by Anna Romer
A shuffle came from the darkness. Looking up, she blinked in surprise. A man stood before her. He wore a blue jacket with brass buttons. A soldier, she realised – her soldier, the same young man who had caught her eye in the marketplace.
What a glorious smile he had. His eyes glowed like black fire, his teeth shone straight and white. Dimples bracketed his lovely lips. He stood tall, his fine military coat snug around muscular arms, his hair glossy as an eagle’s wing, his limbs sturdy and strong.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, with a catch of wonder in her throat.
The man did not answer. He swooped to her side, and for one wild reckless moment, she thought he meant to pull her into his arms for a kiss. Instead, his quick fingers plucked a silk thread from her sleeve.
Fineflower flinched at his touch. ‘Won’t you tell me your name?’
The man held the strand up before his eyes. ‘My name is not important,’ he said in a voice that sent tingles of fright and desire across her skin. ‘All that matters is getting you out of here. Alive,’ he added, gazing pointedly at the ghostly wives.
‘All favours come with a price,’ she said warily. ‘What is yours?’
Dusting the silk from his fingers, the soldier looked into her eyes. His gaze was fathomless as a subterranean cave. When he spoke, his voice was full of hunger.
‘Your willing heart.’
Fineflower shuddered and drew away. ‘I can’t give you that. I don’t believe in love. But my gown is sewn with jewels. You can have those, if you like. Sapphires. Rubies. Diamonds?’
The man of shadows shook his head. ‘I have no need of baubles.’ He glanced at the mountain of cocoons, and sighed heavily. ‘A task such as this demands a high price. The heart is a treasure, nothing of greater value exists in this world or the next. My offer stands. Your heart . . . given willingly.’
11
Bitterwood, 1929
Nala let out a whoop. As they crested the hill, the ocean burst into view. Not the bruised black depths and rolling grey waves of Orah’s memory, but a glittering blue sheet pulled tight behind a coastline of grassy green hills. A dusty road meandered along a cliff edge, and further back, on the very top of the bluff, was a large house.
Orah felt a thrill of wonder. In the dying afternoon light, it looked like a magical fortress plucked from the pages of a fairytale book. She remembered Nala’s words. They’re kind people, the Briars. They’ll help you find your dad.
Twenty minutes later, Warra was leading them along a grassy path and around the side of the house, through a tunnel of camellia bushes, and under an archway smothered in climbing roses. They emerged into a private, neatly kept yard that resembled a miniature farm.
A colony of brown hens scratched around a vegetable garden, and black-faced sheep grazed in a small paddock. Grassy avenues cut between rows of sprawling mulberry trees, while further down grew apples, quinces, persimmons, cherries, and lemons.
As they approached the back of the house, a woman stepped from the shadows of a long verandah. Her light green dress shimmered in the sunlight as she walked towards them, hugging her slim figure, and complementing her red-gold hair, which she wore pinned back in a loose bun.
Orah held back, staying by Warra’s side.
Nala pushed forward. ‘Mrs Briar, this is Orah. She came from Scotland with her mum but the ship was wrecked in the storm. Warra pulled her from the water, but she’s all alone. Her dad lives in Melbourne, but she doesn’t know how to find him—’
‘Nala, please. Slow down, you sound like a lorikeet. Shipwreck, you say?’
Nala nodded frantically. ‘Everyone drowned.’
Mrs Briar’s frown deepened. Her gaze travelled over Orah’s tattered dress and bare feet, the cuts and purple bruises on her arms, the knotted hair. ‘Edwin rang this morning. He said there’d been a wreck further up the coast, but I had no idea it was so close. Are you quite sure?’
Orah moved closer to Warra. She had been looking forward to meeting the Briars after hearing so much about them, but now that she was here, she felt awkward and shy.
Nala seemed unable to contain herself, and raced off again. ‘We were on the cliff and saw her in the water. Warra swam out through all the wreckage and saved her.’
‘You brought her straight here?’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘Did you see anyone along the way?’
Nala shook her head and launched into a lengthy description of their journey through the bush and along the sea cliffs.
Orah stopped listening. The woman, Mrs Briar, was like no one she had ever seen. A film star, or a queen from the fairytale book she had left behind in Glasgow. Her hair was polished copper, glowing pure gold where the sun struck it. Her skin was creamy white, as smooth and flawless as fresh milk. The blueness of her eyes made Orah think of sunlit water.
‘We thought you would know what to do,’ Nala finished.
Mrs Briar pondered Orah for the longest time. When at last she spoke again, her voice had changed, become gentle.
‘Did you say your parents were on board the ship?’
Orah opened her mouth to speak, but her heart beat so hard she couldn’t breathe.
Warra said softly, ‘Her mother.’
‘Did she survive too?’
Warra shook his head.
Mrs Briar looked at Orah. ‘What about your father?’
Again, Orah stalled. She was suddenly, horribly aware of her ragged dress and knotty hair, and her face and hands stiff with salt and dust.
Nala came to her rescue. ‘He lives in Melbourne, missus. Orah remembers his address. She’s hoping,’ she added quietly, ‘that you could help find him.’
Mrs Briar was shaking her head, as if the story of Orah’s survival was finally sinking in and proving too far-fetched to believe. Her gaze softened on Orah.
‘What did you say your name was?’
Orah swallowed and her throat made a clicking sound. ‘Orah Dane.’
Mrs Briar reached out and plucked a dry leaf from Orah’s hair. Pinching the leaf between her forefinger and thumb, she examined it, as if it might contain the solution to this unexpected dilemma. With a sigh, she let the leaf fall, and her blue gaze followed it to the ground. She looked back at Orah.
‘Well, Orah Dane, I’m ever so sorry about your mother. When my husband returns next week, we’ll talk further about what to do. Until then, you must stay here as our guest.’ She looked at Nala. ‘Go and clean yourself up, then bring us some tea and sandwiches.’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘Warra, start fetching the bottles from storage. We’ll begin preserving tomorrow.’ Mrs Briar gestured to Orah. ‘Come along inside. You must be starving. While you eat you can tell me more about this shipwreck.’
Orah followed Mrs Briar to the front of the house where they entered a spacious sitting room.
The furniture was elegant, chairs with curved legs and glass-fronted cabinets displaying chinaware, and a tall grandfather clock with a gilded face stood near the window. Botanical pictures hung on all the walls, and Orah would have liked to observe them more closely. Birds and butterflies, and strange prickly flowers.
Mrs Briar settled herself on a couch. She beckoned Orah to sit beside her. Orah hesitated, before perching at the far end.
The grandfather clock ticked loudly in the silence. Nala brought in a tray of bread and jam and tea things, which she placed on a low table. As she poured tea, she met Orah’s eye and winked.
‘Thank you, Nala,’ Mrs Briar said. ‘Have you started dinner yet?’
‘It’ll be ready at six, missus.’ Nala smiled at Orah, and then hurried back into the hall.
Mrs Briar passed Orah a plate and a linen napkin. ‘You must be starving. Eat up.’
Orah took the plate. Mam said it was rude to eat in front of someone who wasn’t eating too, but as she breathed in the delicious smells, her hunger overcame her good manners. Bread made crusty over the fire, wedges of butter that melted and ran betwe
en her fingers, sticky plum jam.
Orah forced herself to chew slowly, savour every mouthful. After washing it all down with a long thirsty swallow of tea, she mopped her lips with the napkin, and quietly thanked Mrs Briar.
The woman nodded. ‘Now, will you tell me how you came to be here? Start at the beginning so I can get a clear picture of events.’
‘Yes, Mrs Briar.’
‘Please, my dear, call me Clarice. We don’t stand on ceremony here.’
Orah nodded, stealing a glance at Mrs Briar from beneath her lashes. Mrs Briar was unusually lovely, with her creamy skin and blue eyes. Taking a deep breath, Orah began to talk, softly at first, barely able to push the words from her throat, wobbly and halting, but with Mrs Briar’s encouraging nods she soon found herself relating her story with more confidence.
At its end, Mrs Briar leaned forward and placed her fingers lightly on Orah’s shoulder. The woman’s eyes had turned glassy with unshed tears, and they seemed to bore into Orah as though she were drinking in her hurt, recognising the distinctive flavour of grief.
‘Your poor mother,’ she whispered. ‘You must feel so very lost without her.’
Orah’s lips trembled. She was lost. Cast adrift in a world she knew nothing about. She went to speak, but there were no words. Hanging her head, she clenched her body tight around the pain.
Mrs Briar murmured in sympathy. Her fingers slid to Orah’s wrist and she gently tugged the girl towards her. Orah wanted to surrender, to sink against Mrs Briar’s softness and absorb the warm comfort of her embrace. She wanted it so badly her bones ached. Yet she held back. This woman wasn’t her mother. She couldn’t even remember the name Mrs Briar had insisted she call her. Her mind was fuzzy, her thoughts tangled. She frowned, as if recalling Mrs Briar’s name was suddenly the most important thing in the world. Posie, she kept thinking. Which was silly. Posie was her mother’s name. And Mrs Briar – despite her kindness, despite her beauty and soft ways, and the liking she had clearly taken to Orah – was not Mam.
Embarrassed by Mrs Briar’s patient scrutiny, Orah drew away.
‘I remember Pa’s address. Mam wrote to him there, it’s a boarding house in Victoria Street in Melbourne. Do you know of it?’
Mrs Briar smoothed her hands together on her lap. ‘I’m afraid I don’t, but Edwin might. Melbourne’s several hours from here. My husband travels there every second month on business, but he only left a few days ago. He’s too busy to make a return journey so soon, especially with Christmas less than a month away. Which means you’ll have to stay here for a while. That is, unless you have relatives you can go to?’
Orah shook her head. ‘Mam’s family turned their back on her when she married my father. Pa’s parents died when he was a boy. There were distant cousins in Glasgow, but we never saw them. There’s no one. Not in Glasgow, and not here.’
‘You’re all alone, then?’
Orah swallowed. Mrs Briar’s words echoed in her mind. Alone. All alone. Her shoulders began to shake. Her body buckled over. A sob choked out of her, shaking loose the invisible threads she had stitched around herself to hold in her grief.
This time, when Mrs Briar gathered Orah into her arms, the girl did not resist. Mrs Briar was bony, her breasts small, her arms slender and insubstantial. She had none of the cushioning comfort of Orah’s mother; none of the fleshy security Orah had taken for granted would always be there. Now that Mam was gone, Orah craved her tenderness. Mrs Briar was warm and sweetly scented, and in her own way, somehow needy. She held Orah so tightly, almost desperately, that Orah began to shake. Despite her fear and shame at coming apart in a stranger’s arms, she buckled into Mrs Briar’s embrace, grateful for any small comfort offered freely by this blindingly beautiful woman whose name she could not remember.
The room was small, a cocoon of darkness. Immediately Orah felt at home. A narrow single bed jutted from the wall, with a plump pillow and soft mattress, a cheerful patchwork quilt. Beside the bed was a table with washbasin and jug, and a brass candlestick. A pretty dress and undergarments in Orah’s size were folded over the back of a chair, while on the bed lay a crisp white nightdress.
She crossed to the window. Below was an enormous parklike garden. It looked wild and unkempt, nothing at all like the house’s grand entryway with its circular stone drive and guardian trees. In between the foliage, she glimpsed a shed roof. Warra and Nala sometimes slept in one of the outbuildings, they’d told her, but Orah could see no lights or movement. She knotted her fingers together, wishing she were with them. This was the first time they had been apart since the wreck.
The moon drifted behind clouds, plunging the garden into darkness. Orah turned away. Months would pass before Mr Briar could look for her father, and the thought filled her with heaviness. She longed to lie on the bed and fall asleep, but she knew there would be no rest for her until she found her father.
A knock sounded on the door. Mrs Briar poked her head into the room, and then entered. ‘I’ve just come to tuck you in, Orah dear. I hope the room is to your liking?’
Orah nodded. She slipped into bed. Mrs Briar tucked her in and then sat on the edge of the mattress and smoothed cool fingers over Orah’s brow. Her dress crackled pleasantly, and a scent rose from her skin, roses and sugar syrup.
‘Shall I tell you a story?’ she said.
Orah nodded again. She liked stories. They always soothed her. She settled under the covers, but the moment she closed her eyes, she saw her mother’s face and all the memories of that terrible night rushed back. A tear leaked from her eye. She turned her face to the pillow, hoping Mrs Briar hadn’t seen.
‘. . . a Chinese princess,’ Mrs Briar was saying, ‘who loved nothing more than walking in her garden beneath the trees, sipping her tea as she pondered the landscape. One day a cocoon fell into her hot drink and began to unravel. As she fished it out, the princess noticed that this thread was finer than any she’d ever seen.’
Orah blinked around, her sorrow forgotten. ‘What was it?’
‘Why, darling girl, it was silk. And that was how the world discovered the most delightful material ever to clothe our human skin. Here,’ she added, extending her sleeve, encouraging Orah to touch it. ‘Exquisite, isn’t it?’
Orah ran her fingertips lightly along Mrs Briar’s sleeve. She found she could not remove her hand. But it wasn’t the silk that kept her touch resting there, although that was very fine, just as Mrs Briar had said. What made her linger, what kept her fingers curled lightly around the woman’s elegant wrist, was the human warmth. It soothed her, made the band of worry on her brow loosen and disappear.
Mrs Briar placed her hand over Orah’s and stroked her fingers. She gazed at Orah for the longest time, and then smiled. ‘Perhaps while you’re here, I’ll teach you to spin.’
Orah found herself nodding sleepily. Her last image was of a small white cocoon plopping into a teacup, and the princess’s eyes – light blue rimmed with grey, just like Mrs Briar’s – peering curiously over the rim.
The following day, Orah found herself in the midst of a jam-making flurry, jostling elbow to elbow in the kitchen with Nala and Mrs Briar – Clarice, as she was learning to call her. The annual church fete was still a few months away, Clarice explained, but the fruit was ripe now and needed bottling.
Enormous pots of sticky syrup bubbled on the stove, filling the kitchen with fragrant steam. Nala cored and peeled, while Warra gave Orah a tiny paring knife and showed her how to pit the cherries. Warra delivered a seemingly endless supply of fruit to the kitchen table. Mulberries, apples, figs, peaches. Orah watched him come and go, and found that if she positioned herself near the window she had a clear view of him. As long as he was near, the sea stopped rolling beneath her and the roar of waves in her mind became quiet.
For the next few days, they worked tirelessly. Soon they had made enough jam to fill sixty jars. Not only jam, but also bottled vegetables, and preserved whole fruit in syrup. They brewed up any leftover parings w
ith the summer tomatoes and made spicy relish.
‘Just in time,’ Clarice announced as she entered the kitchen one evening. ‘Edwin’s arriving home in the morning.’ She grabbed the kettle and hauled it over to the sink. ‘Come on you lot, back to work. I want this kitchen spotless before bedtime.’
Orah was in the garden early next morning. The air was brisk and she tugged her wrap about her shoulders, hurrying around the house and down the slope towards the orchard.
She had hoped to see Warra, but he and Nala were nowhere about. There’d been talk of fishing last night, so they were probably down on the beach. As the sky began to lighten, she walked between the trees, following the grassy avenue downhill. At the edge of the orchard, she found a weatherboard building with a steep gabled roof. Going over to a window, she cupped her hands and peered in.
The lofty cathedral ceiling made the space appear cavernous. Four tables dominated the room. On the tables were large wooden trays that looked, from her vantage point at the window, to be full of leaves. There were strange shelves against the far wall, seemingly made of sticks—
‘Hello there,’ a voice said behind her.
Orah whipped around.
A man stood in the patchy sunlight. Lanky and thin, more of a scarecrow than a man. Mam would have called him a string bean. He wore a shabby black suit that was too short at the ankle and frayed at the cuff.
‘I’m sorry I startled you,’ he said. ‘You must be Orah?’
She nodded.
‘I’m Edwin Briar. Clarice said you’ve come to stay with us. How did you find your room?’
‘Good, thank you.’
The first skeins of sunlight picked through the treetops, illuminating his features. His long face was made striking by the sharpness of his cheekbones and brow. It was an odd face, pinched by a frown, yet somehow still friendly. His dark hair had been worried into a cockscomb that jutted in disarray from his head. He nodded towards the rearing house.
‘Want to see inside?’ Taking out a ring of keys, he unlocked the heavy wooden door, and then pushed through.