Thornwood House

by Anna Romer

  I was in the water, a cold shock in the dark, gulping dark mouthfuls. Bronwyn’s skin was slippery as I pushed her upwards to Danny’s reaching hands.

  ‘Mum . . . ?’

  Her voice came from another world. Shrill and tremulous, a faint spectral echo. I tried to catch it, tried to snare the threads of it so I could pull myself back to her, find her in the labyrinth of darkness which now engulfed me . . .

  Danny wrapped her in his shirt then braced himself against the catchment wall and reached in again, gripping his fingers around mine, hauling me from the water. I felt solid ground beneath me, felt my daughter’s shivering body in my arms.

  ‘Oh, Mum – !’

  Her body was wracked with sobs, her skin ice-cold. As I squeezed her tightly to me, she wound her arms around my neck and squeezed back. Hot tears scalded my face, mine or hers I couldn’t tell. All I cared was that she was here with me now, breathing and alive, safe.

  ‘Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry, I’m so very sorry – ’

  ‘No, Mum.’ Cold lips moved against my cheek, her breath warm. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things to you, I shouldn’t have run away . . .’ She pulled back suddenly, her eyes wide as she touched the side of my head with her icy fingertips. ‘Your poor face. Oh Mum, it’s all my fault . . . He said he was going to hurt you – ’

  I grasped her fingers, tried to warm them against my lips. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Bronny – do you understand? None of this was anything to do with you. He was a bad man, a damaged man, but he’s gone now. You’re safe . . . we’re both safe.’

  Bronwyn nodded, smoothing her fingers over the top of my head. Her face was streaked with filth, scratched in places, her eyes like saucers, the sapphire irises huge, nearly black. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Droplets of rainwater clung to her fair lashes.

  ‘I know what he did,’ she whispered, pressing her lips to my face. ‘He told me. He killed Dad, didn’t he?’

  It chilled me to hear her speak so matter-of-factly – but then she’d always been the level-headed one, just as Tony had been. She started crying again, her eyes brimming like lakes, her gaze not moving from mine. One day I would tell her what I’d learned about Tony, and why he’d felt the need to withdraw from her life . . . but not now. That would come later. Much later. Instead, I held her tight and near, didn’t bother trying to talk away her tears, didn’t bother trying to comfort her. I just let her cry, holding her silently until she was done.

  Finally, she wiped her wrist across her eyes and – to my surprise – slid a motherly arm around my shoulders. Nestling close, she kissed the top of my head – the way I used to kiss hers a million years ago when she’d been a little girl.

  She hugged me tight. ‘We’ll be all right now, won’t we, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, Bron,’ I promised. ‘Yes, we will.’

  Looking over her shoulder, I found Danny watching us, his expression dark with emotion. He gave me the thumbs up sign, and I nodded. I tried to summon a smile, but my lips were trembling. The tears that had been wobbling in my eyes – it seemed for a lifetime – finally rolled over my lashes. We would, I knew. We would be all right.

  I pulled my daughter closer and, just for that one precious moment, allowed myself to believe.

  29

  Aylish, March 1946

  Leaves and sky. That was all I could see. I tried to turn my head to the side, but a great heaviness had settled on me. I’m asleep, I thought.

  But no, my eyes were open. Otherwise how could I have seen the leaves and sky?

  The bush crackled around me, waking up. It was pre-dawn, the cicadas were singing, and a bullfrog grumbled from some faraway muddy hollow.

  Looking sideways, I saw a coil of long hair. My hair. For some reason the sight of it made my heart sink. The hair was tangled, littered with leaves and clots of earth. Strands of it were matted into clumps by a sticky dark substance, and a funny smell rose out of it. Towering over me was a boulder, its grey flanks dotted with lichen. Beyond the boulder curved the stony verge of a dirt track. Nearby, the ground was splashed with shadow, glimmering in patches as though something wet was spilt there.

  Again, I tried to move. Nothing happened. I was lying on my back, my limbs twisted beneath me. My head rested on stones. All I felt was cold. Deep, bone-biting cold. I tried to raise a shiver, but my body wouldn’t respond. It wasn’t so much that I was uncomfortable. Rather, I felt disjointed, my bones loose and no longer connected to me. I wanted to cry out, but even if I’d been able to muster a breath, I knew there’d be no one to hear –

  I was wrong.

  Footsteps approached. Then a man was kneeling beside me. Calloused fingers explored my face, grasped my shoulders, felt along my arms. His touch ran over me, every inch. I could feel the heat in his palms.

  ‘Aylish,’ he said. His face moved into view. His dear face. He was smiling. If I’d been able to move my lips I would have smiled back . . . and begged him to gather me into his arms, hold me hard against him, chase the cold with his own vital warmth.

  He must have read my thoughts, because he lifted me as though gathering up a sleeping child. Then he bent his head and kissed me, his mouth just as I remembered it, warm and strong, lush with promise. My lips tingled. An ember flickered and burst into flame; my frozen body stirred. A delicate sensation: the knitting of bone, the flow of blood; the slow, delicious return of circulation through my limbs . . .

  Samuel began to walk, but rather than going downhill in the direction of his father’s old homestead, he went up. Along a ferny trail, between arching arms of bracken, around big boulders laced with lichen. Through a corridor of casuarinas whose weeping branches bowed and sighed in the breeze. Cool shadows gathered around us, while overhead the treetops shimmered in the sunlight. In between the leaves were bright coin-sized medallions of luminous blue sky.

  Leaves and sky. Always leaves and sky.

  ‘Samuel,’ I whispered, ‘where are we going?’

  ‘To our secret place, of course.’

  Of course.

  He kissed me again, more tingles flooded me, more warmth. Then to my glad surprise he released me from his embrace and lowered me to my feet. I stood, a little wobbly at first, my limbs quivering, my head giddy-light, unsteady as a newborn foal. Yet when Samuel took my hand and led me up the trail, I fell in beside him, soon matching his long, confident strides.

  While I walked, I breathed. Drinking in the spicy scent of yellow-buttons and eucalyptus, of bark and crushed leaves, savouring the darker aromas of earth and sap and stone.

  With each breath I grew stronger.

  The sky lightened. Dawn burst forth, making heaven seem close. I could hear the birds now, belling their dizzying song into the blue morning, a chorus of crystal notes that soared high and pure as the sky.

  Bellbirds . . . my bellbirds, their voices like stars, singing me home.

  30

  Audrey, March 2006

  A perfect day dawned over the Lutheran churchyard. A pair of emerald-grey dollarbirds swooped from the branches of a nearby red gum and flashed across the sky. I wondered if they were the same ones I’d seen the day I’d come looking for Aylish’s gravestone . . . and if they were, perhaps, not birds at all but guardians of a hidden world.

  I shifted on the bench, cold in the shade despite the scorching sun. Three weeks had passed since that night at the gully. In that short span of time I’d tried to bend my mind away from the events that had nearly stolen my daughter from me. Which was no easy task; there were so many questions.

  First the police, then the detectives. Then, with more ferocity than the other interrogators combined, the media. Who was he? they wanted to know. Was he a relative, a family friend? Why had he abducted my daughter, and was she coping in the aftermath? Did I plan to stay on at the property after my ordeal, or would I sell up and move?

  I answered as best I could. My memory of that night was disjointed and nightmarish. Sleeping pills were keepi
ng the dreams at bay, and Bronwyn and I had decided to simply put that night behind us and focus on the better times that we believed lay ahead. For her, it seemed to be working. For me . . . well, I knew it would take some time for the flashbacks to grow more infrequent and finally dwindle.

  The discovery of Cleve’s body in the gully, combined with my account of what I’d learnt, sped up the forensic investigation into the remains found in Cleve Jarman’s submerged Holden. The body was that of a bushwalker who’d been reported missing in Toowoomba, a man in his twenties with a string of convictions for drug possession. Apparently he’d been ‘bushwalking’ to the remote highlands of the national park to tend his marijuana crop. That’s how he’d encountered Cleve. There were no signs of physical trauma to the skeleton, and the police mentioned the possibility of strangulation or poison, but that particular detail was – like so many others now – buried forever in the impenetrable substrata of the past.

  The police had retrieved the scattered letters from the dark spaces of the gully, where I’d thrown them during my struggle with Cleve. They’d made copies and returned the originals to me, though the sergeant later admitted that the events recounted in Aylish’s letters wouldn’t have been enough to lawfully convict Cleve of any crime – young Cleve might have stolen a possible weapon, but it didn’t mean he’d used it. What had clinched the deal for them was the partial fingerprint they’d lifted from the Winchester found with Tony’s body – Gurney Miller’s old rifle, which Cleve had retrieved from the submerged Holden when he’d buckled his dope-growing stand-in into the driver’s seat. The fingerprint was a perfect match to the man whose lifeless body they’d retrieved from the gully floor; the man the local sergeant had personally identified as Cleve Jarman.

  ‘Hey kiddo, why the frown?’

  The bench creaked as Corey settled beside me. She unburdened herself of an enormous bunch of gerberas, laying them next to my own bouquet of pink and white native daisies. She gave me a peck on the cheek and gently squeezed the fingers of my good hand.

  ‘You’re late,’ I replied, ridiculously pleased to see her. Then handed her a bit of paper.

  ‘What’s this?’ she cried. ‘You’ve caught Danny’s note-writing bug?’ She held it up to her eyes, pretending to squint at my tiny scrawl as she read aloud. ‘Corey and Eliza, BBQ at Thornwood, Saturday arvo, tofu snags provided.’

  She nudged me with her elbow. ‘Oh Audrey, I’m glad you’ve decided to stay. Danny and Jade are just so . . .’ She sighed, rolling her eyes dreamily.

  I laughed, then cursed as I hugged my ribs, and that set Corey off and then we were both giggling. A moment later she was serious again. ‘So what’s this present you said you had for me?’

  Sliding two flat parcels from my tote, I placed them in her hands.

  Corey unwrapped the first to find a book, The Magic Pudding, by Norman Lindsay. She gave me a curious look. ‘I loved this as a kid, how did you know?’

  ‘Open the other one.’

  Inside the second parcel was another book, smaller, buckled and water-damaged. The stained cover, with its fluffy white kitten and blush roses, looked weatherworn in the sunlight.

  Her smile faltered. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A diary,’ I told her. ‘I found it – or rather, Bronwyn found it – at Thornwood.’

  She looked from me to the little journal and back at me, plainly mystified. Then her fingers were cracking open the cover, her eyes eagerly scanning the neat lines of cursive that inked the inner pages.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, Audrey.’

  For a long time we sat silently. The raucous chatter of the dollarbirds echoed overhead. Gum leaves rustled in the balmy breeze, invading the air with their spicy green scent. Corey pored over the pages, not reading – that would come later – but touching the lines of water-blurred ink, shaking her head disbelievingly. Tears rained from her eyes, but the tremulous smile never left her lips.

  At last she sighed and closed the diary, hugged it to her chest. ‘Thank you, Audrey. You can’t know what this means to me.’

  ‘I think I can,’ I confessed. ‘Some parts will be difficult for you to read . . . but I think Glenda would have wanted you to have it.’

  Corey’s tear-streaked face was luminous. She mopped her eyes on her wrist and gave me a lopsided hug.

  A shout from the graveyard had us both looking over.

  Luella had brought along her grandfather’s ancient Box Brownie and was calling for us to join them. Corey waved, but we continued to sit for the moment, happy to watch. Luella was bustling about trying to coordinate Jade and Bronwyn into some semblance of order so that she could take their photo. The girls were doing their wet hen routine – only this time they were being pursued by a swarm of exuberant kelpie puppies that seemed to want to be everywhere at once.

  ‘Look at them,’ Corey said with a laugh. ‘Trust Hobe to find a way of offloading his excess puppies. None of us will get any rest from this day forward, mark my words. I hope Luella knows what she’s getting herself into.’

  I looked across the cemetery at Bronwyn’s grandmother. She’d agreed to meet with Hobe later that afternoon. Her face glowed, and despite the bruises still lingering around her eye she looked relaxed and beautiful. Hard to believe that only yesterday she’d read her mother’s stolen letters. Once, I’d have thought it right to keep them from her; right to protect her from the truth. But I remembered her face the night Bronwyn had been taken. Shock, at first; then the steely glint in her eyes as she’d pressed her father’s hunting knife into my fingers, the quiet words that had carried so much command.

  Do whatever you have to, Audrey. Just bring her safely home.

  A delighted squeal drew my attention back to Bronwyn and Jade. They’d finally organised themselves into a tight huddle for the camera, only to scurry away again in shrieks as an oversized butterfly dive-bombed the armloads of roses they both held.

  Corey stood up, still clutching the diary against her chest. ‘Come on,’ she said, helping me to my feet and collecting our bouquets. ‘No point letting them have all the fun.’

  She was right, of course.

  After all, it was a glorious day. The sky was a cobalt-blue dome, the sun was deliciously hot, and the morning brimmed with promise.

  It was Sunday, and we’d all brought flowers for Aylish.

  Later, in the hushed bubble of my sunny studio, I rang Carol. She’d been following the news reports on the TV and in the papers, and the police had notified her about the ongoing inquiry into Tony’s death. As the media was making such a meal of it all, I thought she deserved the simple truth.

  I related my discovery of Glenda’s diary and how it had helped me unravel the truth about her murder. And how that, in turn, had led me to discover what had really happened to Tony.

  When I finished, she was weeping quietly.

  ‘Thank you, Audrey,’ she said through her tears. ‘Tony was right about you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He used to say, and I quote, “Audrey’s a girl in a million.” Now I can see why.’

  We hung up, and I sat in the stillness. The old house creaked. Outside, a pair of magpies warbled an intricate duet. For a while I trod water, engulfed by Carol’s sorrow, and by my own. Then my mind stopped whirling. A feeling of relief folded around me, warm and soothing as bathwater. I shut my eyes, and in the semi-darkness behind my lids I saw the beautiful young woman I’d seen on the other side of the gully. She was smiling now. The late afternoon sun gleamed in her hair and burnished her skin, illuminating her as she turned and slipped between the trees, quickly vanishing into the light.

  Epilogue

  The world sleeps, the sky is at its darkest. My bedroom window is open and bare of curtains. Warm night air blows in, carrying the spicy perfume of gum leaves and roses. There are no neighbours for miles, no one to spy on us but possums and birds.

  Soon, the sun will come and chase the night. Being woken by the diaphanous pre-dawn glow – that Aylish
called the piccaninny light – is fast climbing to the top of my list of favourite things.

  Most favourite of all is listening to the man beside me sleep.

  I reach across the bed, and he’s there. Large and warm, solidly real. I’m becoming accustomed to drifting off to the rhythm of his breath, held protected in his arms or pressed snug against his warm back. And when sleep finally comes, I take care to tiptoe through my dreams.

  Silently, so as not to wake the dead.

  He spoke to me again last night. One word, uttered so quietly I almost missed it.

  ‘Love,’ he said, and then his fingers curled around mine, tugging me to him, his arms wrapping me firm. His voice was gruff, lazy, pleasantly husky. Rusty, he claims, from a lifetime of neglect. In my view, if he only ever has the inclination to say one word in his life, then he’s chosen the right one.

  About the author

  Anna Romer grew up in a family of book-lovers and yarn-tellers, which inspired her lifelong love affair with stories. A graphic artist by trade, she also spent many years travelling the globe stockpiling story material from the Australian outback, then Asia, New Zealand, Europe and America.

  Her first novel, Thornwood House, reflects her fascination with forgotten diaries and letters, dark family secrets, rambling old houses, and love in its many guises – as well as her passion for the uniquely beautiful Australian landscape. Her second novel, Lyrebird Hill, will be published in September 2014.

  When she’s not writing (or falling in love with another book), Anna is an avid gardener, knitter, bushwalker and conservationist. She lives on a remote bush property in northern New South Wales.