilibrium.

  ‘Seeing someone up at Dad’s hut must have been a shock,’ she said gently, as if talking to a child. ‘But this man, this squatter . . . he’s gone now, didn’t you say? Oh Audrey, people come and go around here all the time. Seasonal workers, campers, conservationists – he might have just been a poor old bushie taking shelter for a few months.’

  ‘There was something about his face,’ I blurted. ‘Parts of his skin seemed to gleam unnaturally in the sunlight.’

  A pause. ‘Gleam?’

  My heart was sliding about, my palms were moist. I was labouring the point, but I couldn’t stop, not now. ‘Cleve’s face was scarred, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Cleve did have scarring, but it was barely noticeable, even if you’d been standing up close. Trust me, Audrey – it wasn’t Cleve you saw up at the hut.’ She smiled kindly and patted my arm, then got to her feet. ‘I’ve spooked you with my little ghost story, haven’t I? Oh Audrey, it was a long time ago, nothing more than a childish imagining. Now, come along inside. I’ve got some cheesecake for you to take home for Bronwyn, I know how she loves her after-school treats.’

  I caught up with her at the foot of the back steps. ‘That’s why Tony came home, isn’t it? He suspected his father might still be alive.’

  ‘I’m sorry, pet. You couldn’t be more wrong.’

  I felt her annoyance; I’d overstepped the mark and was heading into territory where I was unwelcome. But I couldn’t pull back now.

  ‘Tony and Cleve weren’t close, were they? Which makes me wonder why, after twenty years away, Tony would rush back here in a state of near shock, with hardly a word to his wife . . . unless he suspected something?’

  Luella’s already pinched face turned grey. She looked at me for an age, but I sensed she’d forgotten I was there. Finally she turned and climbed the back stairs and vanished into the house.

  I went after her. She wasn’t in the kitchen, but I could hear her in the front of the house. Banging doors. Slamming windows. Doing a lot of thumping and clicking that – as I went along the hall – I recognised as deadbolts being engaged.

  ‘Luella . . . ?’

  I found her in the sitting room, hauling a heavy curtain along its track. The drape eclipsed the last column of light and the room fell into semi-dark.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, though I could see perfectly well.

  She ignored me. Another window wrenched along its casing then walloped shut. Another lock rammed into place.

  My heart started to hammer. ‘You believe me, don’t you? That explains the deadbolts, the bars on your windows . . . you’ve always suspected.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing of the sort. For heaven’s sake, Audrey, I’m a woman living alone. Aren’t I entitled to feel secure?’

  ‘Security’s one thing, Luella – but you’ve got more padlocks than Fort Knox.’

  ‘The house was burgled once,’ she said dismissively. ‘Nothing was stolen, at least nothing of value. They ransacked the shed, took a few tools and bits and pieces. You know what it’s like these days, every time you hear the news there’re kids breaking into people’s homes, running amok – ’

  One of Glenda’s diary entries came to mind: Dad’s a hoarder, he’s got boxes and jars and tins of things stashed all around the shed. I recalled the letters I’d discovered up at the settlers’ hut, and of the carved box they’d been kept in. I remembered the blackened axe handle with its greasy, skin-like patina. The dolls’ heads, the photograph. And the ammo tins labelled with a hotchpotch of contents. Matches. Pencils, tea, candles, rope.

  The man at the settlers’ hut was a hoarder too.

  ‘Perhaps it was Cleve who broke in?’

  Luella spun to face me. ‘No.’

  ‘But the forensic tests aren’t yet conclusive. Those remains they dredged from the dam might belong to anyone.’

  She shut her eyes. ‘I don’t need any tests to tell me what I already know. It was him.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  She went out to the kitchen, pulled shut the back door and rattled the key in the deadlock. Slamming the window, she hovered in the leafy sunlight.

  ‘I know he’s dead, Audrey.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘I saw him die.’

  This to
ok a moment to process. ‘But if you saw him . . . if you knew, then why was he reported missing? Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  She squeezed the deadbolt keys out of sight between her hands. ‘I had my reasons.’

  I stared at her. Why would she want everyone to think Cleve was still alive, if she knew he was dead? A chilling thought came to me. After reading Glenda’s diary I’d come to suspect that her death was no accident. And when I’d heard Tony’s story about finding her half unconscious beneath the beech tree, I’d understood why she’d never returned for her belongings. One question gnawed uneasily. If Glenda had been badly hurt, she’d never have managed to drag herself a mile to the gully. Which could only mean that someone else had taken her there.

  I looked at Luella. She had found her daughter’s body. Had she somehow arrived at the same conclusion? Is that why she’d allowed the police to construe that her daughter’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident? Had she suspected the truth, and taken matters into her own hands?

  ‘You knew,’ I said flatly. ‘You knew Cleve murdered her.’

  Luella nodded.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Tony told me. Earlier that night, he’d found his sister up at Dad’s. She was barely conscious, and kept mumbling something over and over, but Tony couldn’t make out the word. He ran for help, but when he got back to Dad’s, Glenda was gone. It wasn’t until hours later that he realised what she’d been trying to tell him.’

  ‘That it was Cleve.’

  ‘Yes.’ A pair of palm-sized roses bloomed on her face, as if she’d been slapped hard on both cheeks. Turning, she vanished into the dark hallway.

  I found her in the floral bedroom. Pulling shut the window, she engaged the lock and closed the drapes, plunging the room into twilight.

  ‘That’s why you burnt his pictures.’

  Again she nodded.

  ‘Why?’ I had to ask. ‘Why did he do it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  My world was shifting on its axis, changing gears, forever altering the course of its rotation. Slowly, inevitably, I was drawn by the gravity of a new understanding.

  ‘Oh, Luella . . . you killed him?’

  While she’d been standing there, she had dug her fingernails into the back of her hand. Half-moons of blood sat along her knuckles.

  ‘I wish to God I had,’ she said quietly. ‘But no, it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Then who?’

  She went across the room and stood in the doorway. ‘The night she died, Glenda had been on her way to Corey’s. She left a note, but there was a storm and I was worried. She always rang to let me know she’d arrived safely. Cleve’s car was in the drive and the shed light was on, and I wanted to ask if he’d received a call from her, but when I knocked he wouldn’t answer. Strange, I thought, then dismissed it. When Glenda still hadn’t called by eight-thirty, I rang the Weingartens but no one was there. Thinking she’d taken the shortcut through Dad’s and got caught in the rain, I grabbed my umbrella and rushed after her.’

  Luella turned and went along the hall. In the bathroom she checked the window, then continued down to Tony’s room and shut the venetians. ‘When I reached the gully I saw something lying on the ground in the centre of the clearing. It was a shoe. My daughter’s shoe.’

  She was shaking her head now, tears wobbling in her eyes. ‘It took me an hour to find her, but I was too late. My precious Glenda, on the gully floor. Her body half in the water. She was covered in leaves and dirt and bits of gravel sticking to the blood. And her . . . her head, it was . . .’ She pulled out a hanky and mopped her face, then hurried back into the hall.

  ‘I lay down beside her on the gully floor. Held her in my arms the way I’d done when she was a baby, rocked her. I can’t remember how long I was there, it seemed forever. I heard something in the clearing above, the thump of feet and crying. I came to my senses . . . or rather, shook myself out of helpless shock and into something else, something raw and dark and full of hate. Anger, I suppose. I knew her death hadn’t been an accident.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It was her shoe. The one I found in the clearing. If Glenda had fallen accidentally, her shoe would have been lying at the edge of the gully, not at the centre. And I had a feeling,’ she added softly. ‘A mother’s feeling.’

  She entered Glenda’s room and I trailed in behind. It was just as I remembered. Wallpapered with yellow roses, the bed made, the collection of furry toys propped on the window seat. A school jumper draped over the back of the vanity chair.

  Luella picked up the jumper and brought it to her lips.

  ‘I ran home. Stumbling, falling, getting up. Not knowing what I’d do when I got there.’ She shook the jumper loose and refolded it, laid it back on the chair. ‘I found Tony in the shed. The fluoro light was flickering and there was an unpleasant smell. Smoky, acrid. Tony was standing near the door. He had a rifle, an old Winchester, cradled in his arms. Ghostly white, he was . . . I shouted at him. Went over and shook him, but he didn’t respond. He kept staring at the back of the shed. I turned to see what had transfixed him, and saw . . .’

  I stumbled over to the bed and sat heavily. The roses on the yellow wallpaper seemed to fly around the room, dazzling me.

  ‘Cleve,’ I whispered.

  Luella crossed to the window. Sunlight danced across her face. Her skin was damp; with sweat or tears I couldn’t tell.

  ‘My husband was a big man. He’d gone to fat in middle age and was nearly impossible to lift. Somehow, between the two of us we got him into the Holden and drove him out to the dam. I buckled him into the driver’s seat, and jammed the old Winchester in the footwell hoping that when his body was found, the rifle would explain the gunshot wound. It wasn’t a flawless plan, but I knew there’d be an inquiry. I disengaged the handbrake, and Tony helped me push the car down the slope into the water.

  ‘Later, when it was over and we came back to the house, we couldn’t look each other in the eye. I told Tony, Not a word to anyone. I needn’t have bothered making him promise. Tony was all eyes, sick with shock. I wished I’d tried to console him, but all I could think about was getting rid of all traces of Cleve . . . especially evidence of Tony’s involvement. I knew there’d be questions, probably an investigation. It seemed easier to drag out my bucket and mop, get busy with my soapy water, than to deal with the horror of what we’d done.’

  Luella drew the venetians. The light broke into ribbons and the room dimmed.

  ‘By the time I finished cleaning up it was eleven o’clock in the morning. I had a shower, scrubbed the blood from under my fingernails, did my hair and makeup, even ironed a clean frock. Somehow I kept my voice calm while I telephoned the police. Then I went back to the gully to say goodbye to my daughter.’

  We stood in the jagged shadows. Luella didn’t cry. The tears that had been wobbling in her eyes were gone, leaving her pupils large and wet. She kept blinking, shaking her head as though trying to disentangle herself from what she’d just revealed.

  I felt somewhat twitchy myself.

  Twitchy, yet calm to the point of numbness. Cleve Jarman had been a bad man. He’d hurt his family beyond repair. He was a murderer . . . but did that excuse what Tony had done? Did it justify Luella’s silence? I tried to stay unbiased, but I kept seeing the gully with its wet leaves and flowing creek, the cool green air tainted by the stink of bruised flesh and spilled blood. And the limp beloved body, skin cooling in the night air, the last echoes of a precious life swiftly ebbing. If the tables had been turned and I’d been the one to find my daughter’s body – would I have acted differently?

  I tasted blood, realised I’d bitten my thumbnail to the quick. Fisting the gory mess out of sight, I stole a look at Luella.

  She stood motionless in the tattered ribbons of light coming through the blinds, gazing at nothing. A strand of hair had escaped her beehive and glued itself to her cheek. Every time she blinked, the strand quivered.

  ‘Something’s not add
ing up,’ I thought aloud. ‘You said you put the Winchester in the footwell, before you pushed the car in the water.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But the newspaper report didn’t mention finding a rifle.’

  A soft intake of breath. ‘Perhaps they decided not to disclose such a distressing fact.’

  I steeled myself, knowing I was rushing across an invisible threshold but unable to pull back. ‘Hobe told me that the gun Tony used on himself was a Winchester. He said it was Gurney’s rifle, and that Tony stole it the night Glenda died. If it was the same one he used to kill his father, then what I can’t understand is how it got from the footwell of the submerged Holden and back into Tony’s possession twenty years later.’

  Luella seemed frozen, as though the barest movement might splinter her careful control. When she finally spoke, her voice was eerie, an exhalation of sound in the stillness.

  ‘Things get muddled over time. It might have been a different rifle, I can’t recall.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘You know, I wouldn’t have told you all this if Tony had still been alive . . . but he’s gone now, and so is Glenda. There’s nothing left for me. I won’t mind if you decide to turn me in, Audrey. In fact, it’d be a relief not to have to hide anymore.’

  I walked over to the window and peered through the slats. The glary daylight seemed artificial. I felt I’d endured a lifetime in this stuffy gloom, crushed beneath the weight of Luella’s confession. And yet something told me she wasn’t being entirely honest. I let the blind fall back.

  ‘It’s not my place to judge you,’ I said. ‘To be honest, I’d probably have done the same.’

  Luella nodded, but she seemed distant again as though my reassurance was the least of her concerns. Tucking her hanky back in her bra, she trod awkwardly towards me. I felt a rush of dread, fearing that she meant to envelop me in a hug. After what we’d just shared I felt raw and exposed, on the brink of not coping.