by Anna Romer
Clarice smiled widely, sweeping an elegant hand in an arc to encompass the long tables. ‘Each tray contains a thousand worms,’ she declared. ‘And sometimes we keep twenty trays in operation.’
Orah scrunched up her eyes at Clarice, baffled. ‘Twenty thousand cocoons? I thought you only needed nine?’
Clarice laughed. ‘I’ve learned the hard way to accommodate for the whims of ladies’ fashion. Any excess silk I have from year to year goes into the making of—’ and here she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘rather comfortable bloomers.’
Orah’s eyes went wide, and Clarice laughed again. ‘Come on, my pet, there’s something I want you to see.’
Orah followed Clarice outside and then down through the orchard. Tall trees blocked the sunlight, casting the grassy mound housing the icehouse into deep shade. Clarice pushed open the door and they went inside. While Clarice lit the kerosene lamp, Orah looked around. High narrow shelves lined the walls, packed with dozens of bottles, their store of preserved vegetables and fruit. Clarice held the lantern aloft and led the way along the passage, down some steps, and further into the dark. They reached a narrow doorway and ducked through into a small square room. There were more shelves here, only wider than the ones in the passageway. Instead of jam jars, these shelves were packed with narrow wooden boxes. Clarice retrieved a box and removed its lid, then held the lantern high so Orah could see inside.
At first they looked like sheets of wrinkled paper – leaves from the Bible, Orah thought – but then she noticed that each sheet was covered in tiny black dots.
‘Silkworm eggs,’ Clarice told her. ‘We keep them cold in here until we need them. Then we bring them into the relative warmth of the rearing house so they can hatch. That way we can produce batches of silk all year round.’
Orah shivered. She stepped away from the box, suddenly eager to be back out in the sunlight. She looked at Clarice and found the older woman smiling back at her. It must have been the oily lantern light, or perhaps the dense darkness; it might have been the lack of air, or the dull pervading cold. For whatever reason, Clarice seemed faded, her vibrant beauty somehow dimmed.
Later, much later that night, Orah woke from a dream. She sat up, but didn’t switch on the light. Usually she forgot her dreams on waking, but this one had roused her from sleep, and she knew there would be no forgetting. In the dream, she’d held Clarice in the palm of her hand – not the real Clarice, of course, a tiny version, her very own Thumbelina with Clarice’s face and shining red hair, dressed in one of Clarice’s fine silk dresses. Orah had carried tiny Clarice to the icehouse, down the dark steps and along the narrow passage to where the egg boxes waited. Sliding the cover from one of the boxes, she popped Clarice inside. When the cover went back on, little Clarice began to cry – forlornly, desperately, a sobbing so ragged it tore at Orah’s nerves. The wretched sound followed Orah back along the passageway, past the bottles of preserves, through the heavy door, and back out into the garden. She could still hear it now, echoing in the back of her mind as she sat in her moonlit bedroom – the muffled mouse-like weeping. On and on it went, on and on, as though that tiny hidden heart must surely break.
As the weeks passed, Clarice found herself looking forward to that quiet part of the day when the chores were done, the children’s school lessons were learned, and everyone was fed and left to their own devices. Night had fallen by then, and in the hours before bedtime, it became customary for Clarice and her girls, as she thought of them, to light the lanterns and congregate in the rearing house.
The girls were in there now.
The night was hot; the weather had become muggy in the days leading up to Christmas. On her way back from the kitchen with a tray of cool drinks, Clarice paused to look in on them, unseen, from the window.
Orah sat at the old spinning wheel, pumping the treadle with her foot as her nimble fingers teased out the fluffy silk she held in her hands. Nala provided a steady supply of raw downy fibre to Orah’s lap basket, making sure it never emptied. Spinning silk thread, as opposed to simply unravelling the cocoons, was a tricky business, yet Orah had delighted Clarice with how quickly she had learned the skill. Clarice had set aside time each evening to instruct her, a special part of her day.
‘You’re a natural,’ she’d told Orah.
‘Mam was a spinner,’ Orah explained. ‘She showed me how, although I’ve only ever used a spindle and wool, never silk.’
Within a week, the girl had mastered a skill it had taken Clarice nearly two years to grasp. Edwin’s mother had been against the boiling of cocoons to harvest the silk – a method that killed the worms inside. It was cruel, she’d said, and Clarice had agreed wholeheartedly. Instead, Susanna Briar had taken instruction from one of her Chinese friends in Ballarat, and learned to spin silk from the short strands left behind when the worms broke from their silken nests. To maintain the strength of the silk, double strands must be spun into the one thread, requiring two hands – and sometimes, in a pinch, Nala would provide a third.
Clarice’s heart filled with warmth. They were such good girls; they never bickered or complained, and Clarice so enjoyed having them around. Of course, Nala already had a mother, but Orah was all alone in the world, in need of a mother – while she, Clarice, had empty arms and a heart that ached for love. Was it so very wrong, she wondered, to want Orah to stay?
Clarice’s breath fogged on the windowpane, and she drew away. Something made her glance over her shoulder, in time to see Edwin approaching. She held a finger to her lips, and then motioned to the window. Edwin joined her, and after a little while, he murmured, ‘My mother would have loved her, wouldn’t she? She’s taken to that spinning wheel like a duck to water.’
Clarice smiled. Edwin’s comment had been casual enough, but it made her see that he wanted it too. He wanted them to be a family. The warmth in Clarice’s heart began to glow, and for the first time in many years, she reached up and gently touched Edwin’s cheek.
‘Do you promise? Orah hadn’t meant her voice to come out quite so sharply.
It was now February. Almost two months had passed since her arrival at Bitterwood. Christmas had been and gone, a solemn day for Orah despite Edwin and Clarice’s attempts to cheer her. It was her first without Mam, and in the wake of it, her longing to find Pa had grown almost unbearable.
Edwin patted his pocket. ‘I’ve written down your father’s address. It’s right here. Victoria Street, Melbourne.’
‘Will you telephone to let us know?’
‘We’ll see. I’ll do everything in my power to find him, Orah, but do you remember what I told you?’
She slumped. ‘He might have moved on.’
‘It’s a possibility.’
Her voice turned small. ‘He might . . . he might have died.’
‘Don’t lose heart, little Orah. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ Edwin smiled. ‘Are you happy here with us, my dear?’
‘Oh yes. You’ve been ever so kind.’
‘If . . . if it turns out that he’s – well, if your father can’t be found, would you like to stay with us at Bitterwood? Forever, I mean.’
Orah didn’t want to think about that. It meant giving up on Pa, and worse, accepting that Mam was gone too. Besides, forever was a long time. Truth be told, she loved the guesthouse and its big rambling garden. She loved the rearing house with its warm musty smells and beautiful silk moths. She had grown accustomed to the perpetual boom and swish of the ocean on the cliffs below. In so many ways, her life here was richer and more interesting than ever it had been in Glasgow. But Pa was Pa, her flesh and blood. What could be more important than finding him?
Her gaze strayed down the slope towards the orchard. A ladder rested against one of the tallest mulberry trees, and Warra balanced halfway up, reaching into the branches. Below, Nala held a basket to catch the fruit he dropped. From time to time, their shouts and giggles or soft chatter carried on the balmy breeze.
As if sensing he
r attention, Warra looked around and smiled, and Orah felt her face flush with happiness.
Yes, she thought. I could live here forever.
She looked back at Edwin. ‘You’ll try your best to find Pa, though, won’t you?’
‘Of course, my angel. I’ll head off in the morning and should arrive in Melbourne after lunch. The supplies will take a couple of days, but after that I’ll start making enquiries. Visit this place in Victoria Street, see if I can flush him out.’
She knew he’d meant to cheer her, to lighten her worries and put her heart to rest, but as he turned away, Orah thought she saw the sudden gleam of tears in his eyes. Perhaps it was the sun, or the dust, or the salt air, or any number of irritants bent on making a person’s eyes water. Besides, why would the prospect of finding her father upset Edwin?
She’d been mistaken, she decided, hurrying down the slope towards the orchard. When Warra glanced around again and waved, the hypnotic warmth of his smile made her forget about Edwin, forget about what she’d seen. Her heart leaped and she ran the rest of the way to the trees to join her friends.
Voices woke her. Midnight voices, perhaps the echoes of a dream.
Orah stirred in her bed.
For the first few groggy moments, she thought she was in her old bedroom in Glasgow, in the days before Pa left for Australia. It was him and Mam she could hear, their hushed utterances drifting up from the room below. They spoke softly, yet urgently, with the edge of reproach they always used when arguing.
You can’t let her go, Edwin. I won’t let you.
It’s the law.
The voices sounded a long way off, disembodied in the darkness, the way they might in a fever dream. Distinct one moment, muffled the next.
The law be damned. Even if he’s alive . . . I pray you never find him.
I have to try.
Orah shook herself awake and sat up. Tilting her head, she listened, holding her breath the better to hear. It was no dream. The voices – those of a man and a woman – continued, but the words became indistinct.
Abandoned them . . . What right has he . . . No claim . . .
She’s his child.
Why can’t she stay . . . We’ve always wanted—
I can’t—
Climbing from the bed, Orah went to the window and peered between the curtains. A draught whispered through a crack in the pane. From somewhere outside, a light was shining, the bright yellow gleam of a kerosene lamp. As she watched, the light moved slowly through the gloom. There, moving side by side like slow shadows, were two figures. One was slim and shapely, appearing then disappearing between the tangled confusion of shadowy tree trunks. The other was tall and angular, shambling through the dark with the graceless bearing of a scarecrow.
The lamplight fluttered, and the figures melted into the dark trees. The quiet insistence of their voices lingered for a while in the warm air, but finally even that faded into the night.
Orah rested her forehead on the window. Her breath clouded the glass, and the sea air blew across her shoulders. Edwin would find her father. She couldn’t say why she believed this so intensely, just that she knew it in her heart. Quiet, clever Edwin; he wouldn’t give up. After all, he had promised.
She strained to hear the voices, but there was nothing now. Just the melodic hoot of an owl down in the orchard, and the distant murmur of the rolling, washing sea.
15
Bitterwood, May 1993
With trembling fingers, he opened the wardrobe and lifted out a silk dress. It almost slithered from his grasp, its shiny folds taunting, as if to say, See? See how lovely I still am, while you, old man, have all but crumbled to dust.
The silk looked black in the moonlight, but he knew that if he flicked on the bedside lamp the colour of the fabric would leap and shimmer like a splash of blood.
Scarlet, she’d called it, with a prim emphasis on the ‘t’.
He raised the dress to his lips. Even now, her scent lingered in the fold. Cherries and sugar syrup. Mulberry leaves, and a warm musk that was somehow all her own. He breathed deeply, letting the aromas of the past settle around him, comforting and – even after all this time – agreeably familiar.
At last, his heartbeat slowed. His breathing became less erratic. A figure materialised from the dark. She stood before him, her long copper-bright hair cascading over her shoulders, gleaming against the deep red of her silk dress. Her eyes were so clear and blue he wished he could drown in them.
How he loved her.
He could still picture her the way she’d been that late summer night in the orchard, before his departure. The night the rift had finally swallowed them. She had glared at him in the lantern light, shifting her body impatiently, making the dress flare around her shapely hips.
God help him, that red silk dress.
Clarice had reared the silkworms that spun the fibre to make that dress. She had fed the worms three times a day, bundled them into the nesting frames so they could spin their cocoons. Later, she had collected basketsful of wooden spools, wound around with thousands of yards of silk thread. Edwin had driven those baskets of thread to the mill in Geelong. There, skilled labourers had hooked the thread into their machines and woven it into bolts of fabric so fine and silky a man could die of joy just to run it through his fingers. Then the dyeing, where the bolts were plunged into bubbling cauldrons of mauve, forest green, pale pink.
And her favourite, the deep bright scarlet.
To everyone’s surprise, she had proved herself an exceptional seamstress. Bent over his mother’s old Singer sewing machine, her legs pumping the treadle, her long fingers manoeuvring the fabric this way and that until, with a final flourish, she would hold aloft an exquisitely tailored skirt or blouse.
Or, perhaps, a dress.
He saw it now so clearly. The way it had shimmered in the lantern light beneath the orchard trees, teasing him, rendering him helpless. Reminding him of what he had lost.
Clarice had spoken fiercely. ‘He abandoned them, his wife and his little girl. What right has he to claim her now? No claim, I tell you.’
‘She’s his child,’ Edwin had countered.
‘Why can’t she stay? We’ve always wanted another daughter. Just tell her you were unable to find him. Please, Edwin.’
‘I can’t do it,’ he’d told her. ‘I can’t lie to her.’
‘You must.’
‘Clarice, I cannot.’
‘Please, Edwin. My heart will break.’
Around them, the mulberry trees seemed alive. He was not aware of the breeze, but the leaves fluttered as though stirred by invisible hands. The boughs creaked nervously. A lone owl hooted somewhere in the branches over their heads, its song shrill with warning.
‘I’m sorry, my love. I can’t betray her trust.’
‘So instead, you betray your wife?’ Clarice wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘What sort of a man are you?’
The words struck at his heart. Edwin’s brother had often asked that very same question. Edwin’s thoughts flew to Ronald, to that morning in France. The crack of gunfire, the stink of mud and fear. The captain’s shout in his ear, For the love of God, hold your fire!
After the war, he’d been a shell of a man. Withdrawn into himself, disillusioned by the cruelty and pointless waste he’d seen on the battlefields. Bowed beneath a guilt so heavy he knew it must eventually crush him. Then, miracle of miracles, Clarice had accepted his fumbling proposal. Back then she had been a bright butterfly in his colourless world, a creature of whimsy and aching beauty who had helped him forget.
‘Your happiness was all I ever wanted,’ he said.
‘Once I thought I could love you, Edwin.’ Her tone was low and accusing, but her voice trembled. ‘You were sweet and sincere, always kind. Now, I see what you were all along. Weak, spineless. The sort of man I find so easy to despise.’
She turned suddenly as though to rush away, but in her distress stumbled over the gnarled root of a tree. She hit the ground
hard, and the air left her lungs in a breathy grunt. Burying her face in her arms, she began to sob.
Edwin might have fallen to his knees beside and begged her forgiveness. It struck at his heart to see her there, crumpled in the dirt as she wept her bitter tears. But he heard movement behind him.
Twisting around, he stared into the trees. It hadn’t been a noise, not exactly. Rather, a disturbance in the air. An indrawn breath. A sigh that rustled the leaves. The blink of watchful eyes. Then he saw it. A shadow, a man’s shadow. Brass buttons glinted in the lantern light as the shadow reached its arms towards Edwin, its fingers splayed as though beseeching. Edwin inhaled sharply, and the scent of rotting cherries filled his lungs.
The orchard faded back into the past, making way for the dim and somehow unappealing light of reality. Edwin stared across the cavernous expanse of his bedroom. The dark had grown deeper, the moonlight from the window gone.
So many memories. So much to ponder before he died. How could he bear to leave it all? The answer was simple. He could not.
At least, not yet.
Carefully, he placed the dress back on its hanger, returned it to the wardrobe, and tucked it away from sight.
Below the walls of the great castle, the waves whispered and sighed as they beat their watery fists against the rocks. The ocean was angry, the Queen knew. Angry, and impatient to reclaim what she had stolen.
—The Shell Queen
16
Bitterwood, June 1993
‘What’s this?’ Morgan called from the bottom of the orchard. ‘Some kind of fallout shelter?’
I paused on the path. Sleep had evaded me last night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Morgan in the upstairs guest room, tucked into the bed I’d made up for him. His light was on until after midnight. I saw it blink out, leaving the house in darkness. Leaving me restless, tossing and turning, burning with guilt, eventually tumbling into sleep, and into dreams of deep water and forgetting how to swim.