Lenore had lavished punishment rather than praise on them both, always telling Ava she had to grow a thick skin. It was the only way to get through life. This life, she would say, as though there was another or their family’s existence was different from everyone else’s. And it was, only it took Ava a decade to figure that out, a decade to toughen up. The sad thing was, by the time she’d grown old enough and big enough to stand up for herself her father had grown frail. He was no longer the breadwinner, so Lenore’s abuse switched between her husband and her daughter. To feed her mother’s constant clamour for money, which she promptly lost on the club’s poker machines, a fifteen-year-old Ava had been pulled from high school, forced to say goodbye to friends and her beloved cooking class with Mrs Ramsey, and put to work in the public service. As a filing clerk at the transport office, she did menial tasks for other miserable public servants, whose goals were usually based around not working much at all. Between the blank faces and beige folders that had become her nine-to-five, and the two-hour commute by bus and train, Ava itched to create. A clerical job was not what she wanted and she was going to tell her mother.
First she had to tell her father.
‘Ava, Ava, be a good girl,’ Marco Marchette had said. ‘A few years and you’ll have gained skills and be in a position to—’
‘Skills? Papa, if I stay working there the only skill I’ll have is how to fudge my timesheet. I’ve run out of creative ways to tie that stupid pink ribbon around files.’
‘A bit longer and I’ll be well again. The treatment seems to be working. I look stronger, yes? See what love can do, my Ava?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ she lied. ‘Yes, you do look strong.’ She sat gingerly on his lap and wrapped both arms around his neck. ‘I’ll stay, Papa, and I’ll save up. When you’re better I’ll take you to Italy.’
Her father’s eyes had lit up. ‘To the Amalfi coast?’
‘Why not? Isn’t going back to Positano what you want to do?’
‘That will take a lot of money and your mother—’
‘Mum doesn’t know I keep some of my wage each fortnight.’ Access to the stationery cupboard at work meant she could rewrite the wages information on a new pay envelope before she handed it to Lenore. ‘I’ve saved a heap already. I want to go to Paris. Have you heard of Le Cordon Bleu? It’s a cooking school.’
‘Positano? Paris? Oh, Ava.’ His hug and happy laugh warmed her heart, but soon her mother would come home from the bowling club, having gambled a good portion of Ava’s last pay packet, and the laughter would end. Ava and Marco would fall silent and the house would be still, but only until after dinner when booze and her mother’s misery monologue and drunken demands livened the joint up again. ‘Such dreams, my little dragonfly, such big dreams.’
‘Not dreams. Dreaming is what my girlfriends do, waiting for a Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet.’
‘My Ava does not want a Prince Charming to rescue her?’
‘Persone forti si salvano, Papa. The strong save themselves. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me? Besides, there’s only one prince for me, ever.’ She kissed her father’s cheek. ‘My dream is Paris so I can learn about pastries, but then I thought…’ She shrugged. ‘In Positano I can learn about pasta and sweet pastries, and we can hunt down the perfect panna cotta together. You love your panna cotta, Papa.’
The front door slamming against the hallway wall forced Ava to her feet. Marco grabbed her hand, and she was certain he could feel the mad beating of her heart had reached her fingers because he squeezed them tight. ‘Listen to me, my tiny dragonfly,’ he whispered. ‘I won’t let you waste your money. You need it to take yourself away from here as soon as you can.’
‘But—’
‘Ssh! Your mother and I will be fine.’
‘No, Papa.’
‘I promise you and I will be together again one day, Ava, but for now you need to do this for me. Dream big, travel far, find your place, love deeply and be loved in return. You deserve all this and it is what I ask of you.’
‘Where is everyone? Ava?’ Her mother’s voice reverberated along the high ceilings of the semi-detached cottage that had been Ava’s grandparents’ home. Lenore had never lived anywhere else, tied to the place with a child she had never wanted. Maybe that accounted for her misery and the sense of ownership in the house, as though Ava and her papa were unwelcome squatters. ‘There you are.’ She stared at her daughter, sparks of anger in the sharp movements as her hand came within inches of Ava’s face. ‘Do you want to explain this?’
Lenore held out the small yellow envelope. One of the fortnightly pay packets she’d brought home.
‘Don’t look at me with that innocent face. Bruce Halverson,’ her mother spat the name, ‘the man who got you that job, says this is not an official wages envelope and the information is wrong.’
‘I, um…’
‘Well, do you want to explain?’
‘The money’s mine,’ Ava blurted. She looked at her father in his wheelchair and drew strength. ‘I earned it.’
‘How dare you?’
Whack. Ava’s cheek burned.
‘You sneaky little cow. Where are you hiding the rest? Where?’
Before Ava could answer, her mother had grabbed the hair that hung loose, dragging her along the narrow hallway to the bedroom. Lenore thrust open the door so hard it knocked down the lamp with the red scarf and tassels Ava draped over the shade to dim the light. One by one Lenore ripped open the dresser drawers. ‘Where is it all? Tell me before I find it, because I will find it, Ava.’
‘No!’ Ava tugged at her mother’s arm. ‘Stop.’
‘Get out of my way.’ The shove knocked Ava off her feet, her teeth cutting into her lip. With the metallic taste of blood in her mouth, Ava tried to stand, only to see more blood on her hands. She’d landed on top of the broken light bulb, sending glass splinters deep into her flesh.
Ava was afraid of yet another blow, but even more terrified that her mother would discover her savings and, like a police dog, Lenore Marchette was on the scent.
‘Lenore, stop! Stop immediately.’ Marco Marchette had positioned himself in the doorway looking bigger and tougher than he had in a long time.
‘Go away! This is between me and my daughter.’
‘She’s my daughter too, Lenore.’
‘Oh, really?’ her mother spat back. ‘Let me think about that. There’s you and there’s Donald McNally, a real ranga – a redhead all the way, if you know what I mean. Our Ava’s always had such a strong auburn streak in her hair.’ Her mother reached down and yanked Ava closer to her father. Her scalp hurt and Ava squealed. ‘You got any redheads in your family, Marco? No, I didn’t think so.’
Without warning he propelled his chair into Lenore’s legs, knocking her off her feet.
‘How dare you? You bastard!’ Back on her feet, Lenore scattered the contents of Ava’s dressing-table, latching onto the silver vanity mirror. ‘That’s the last time you’ll ever—’ Whack. She hadn’t even finished the sentence when her hand lashed out, the mirror flying from her grasp to carve a slice through the skin on Ava’s forehead, just above her left eyebrow.
Two nights later, with Lenore passed out on the bed, Marco had whispered his plan to his daughter.
*
At the beep-beep of a horn, Ava scrambled to collect her handbag, her sunhat, and the cheque she would have preferred to bank, and joined John in the car, sensing his curious stare.
‘You don’t look very happy,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I told you, John, it’s this ridiculous car business.’ Ava waved the cheque in frustration as they rattled over the cattle grid at the boundary gate to Ivy-May.
‘What’s so ridiculous?’
‘Buying a damn car! You do understand I won’t be cooking at Ivy-May for ever, right?’
‘Absolutely correct!’ he replied. ‘I will be. As soon as Mum and Dad agree I can handle the place I’ll be in charge of t
he kitchen and you’ll be in charge of our kids. Maybe we’ll try for a baker’s dozen.’
‘John, please, we—’
He poked the music cassette into the slot on the dashboard and raised the volume. ‘Come on, stop being so serious and sing with me.’
He began without her, forcing Ava to yell over the raucous rendition, ‘You sound like a strangled cat.’
John loved his jokes, and his teasing was the only thing about him that reminded Ava he was younger. But John was far from silly. A part of her knew the music was his way of avoiding the truth, while the rest of her mind was preoccupied with the notion that while she’d managed to run away from one intimidating mother she’d slammed into another in Marjorie Tate. The only difference between the two was that Lenore had slowly worn her family down, while Marjorie masked her manipulative ways behind motherly love.
As the car whizzed along the road, passing the most impressive of all twelve trachyte formations towering over the region, Ava tried to imagine how enormous the volcano must have been before; over millions of years, its shell was slowly stripped away by the weather until all that remained was its resilient heart of hardened lava. People had tried to wear Ava down over the years, too, but she’d protected her heart, built a wall, made it strong and kept it safe. Until John. Leaving him might break it.
The first sign of danger should have been that night when he had lain on the bed with her and whispered his ancient tale about monster volcanoes. She’d told him she thought the strange hemispherical mounds that littered the landscape around Ivy-May looked like giant truffles sticking out of the ground, but John had explained that a long time ago the earth’s core had seethed and writhed in anger, roaring to life and spewing molten rock. When she’d asked what had angered it he’d told her two star-crossed lovers had been running away together, but the monsters rising from the earth had frightened them back home to their families and kept them apart for ever.
As the car drove past another rock mass rising directly out of the plain, Ava thought of how her presence was unsettling the Tates. How long before another volcano, seething somewhere deep below the earth’s crust, rose up to frighten her and John apart? Ava Marchette might be just the irritant the monster needed. If Mount Marjorie was going to erupt at least Ava would have a getaway car to make good her escape.
She laughed, finally joining in with John, who was bawling John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’.
Chapter 11
Surprises
‘Someone’s been working hard,’ Katie called to John, who was striding along the path that wound from the creek, up the hill past the cook’s cottage and on to the herb garden at the back of Ivy-May homestead. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you to say happy birthday and deliver this.’
John didn’t stop but Katie fell into step anyway.
‘Deliver what?’
She lunged at John, wrapping one arm around his neck, almost knocking him off his feet. ‘This.’
‘What the… ?’ John’s head jerked, clipping Katie’s chin so that her teeth knocked together.
‘Ow! Jeez, John, it’s a birthday kiss. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nothing? Nowhere? Are you serious?’ Katie raced ahead to stop in front of him. She planted both hands on her waist, a human roadblock. ‘I know – you were hiding my present. You’re not going to make me follow clues all over the place again, I hope. Reckon we’ve outgrown those games, John.’
‘No, Katie,’ he said, sidestepping the obstruction. ‘I wasn’t.’
They were on the move again, John setting a fast pace.
‘Then what have you really been doing?’
‘One of the windmills needed work.’
Katie looked at the hands swinging by his side, his best jeans, his shirt still with its ironing creases. He’d even smelt clean, her brief kiss on his cheek leaving the faintest scent of something spicy and sweet on her lips. ‘Where are your tools?’
‘Er, they’re still in the ute. Thanks for reminding me. I’d better get them while I think of it.’
John turned towards the shed, leaving Katie to wonder. It looked to her as if he’d been dressed for a special trip into town. But why? Was he planning something? A birthday surprise? Maybe one of his gifts was perfume and he’d tested a few. Yeah! That was it. A thrill trickled through Katie. The Tates and the O’Briens normally shared a combined family-only birthday barbecue each May. John would cook up a feast using his own sausages, fresh damper, and a generous spoonful of homemade tomato chutney. But with this year being Katie’s eighteenth and John’s twenty-first the decision had been taken to hold a big bash on the first of the month with invitations and speeches.
‘And champagne,’ Marjorie had insisted. ‘We’ll need lots and lots of champagne, won’t we, Katie dear?’
Katie could hardly wait until tomorrow night when she planned on sneaking John away from the party to somewhere quiet, somewhere dark, somewhere she might finally prove that she was eighteen and all woman.
Her fingers connected with the note in her pocket. Drat! She’d been excited to show John the reply to a letter she’d written to the local member of council – her third attempt. This time she’d received a response including, of all things, an apology for leaving Candlebark Creek off a highway road sign. The thing about letters, she’d discovered, was no one knew Katie O’Brien was a teenager from country Queensland. Suddenly she had a voice and she could make a difference. She’d proven as much by writing to the state tourism people to find out how to get the Ivy-May B-and-B listed in brochures as a charming country property with comfortable rooms, breakfast baskets and evening meals (optional). The marketing woman in charge of designing brochures had telephoned to say she’d already heard about Ivy-May and the female cook who was showcasing local, seasonal produce. Katie hadn’t shared that information with anyone, especially John who, against his mother’s wishes, was involving himself in meal planning and spending way too much time in the kitchen.
When he wasn’t mowing, spraying or tending the cattle and horses, he was trying to source the cook’s requested ingredients, either from the wholesalers in Lourdesford or, whenever he could, bartering with neighbouring properties.
‘He’s becoming that cook’s beck-and-call boy,’ Katie heard Marjorie tell her husband one day. ‘You’d be wise to keep him otherwise occupied and away from Ivy-May’s kitchen.’
Chapter 12
Succession Planning
‘Happy birthday, son.’ John’s father raised the glass with such vigour that orange juice drenched Ava’s perfectly poached eggs. ‘Your mother and I wanted you to have this before the party, but before you open the card I want to say—’
‘Save the speech for tonight, Colin,’ Marjorie interjected. ‘Let him open it and be surprised.’
His father thrust an envelope at John. ‘Here you go, son.’
‘Ooh, wait, wait!’ All eyes were on Marjorie and her awkward grab at the camera on the kitchen counter. ‘Move, Colin, out of the way quickly. I want to capture John’s expression.’
Marjorie squinted into the viewfinder as John looked, bemused, from the envelope to his father, who had obediently retreated into the background.
‘Open it!’ Impatience crept into Marjorie’s tone as John slowly withdrew the birthday card. Inside he found a cheque made out to him, and his mother’s neat handwriting filled the entire left-hand side. ‘Give it to me, I’ll read it for you, darling.
‘To our wonderful son, on your twenty-first birthday.
Your father and I could not be more proud of all you’ve achieved and all you will achieve. We wanted to let you know we feel you’re ready to take on a more direct role and we want to get you started. We know this year will be the beginning of something very special. Happy birthday, son. We wish you and Katie a wonderful night and, as always, our love and best wishes for your future.
/>
Mum and Dad.’
‘Are… are you kidding me?’ John could barely get the words out.
‘The money is to be banked and used wisely,’ Colin said. ‘It’s to kick-start your future. Your mother and I, in consultation with the O’Briens, agree the timing is right. You know they’re older than we are, and with Pat’s health not the best, they’re keen to retire in town sooner rather than later. Katie is very capable, and after much discussion and reassurance from your mother and me, they’ve decided to arrange for her to have a living inheritance. But the girl will need your help and Mum and I thought an early inheritance from us also makes sense. It means you can work together, learn together, and do what you’ve been dying to do. We wanted to start by giving you this.’
‘It’s the deeds to Great-great-grandpa’s land? Holy cow!’
‘You’re keen to plant those trees on the ridgeline. We can see the merit in investing money in the place, son, and agree new guest cabins by the river will get a return on investment.’
‘Your father’s talking to a man he met at the pub a few weeks back who built some sheds on a property out Lourdesford way. The man wants more work and Dad went out to inspect the quality. The bank will lend us the majority of the money we need, based on the value of Ivy-May.’
‘Maybe we can ask the Lourdesford guy about the old homestead site and—’
‘John, John, John.’ Marjorie smiled. ‘One step at a time, darling. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to consider all the Ivy-May plans you and Katie have been rabbiting on about for as long as I can remember.’ His mother looked genuinely pleased. He’d never seen her smile so much. ‘About Katie, John, I want you to think seriously about consolidating your futures sooner rather than later.’
A Place to Remember Page 6