A Grand Passion

by Anne De Lisle

  ‘It was the first swing,’ he laments, ‘the very first one!’

  CHAPTER 17

  VISITORS FROM THE PAST

  A GARDEN AS OLD as ours should be bursting with ancient trees – towering figs, massive camellias. We know that Edgar Aldridge was a keen horticulturist and constantly experimented in his quest to discover which plants could be grown in our sub-tropical climate. He planted sisal for rope making, sugarcane, maize and potatoes. He grew coffee, camphor, wheat, rice, dozens of varieties of fruit and vegetables, and large stands of bamboo. We’re told that he won prizes as far away as London for his arrowroot. We have no reason to believe he didn’t also throw his energies into ornamental trees, flowers and shrubs. Margaret Jacobsen has told us of the enormous camellias that used to grow between the house and the river when she was a child. So where has it all gone?

  We don’t know why the garden was all cleared so drastically – ‘nuked’ as we like to put it. But we know who did it.

  Mr and Mrs Gilbert Stiler bought the house in 1939 after Hugh Biddles died, and it was during their reign that the verandahs were removed and the garden devastated. We’ve tried hard to think of a reason for such a clearance of vegetation. Were they planning a market garden? Were they afraid of snakes? Or bushfires? Certainly they ensured that there was no bush left.

  The Stilers were reputed to have paid five hundred pounds for the house on what was then twelve acres of land, but they only lived at Baddow for a little over a year. Perhaps their wholesale destruction of the verandahs and the garden angered the ghosts who terrorised them out of the place.

  I find it hard to imagine the Stilers as happy people. They came, they saw, they laid waste, they left. Perhaps they just didn’t like the house. It was certainly the beginning of Baddow’s darkest hour.

  With the Stilers gone, the State Government bought the house to convert it into a migrant hostel. Somehow the conversion never happened, and the house sat empty and forlorn for years. Always stately but lonely, abandoned and increasingly derelict. Stripped of its verandahs, the walls were weathered and stained, the plaster crumbled. Windows were smashed and rain beat in, devastating the beautiful floorboards.

  Local vandals did their bit, too. They stripped out five of the six original fireplaces, adorned the walls with graffiti, broke the balustrading of the internal staircase and hacked hunks out of pretty much anything a person could hack hunks out of.

  No wonder the house attracted the title and reputation of the Ghost House of Maryborough.

  In 1954 the lst Baddow Troop of Boy Scouts bought the house in all its dilapidation to use as their Scout Hall. They paid just two hundred and fifty pounds for it. Live-in caretakers, a Mr and Mrs Stewart, occupied the downstairs rooms – with the exception of the main double living room which was used by the Scouts as their meeting hall. The upstairs rooms, in even poorer shape, were used for storage only.

  The original kitchen at Baddow had been a separate building connected by a covered walkway. Though this was already demolished by the Stewarts’ day, below ground where the kitchen had once stood, the cellar was still intact. This subterranean construction had been known as the ‘hiding’ room, rumoured to have been built in case of raids by Aborigines back in Edgar Aldridge’s time.

  It begs the question, why did Harry Aldridge and his children hide in the attic rather than the cellar, when they had their very own nineteenth century Panic Room?

  One of the first questions my daughter Elizabeth – fearful of the dark and all it might conceal – asked when she came to Baddow was, ‘do you have a Panic Room?’ (I think she’d recently seen the Jodie Foster movie of that name, and believed every house should have one.) We don’t. The cellar is no more. Occasionally our shovels hit the brick walls when we’re planting trees, but these walls are only a shell now and the shell is solidly filled with garden.

  We learn that the trapdoor in the cupboard under the stairs used to lead to another cellar, a brick-lined room you could stand up and walk around in. But that the wife of a previous owner found its existence a constant source of fright, a potential haven for vermin, and demanded it be filled in. We wonder how many buckets of dirt had to be lugged inside and down through the trapdoor to achieve this. For a moment Ian and I get excited and talk about excavating the dirt out again, but commonsense soon prevails.

  The Stewarts tell of having to scrub down the interior walls of the house to get rid of graffiti and of boarding up the windows of the unused rooms. They describe how the overmantel mirrors above the fireplaces were all smashed, though the wooden frames were still in place, having been screwed tightly onto the walls.

  It appears that the Stewarts made a huge effort to get Baddow House into suitable condition for the Scouts, but the building was too far gone and it seems no one had the means to maintain, let alone repair it.

  An enterprising local builder, Mr Jack Hawes, offered to build the Scouts a new hall in town if they would do a swap. In 1960 the Scouts accepted, almost costing Baddow her life.

  Mr Hawes wanted to build cottages on the land, and saw Baddow House as a source of plenty of good bricks. We’ll never know why he changed his mind. I like to think that the house cast her spell over him.

  Baddow House was fighting for survival. Misfortune had plagued her since the very beginning. Maria’s premature death, Edgar’s death, Harry’s bankruptcy and his family’s eviction, the Biddles’ ill health, the brief but disastrous occupation by the Stilers.

  Then came the indignity of abandonment, of vandalism, of near execution. How much sadness can one house bear?

  Knowing how the house has suffered makes me love it even more. I kiss the walls. I kiss away Esse’s tears and hope never to have to weep as she did.

  Out of the blue we discover John and Lois Hastings, who lived at Baddow House for nine years through the nineteen-seventies. It’s always exciting to meet people who have spent time at Baddow. To hear their stories adds pieces to our puzzle, sheds light on those unknown stretches. As far as Ian and I can gather, John and Lois’s time was the first inhabitation of Baddow since the Biddles’ that smacked of the normal life of a normal family who loved the house and garden.

  It goes without saying that I ask them about the ghosts. The foolish part of me is hoping to hear lurid, scary stories, always exciting in the bright light of day and companionship of a group of people. But I know that next time I’m alone and the sun goes down, I’ll wish I hadn’t asked.

  ‘Yes,’ says John. ‘I’ve a couple of good ghost stories for you.’

  Ian and I wait with bated breath and quickening pulses.

  ‘The first one happened when I was alone in the house. I was upstairs, just on dusk, when I heard a rhythmic knocking that seemed to come from the corner of the bedroom ceiling. There was no wind, no reason to believe any force of nature was causing the noise. I froze, listening hard. Bang … bang … bang … My heart was in my mouth. Could there be someone in the attic?’

  He pauses, and I’m thinking of Harry, locked in the attic, imagining him pacing up and down, trapped, afraid, frantic for his children.

  ‘I grabbed my torch,’ continues John, ‘leaned out of the window and shone its light up toward the gutter. Caught in the spotlight was a kookaburra slamming a toad against the iron. Bang … bang … bang … Hard and rhythmic.’

  There’s relief and laughter all round.

  John holds up his hand. ‘Wait, I have another one,’ he says seriously.

  The laughter stops. Once more our attention is all his.

  ‘I was asleep in what you now call the Blue Room,’ he tells us. ‘Something woke me, though I couldn’t work out what it was. I lay very still and, as I came to full consciousness, it seemed to me that the walls were moving and the room was swaying. It was as though the edges of reality were being blurred by another dimension. After a few minutes everything returned to normal, but I thought I’d better not tell Lois, knowing it might frighten her.’

  John looks around at our
solemn faces, then adds, ‘Later that day, I heard on the news that there’d been an earthquake in the Wide Bay district.’

  The phone rings one day and a voice at the other end says, ‘My great-great-grandfather built your house. We’ve heard you’re restoring it and wondered if we could come round and have a look.’

  The voice is that of Russell Anson, Esse’s grandson. I am delighted.

  They arrive and I meet Jack, widower of Esse’s daughter, Barbara, their son Russell, his wife Teresa and various children.

  After so long living, breathing and touching Aldridge history, it is amazing to actually meet blood relations of the family.

  We go for a walk round the garden first, and explain what we are doing with the verandahs. It means so much to me that they have taken the time and made the effort to come here, that they are happy about, and approve of our restoration. I feel a great rapport with them, which only reinforces my belief that I am where I’m meant to be. I determine to give the house an extra kiss later.

  When we go inside I get the strangest sensation. Feelings like this don’t usually happen to me, only in my dreams. It happens the minute we are inside the entrance hall and is exciting, not a bit scary. Every hair on my neck stands upright and my scalp lifts and prickles as though it has a life of its own. I don’t say anything to our visitors, but the feeling lingers with me for the duration of their visit.

  We sit and drink tea, and I pull out all the old photographs we have of the house and the Aldridge family. More tingles. We talk about Esse a lot. I can see from her photographs that Esse was an exceptionally beautiful young woman. She has a sweet, heart-shaped face, huge dark eyes, and she wears gorgeous Victorian clothes, with all the pleats, lace and elegance of that era.

  The Ansons tell us how devastated Esse was to have to leave Baddow House, that before she died she told her family it would have been better never to have had it all, than to have had it and lost it.

  My understanding is total. The thought of losing Baddow is unthinkable, unbearable. It is strange to feel such a link to a long-dead woman I never met, but I can’t help it. There’s a magnetism about her memory, and it’s tugging at me. Though I’m adamant that I don’t believe in ghosts in the sense that the dead can rise and walk our earth, I find myself believing that maybe, just maybe, a person can leave some essence of themselves in a place, an imprint of their existence, especially if there was great depth to their emotions.

  My boys come up for a weekend visit. Is it coincidence that we are having a gang to dinner that Saturday night? I suspect the boys of making an extra effort to travel north to Maryborough when they know a feast is to be had.

  We invite Marian Graham, the architect of the verandahs, and her partner, Adrian, plus Trevor, who will always be a particular marvel to us for finding Baddow House. We also invite Syd and Diana Collins, who own the art gallery in town, and who I have bothered a thousand times in a thousand ways to frame so much eBay art. Syd, who has the patience of Job.

  I spend the day cooking curries: lamb, beef, chicken, fish and a mountain of spiced-up vegetables. By mid-afternoon, Ian returns from a visit to the tip and tells me most of Queen Street stinks of curry. When I have a crowd, it’s what I do. A habit formed from childhood in Malaya, where curry lunches were the norm at weekends. Often for the feeding of the five thousand. I can’t make my curries Gurkha-hot though, as not everyone appreciates losing the skin of their soft palette these days, but I chop up loads of chillies so that my boys and Adrian can turn up the heat to their taste.

  When we moved to Baddow House, the comment, I don’t suppose you’ll use that dining room much, easier to eat in the kitchen, was made too often to remember. How wrong they were. I love eating in the dining room. The raspberry walls tempt my appetite, food tastes better off the Myott pheasant plates, dissected by our best silverware, and wine slips easily down our throats under the halo of soft light from our enormous chandalier.

  The wood of the step into the dining room dips in the middle, worn by incalculable numbers of feet: booted, slippered, bare feet. It’s a tangible reminder of past dinners enjoyed in this room. If you close your eyes you can imagine the company, the laughter and the warmth. Candles instead of the chandelier. Bodies over-dressed for our tropical nights. Layered corseted clothes, up to the neck, to the wrist, to the ankle. But happy times, I feel certain.

  We eat till we’re fit to burst, then I bring in the puddings. Always chilled and fruity after a curry. I’ve made a pavlova and an open blueberry and apricot tart. Australian and Gallic, to follow the Nepalese and Malay. A multicultural mix.

  Andrew and Robert help themselves to seconds of each as Ian, inevitably, gets droopy eyes. He’s up at the far end of the table, nodding alarmingly close to his bowl, too far away to kick awake. Ian, who has more vim and vigour than the Energiser bunny, winds down with a thud when he has a belly full of food and red wine, and the hour has grown late.

  Everyone drifts home, and the four of us go to bed. I crash, unaccustomed to the amount of food and wine and the lateness of the hour. Out of practice.

  Somewhere in the depths of my deepest slumber of the night, I’m vaguely stirred by music, and realise someone is playing the piano. It’s enough to make me open my eyes and look at the clock before, drugged by food, wine and overwhelming tiredness, I slip back into sleep with the half-remembered thought that I must have been dreaming. By morning the memory is gone.

  Ian and I have finished breakfast by the time the boys emerge. Robert is first and, as always, goes by way of the dining room for a quick tinker of the piano he loves. He doesn’t tinker for long. He finds us in the kitchen and says, ‘That’s weird, I know I closed the lid of the piano last night, but it was propped up this morning.’

  ‘It was late when we all went to bed,’ Ian suggests, ‘perhaps you forgot.’

  Robert shakes his head. ‘I always close it. Anyway, that’s not the only weird thing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The keys feel wet, sort of sticky.’

  His words make me smile. ‘You must have played after mauling the remains of the pavlova last night.’

  ‘No. I’d never do that.’ He looks almost annoyed at the suggestion, as annoyed as Robert is able to look. And suddenly, a buried, dreamy thought clunks back into place in my head.

  I wait until Robert has vanished with a towel to clean the piano keys then, whispering, say to Ian. ‘I’ve just remembered something really strange. Last night, at about two-thirty, I thought I heard the piano playing. I suppose it must have been a dream.’

  ‘It wasn’t a dream,’ he says. ‘I heard it too.’

  My stomach gives a bit of a lurch. I feel my pulses quicken. We stare at each other, the unspeakable suggestion suspended between us.

  Robert wanders back into the kitchen with the towel. ‘All clean,’ he says, and pours himself a coffee.

  I make a decision. Robert is not a child, and he doesn’t scare as easily as his sister. I tell him about the music in the night and ask if he heard it too.

  His eyes widen a bit, but he shakes his head. ‘Though my room is further from the stairwell, I’d be less likely to hear it than you. Wow,’ he says after a bit of a pause, and stares at the manky towel on the table. ‘Ectoplasmic residue.’

  ‘Ecto what?’ says Ian.

  ‘Ectoplasmic residue,’ says Robert again.

  ‘Ectoplasmic residue,’ I repeat. ‘Didn’t you ever watch Ghostbusters? Or Poltergeist? It’s that sticky wet stuff ghosts leave behind.’

  But already I’ve had another thought. Though the music I heard was not a familiar tune, the standard was very similar to Robert’s. Not a beginner. Not a concert pianist. Somewhere in between. ‘Have you taken up sleep-walking since you left home?’ I ask him.

  Robert takes a sip of coffee, understanding my implication in an instant. ‘I don’t think so,’ he says, ‘but then if I was asleep, I wouldn’t know about it, would I?’

  ‘Did you take a glass of water to bed?
’

  He nods.

  ‘Do you think you could have come downstairs for a refill, sleep-walking, spilt some water and played a bit?’

  ‘No recollection at all, Mum, but it’s physically and scientifically possible.’

  We let the case rest. And in the safe light of day, I delight in the chance to close my eyes and invoke the picture of a beautiful Esse taking her seat on the piano stool with a sweep of full skirts, settling her fine young hands on the ivory keys. Candlelight gleams on her glossy hair, catching the curve of her cheek, a hint of décolletage. Like her tears, can her music permeate the walls?

  We’ll never know for sure. I wonder if we’ll ever hear it again.

  It’s one o’clock in the morning. I’m stirred from sleep by the rare sound of Topsy, the hopeless guard dog, barking.

  Topsy, being a blue cattle dog, is a breed as feared by intruders as they are loved by owners. Loyal, fierce, protective and intelligent. There’s something wrong with our specimen. Though she won’t tolerate and tries to eat anything on four legs, she’s nervous, frightened of people, except for John and Sarah who stuff her full of chips and burgers. When we’re not at home, she hides. When we’re in bed at night, she hides. She only barks when Ian and I are around to protect her.

  The rarity of this is surprising enough to half-wake me. I nudge Ian. ‘I think Topsy just barked,’ I murmur sleepily.

  ‘Probably just a possum,’ says Ian, ‘go back to sleep.’

  Then we hear a man’s voice. It’s distant, out near the road. But it’s raised and angry.

  Ian springs out of bed. He is one of those rare individuals who snap from deep slumber to perfect clarity of wakefulness in a nanosecond. He’s proud of this attribute. He sees it as manly, warrior-like, and laughs at the pathetic grogginess I suffer between the states of sleep and true consciousness. In the mornings I shuffle to the bathroom with half-paralysed feet, unable to speak or open my eyes, while Ian is out on the verandah, sucking in the morning air, surveying his domain.