Beyond the Orchard

by Anna Romer

  Basil stretched on the lawn near the verandah steps sunning himself in a patch of sunlight. His eyes were half-mast, his body relaxed into a long white sausage. I fell onto the grass beside him, burying my fingers in his thick coat.

  ‘Clever old boy,’ I muttered. ‘Soaking up the sun, not a care in the world . . . unlike your silly mistress here, jumping out of her skin at shadows.’ I tickled his belly, which made him purr happily and squirm onto his back. Resting my face against his fur, I breathed in the sweet sunshiny scent of him. Soon, his kitten-talk surrounded me, the soft vibrations anchoring me, drawing me up through time, out of the past and into the brighter light of the present.

  17

  Bitterwood, 1930

  Her argument with Edwin had left her shaken, bruised after her fall. Betrayed. She hurried inside and along the hall, glad the children were asleep, glad there was no one to witness her distress.

  The stairway was dark, but Clarice didn’t bother to switch on the light. She knew her way through this house by touch alone. As she went up to the bedroom, she kept seeing Edwin poised in the orchard denying her, resisting her pleas; she kept seeing the stubborn jut of his lip, kept hearing his hateful words.

  I can’t betray her trust.

  He spoke so easily of betrayal, but that had not been Clarice’s intention. She wanted only what was best for the girl, which meant keeping her here at Bitterwood with them. Orah was growing happier by the day, settling in, flourishing as part of their family. Her father – provided he was even alive – was an unknown quantity. He had abandoned Orah once when she was a vulnerable seven-year-old; how could he be trusted to stand by her now she was a girl of thirteen? Clarice burst through the doorway into the room she shared with Edwin, and stood in the stillness, her hand pressed over her thumping heart.

  A man who abandoned his child did not deserve a second chance. Why could Edwin not see that?

  She had presumed he shared her feelings about the girl. She had seen it in him, the adoration, the willingness to please. He had been the same way with Edith. A witty buffoon, a tireless playmate, a surprisingly gracious clown. Clarice hated to admit it, but he was the perfect father. Perhaps a better father than even Ronald would have been, and this thought pained her greatly. If only Ronald had lived. If only he had fathered her children, stood beside her to watch them grow. And they would have grown. With Ronald at the helm of their family, no tragedy, no mishap, no misfortune would have dared to tiptoe over their threshold.

  Not that she blamed Edwin for the loss of their daughters. He would have gladly died if it meant saving them. She did not doubt his devotion. But he had hurt her deeply tonight, failed to keep his promise.

  You’re my life, Clarice. I’ll stand by you, come what may.

  Dragging a suitcase from beneath the wardrobe, she placed it on her bed and began to fill it with clothes. She didn’t care what she packed, flinging her good dresses in with her old ones, her stockings knotting up with her scarves and gloves, toiletries thrown into the mix with hasty abandon.

  She would take some money from the safe, where Edwin kept his reserves. Then she’d pack the Ford, leave straight away for Melbourne, and take Orah with her. They would find a modest establishment in the city where no one asked questions. Even if anyone did, who would doubt a loving mother and her daughter?

  Hot tears clung to her lashes.

  He knew how she had suffered when they lost Edith and Joyce. Edith’s poor little body succumbed to diphtheria, while Joyce was born with fluid in her lungs. One loss would have been intolerable, but two . . . There were days when Clarice could not breathe from the unfairness of it. Buried in the same grave, along with the last shreds of her sanity – at least, so it had seemed at the time. She had fallen into despair, a black pit from which there was no escape. She had surrendered to the darkness, allowed the pain to pick away at her mind until it felt like a carcass, useless and spent.

  But two months ago, the ocean had yielded them a gift, a beautiful golden-haired girl. Clarice already loved her. It was cruel of Edwin not to see this, cruel of him to refuse what she asked.

  The tears spilled, burning wet tracks down her cheeks. A memory came to her, a long-ago morning in the orchard. She and Edwin had frolicked with Edith. Such cheerful times, it pained Clarice to realise she would never know such happiness again. She stared at the mess of clothes in her suitcase. Bitterwood was full of such memories. Perfect moments of love and joy untainted by the shadow of what was to come.

  With a sigh, she considered her jumbled things. Was she ready to leave it all behind, to sever ties and start a fresh, somewhere out there in the unforgiving world?

  The shadows shifted. Her tears began to dry. Closing her eyes, she listened to the whispers of the past. Edith’s footfall on the stairs; baby Joyce’s soft murmurs as she nursed; Edwin’s dear old mother Susanna shuffling along the hall at midnight with her candle; and the barely-there shouts of Ronald as he raced through the orchard on his way to the cove, hair tousled lovingly by the wind. Ronald had been a terrible tease, he’d ragged poor Edwin nonstop, but hidden beneath his swagger was a keenly compassionate heart, a heart Clarice knew well, because he had given it utterly, eternally, to her.

  Clarice untangled her stockings and refolded them into her dresser drawer. She replaced her scarves and gloves in the pearl-inlaid box Edwin had given her. She retrieved her dresses one by one and placed them back on their hangers. With the suitcase once again tucked under the wardrobe, she stood in the quiet room with her fingers pressed to her lips. She would stay, and make her peace with Edwin. She would say no more on the matter, not even when he departed the following day. Bitterwood was too full of memories for her; she could not bring herself to forsake them. Those memories were like chains keeping her bound to the place. Bound to Edwin. She sighed. Once, she had fancied that within Edwin’s lanky form dwelled the soul of a rabbit: soft and pliable, timid and weak. What a fool she’d been. Edwin had proved tonight that he was less the gullible pushover, and rather more the scheming fox.

  Ballarat, 1930

  Edwin barely noticed the heat as he climbed from the Ford and surveyed the dusty street. In his suitcase, he carried several changes of clothes, a silver tin with travel-sized shaving gear and soap, and his portable ledgers. In the breast pocket of his jacket was a knotted handkerchief containing two pound notes. He carried this reserve at Clarice’s insistence. She liked to know that in the event of a stolen wallet or lost bag, Edwin would have enough money for decent lodgings and a meal. This small kindness had made him ache at the thought of leaving her. He always hated going, but this time seemed worse. Their farewell had been chilly, Clarice barely able to look at him. If only she hadn’t asked the impossible. Edwin had never refused her anything before, but her request, even now, made him lightheaded with shame.

  He took a room in a hotel overlooking the junction of two wide dusty streets. He paid several day’s board in advance, although he suspected his undertaking would be over before then. The old boarding house in Victoria Street, back in Melbourne, had closed years before, the building now condemned, but a chance meeting on the footpath outside with the former proprietor had inspired Edwin to continue searching. The man remembered the big boastful Scotsman, and suggested he try the goldfields of Ballarat. There’s been no mining and no gold for many years now, he’d told Edwin, but I’ve heard of a camp out near Black Hill where the desperates still congregate.

  Edwin went up to his hotel lodgings, changed out of his dusty travel clothes, and then, after a hearty meal in the dining room downstairs, he ventured into the public bar. Two elderly gents were sitting at a table near the window, smoking and looking into their beer glasses. Otherwise, the bar was empty. Edwin approached the counter and ordered a neat brandy, which he drank in a single swallow. He struck up a conversation with the barmaid, a stout woman by the name of Mrs Mallard. She peered at him through well-polished spectacles, rambling for a while about the heat and the dust, about the slowness o
f business since the economy’s downturn.

  When she paused to repolish the counter, Edwin took his chance.

  ‘I’ve heard there’s a camp of drifters out at Black Hill.’

  ‘Then you’ve heard right,’ Mrs Mallard agreed.

  ‘See many of them in here, do you?’

  She screwed up her doughy face. ‘Those fellas don’t have two pennies to rub together. If they want grog, they brew it themselves, or flog it. Poor blighters. You’d feel sorry for them, except the whole country is in a bad way. Out of work, travelling to earth’s end in search of employment. Begging for food, stealing when they can.’

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ Edwin said at last. ‘A Scotsman by the name of Hanley Dane. He immigrated here in 1923, lived for a time in Melbourne. The boarding house proprietor there told me he caught the gold fever and came to Ballarat.’

  Mrs Mallard shook her head. ‘The gold’s gone. They closed up the mines years ago. Of course, the fields are still full of fossickers and hopefuls, trying their luck in the creeks or sifting through the dross left by the miners. Occasionally someone gets lucky. Just the other day a man came in with a nugget the size of a knucklebone. But mostly they’re on the drift, and a more broken bunch of men you’ve never seen.’

  Edwin wet his lips. ‘I wouldn’t mind taking a drive out to Black Hill.’

  Mrs Mallard studied him. ‘What’s he done to you, this Hanley Dane? You seem ever so keen to find him.’

  Edwin cleared his throat, glanced towards the doorway. ‘It’s a personal matter,’ he said quietly. Sliding out his wallet, he paid for the drink, and turned away from the bar.

  Mrs Mallard called him back. ‘You know,’ she said, her eyes sharp behind the gleam of her spectacles, ‘a while back, some of the fellas out there hitched a lift in a truck to Wonthaggi, down on the south coast. They were hiring at the coalmine.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A couple of months ago.’

  Edwin pictured another long car trip ahead of him, and sighed. ‘Wonthaggi, did you say?’

  Mrs Mallard leaned on the counter, and shook her head. ‘You won’t find him there.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘A dreadful place, the Wonthaggi mine. Living conditions are bad, but the mine is worse. The ground is unstable, cave-ins happen all the time. Lives lost, but the men are too desperate to care. Eleven drifters climbed onto that truck. Now, I’m not saying your Scotsman was among them. But do you know how many returned?’

  Edwin stared at her, frozen in place. He could barely hear her words, so loudly did his pulse thunder in his ears. It was hope, he realised. Wild, overwhelming hope.

  Mrs Mallard took off her glasses, polished them on her apron. Slid them back on and narrowed her gaze at Edwin. ‘None of them,’ she said with grim satisfaction. ‘All lost beneath the coal and rubble. Buried alive.’

  Bitterwood, 1930

  Monday was normally the quietest day of the week, but today was an exception. Orah was up at dawn, raiding the garden with Nala for tonight’s feast. There would be baked potatoes, fresh peas, huge springy Yorkshire puddings and pork gravy to smother them with. Warra chopped wood and stoked the range, then caught one of the fattened ducks. They scrubbed floors and polished windows, spread the beds with fresh linen, and placed huge jars of wildflowers throughout the house.

  Orah worked quickly, trying to lose herself in the day’s chores, but her mind wanted to stray. Edwin had not telephoned with news of Pa, but she couldn’t stop the butterflies in her belly, couldn’t help the anxious excitement from bubbling through her. Soon, whispered a small hopeful voice in her head, soon I’ll be seeing Pa, and we’ll be a family again.

  When the sound of the Ford utility finally rumbled along the road at six o’clock that evening, they ran out to greet it.

  Edwin alighted the truck. As he approached the verandah, he paused and looked up, surveying his surrounds, shaking his head as though in wonderment. As though, rather than spending a mere fortnight away, he had been absent for years.

  ‘Bitterwood,’ Orah heard him murmur as he gazed along the shadowy rooftop. ‘Dear old Bitterwood, how I’ve missed it.’

  Orah tried to catch his eye, but he only smiled vaguely and headed inside.

  After a wash and quick change of clothes, he took his position at the head of the table. Clarice sat at the opposite end, gesturing for Warra and Nala to seat themselves across from Orah. Edwin bowed his head, thanked the Lord for the beautiful spread of food, and recited the blessing.

  Orah watched him through her lashes.

  He looked different. There was a dark flush to his normally pale complexion. He had lost weight; he had been thin before, but now his flesh looked stringy, his skin stretched too tightly over his bones.

  Orah barely touched her food. While the others ate hungrily, she chased a slice of duck breast around her plate with her fork. She longed to leap up from the table and drag Edwin to a quiet corner, demand that he tell her what he’d learned about her father. Had he found him? Was he well? Would Orah see him soon? Edwin seemed reluctant to speak of his journey.

  ‘What did you think of Geelong?’ Clarice wanted to know. ‘Were the roads clogged with automobiles? What were the women wearing? Did you meet anyone of interest?’

  Edwin deflected her enquiries, and instead kept steering the conversation back to the guesthouse. Had Warra remembered to mend the garage roof? Were the chickens laying well? Was Nala looking forward to seeing her mother and aunts at the end of the month? How was Orah settling into life at Bitterwood?

  After their meal, Warra excused himself to set a possum trap in the orchard. Nala collected the plates, and when Orah rose from the table to help her, Edwin motioned for her to remain seated. Tiny beads of sweat had collected on his temple. The flush in his cheeks had drained away, leaving his skin ashen. He ran a hand through his hair, and as he lowered his arm, his elbow struck the table edge. Teacups clattered and a rose in the centrepiece vase shed its petals.

  Clarice slumped back in her chair with a sigh. ‘Edwin, please. Orah is sick with waiting.’

  Collecting one of the rose petals between thumb and forefinger, Edwin rubbed the velvet cup until it bruised to mush. Finally, he looked at Orah.

  ‘I found the boarding house in Victoria Street. According to the proprietor, your father hadn’t lived there for years.’ He lowered his gaze back to the fallen flower petals, edging them into a pile with his fingertip. All the while his mouth moved, as if chewing over words he could not bring himself to say.

  ‘Pa must have moved on,’ Orah prompted, ignoring the hollow feeling that was opening in her chest. ‘Did you—’ She gulped a breath, unable to continue.

  Edwin nodded. ‘Your father did move on, to the goldfields of Ballarat. I went in search of him there, but—’ The dark flush had returned, and moisture glistened on his temple. Finally, he looked at Orah. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. Your father’s gone.’

  Orah went rigid. ‘Gone?’

  Edwin’s nostrils flared as he inhaled. ‘A few months ago, he travelled to a town called Wonthaggi, and found employment in the coalmine. There was a terrible accident. Part of the mine collapsed. Some of the miners were killed. I’m so sorry, my dear, but I’m afraid your father was among them.’

  Clarice went to Orah, crouching by the chair and opening her arms, trying to gather Orah into them.

  Orah flinched away. She continued to sit rigidly, staring at Edwin’s face. Finally, she dropped her gaze, taking sudden interest in the way the skin on her knuckles wrinkled when she pressed her hands flat against the table. She sucked in tiny sips of air, unable to expand her lungs fully enough to breathe deeply. She kept very still, knowing that if she moved too suddenly, breathed too deeply, allowed herself to think beyond the moment, she would fall apart.

  I’m alone, she thought. Alone in a land where I don’t belong. A frightening thought, but she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t anything. She felt no fear or sorrow, just an
empty sort of numbness. Perhaps she had turned to stone. The air around her grew cold. For what seemed an eternity, the breath caught in her lungs, congealing into an unbreathable solid. The room vanished, along with its fine furnishings and rich hardwood floor. Orah floated in a grey mist, where the only sound was the harried ratta-tat-tat of her heart.

  As if from a great distance, she heard Clarice sigh.

  ‘Edwin, ring for Nala. We’ll have tea and biscuits. And some warm milk with brandy for Orah.’

  ‘Wait.’ Orah finally looked up. Her voice was a mouse-like whisper. ‘What will happen to me now?’

  Edwin glanced at Clarice, and a stillness fell upon the table.

  ‘Clarice and I considered this possibility before my departure. We spoke at length about what would happen if my quest to find your father failed. If we delivered you to the authorities, they would find you placement in an orphanage. But if you would rather . . . I mean to say, if you decided . . .’

  The mist folded back around Orah, closing her off to Edwin’s words. The hollowness in her chest grew colder and darker. She did not breathe. Her heart refused to beat. Orphanage? Until now, she had never considered such a devastating possibility. Even in her darker moments, she had managed to turn her thoughts around. To imagine Pa striding out of the gloom, his laugh booming as she rushed into his arms, and him lifting her in a bear hug, swinging her around, rubbing his beard against her cheek and mumbling in his gravelly way, Orah, my Orah . . . My little girl, where have you been?