Wildflower Hill

by Kimberley Freeman

  “Ah, the tree,” I said. “Possums, I’m told. I’m not even sure what kind of tree it is.” Why was everyone so hung up on this tree? There were a gazillion trees in the forest.

  “It’s a cabbage gum,” he said. “Don’t be walking under it when it starts dropping branches.”

  “Where’s Monica?”

  “She’s just making me a coffee. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Of course. You’re going to help us take the rubbish away?”

  “Yes, I brought a friend’s pickup truck.” He indicated a ute standing in the driveway. My eyes flicked back to his face, and his gaze darted away.

  “Well, then,” I said. “Time for a coffee.”

  I led him to the kitchen. Monica’s chatter seemed to relax him, and I got to see him smile. Then he didn’t look so serious, and I could see the resemblance between him and his sister. I left them to get on with the trip to the dump and went back to the sitting room, where I was determined to be ruthless with my “might keep” pile. I sat on the piano stool and pulled handfuls of letters into my lap.

  The morning passed in quiet as I reread letters, knowing all the while that three weeks was not going to be enough unless I could be merciless in what I threw out. I tried to tell myself that all this stuff had sat here, not looked at, for years and years, and it had never bothered me. Therefore, it couldn’t bother me if it were all thrown away now, right?

  But it was such a beautiful narrative of Grandma and Granddad’s life together. The letters weren’t in any kind of order, so I dipped in and out of history at random. Granddad had been an MP, always traveling back and forth to Canberra while Grandma stayed in Sydney with the children and her business. It was long before e-mails or even cheap long-distance dialing, so they’d written letters. Good old-fashioned letters, full of detail and affection.

  I heard Monica and Patrick return and looked at my watch. Almost lunchtime. I knew I should offer them lunch, especially Patrick, who was doing this for free, but I’d nearly run out of the groceries Monica had bought earlier in the week. I figured if I just kept my head down in here, they’d go home instead.

  Sure enough, a soft knock at the door a few minutes later. I glanced up. It was Patrick.

  “We’re heading off now.”

  “Thank you so much. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t get up. My knee . . .”

  His eyes were very focused on me. “I need to ask you something, if you don’t mind.”

  I tensed. He was going to ask me out. Unbearable. I tried silence as a ward against it, but he rushed in anyway.

  “I volunteer playing the piano for a little dance troupe of kids. In Hobart. A friend of mine runs it. The kids are really special. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in coming down and offering them a few tips? It would make them so pleased to meet a real ballerina.”

  Relieved and perhaps a little disappointed that he hadn’t asked me out, I couldn’t get my head around his question at first. “Wait, you play piano for them? I thought you were an English teacher.”

  “I am. Well, I have to be. More jobs in English teaching than music teaching, especially as I was fussy about working in this area.” He cleared his throat. “Well? Do you think you’d like to come down to Hobart for an afternoon and meet them?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I knew for certain I didn’t want to teach dancing to kids, so I decided to appeal to his sense of pity. “It’s a long way in the car. My knee is very uncomfortable.”

  “Maybe if it improves, you’ll—”

  “I’m only here for three weeks. Sorry.”

  He nodded, smiled. “I completely understand. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  Then he was gone, and I felt guilty, guilty, guilty. Why couldn’t I go and help kids learn ballet?

  But I reminded myself I wasn’t going to be here long enough to make friends, or help people, or do anything but get this house ready for sale. And it wasn’t right to get people’s hopes up that things could be different.

  SEVENTEEN

  I hadn’t forgotten about the photograph, though I hadn’t looked at it again since the night I found it. In my mind, it had recomposed: the man and Grandma had walked farther apart, Grandma’s grip on the child was more casual, less imbued with maternal love. But when I pulled it out again, I could see that neither of those things was true.

  The man’s arm around Grandma’s waist was possessive. She’s mine. The child’s arms around her neck said the same thing. Anyone could tell, just by glancing at this photograph, that they were a family.

  So I stared at it for a long time, then decided that the woman in the photograph wasn’t Grandma at all. It was a cousin, somebody with a close family resemblance. My brain almost managed to convince me. Almost.

  Except that this was Grandma, and Grandma appeared to have had another family.

  I imagined what my mother would say if she saw the photograph, and I decided not to tell her just yet. I’d take it home with me, show her in person. Perhaps in the meantime, I’d turn up some other photograph, one that made it clear I was overreacting. Or a letter from a male cousin saying, “Oh, remember that time when we were walking down the street in Hobart and you were holding my baby and everybody thought we were a couple?”

  This time I brought it downstairs and propped it up on the table in the long hallway, right next to the phone.

  Monica couldn’t come. She phoned just after eleven to say that she was sick.

  “It’s some stomach bug,” she said in a weak little voice. “I’ve been on the toilet all morning.”

  I thanked her for her frankness and told her to get better soon. I had vowed to start on the little front room today, the one that was piled high with boxes. Starting it without Monica was going to be difficult. In fact, opening the door and peering in filled me with despair.

  Surely, surely, I could just take all these boxes straight to the dump. Their contents had been sealed up for decades; did it matter if they never saw the light of day? But then I remembered the photo, and I wondered what other things might be hidden in the depths.

  The room itself was dark and small, so I pulled the first two cartons out into the hallway and sat with my leg stretched out. Pulled open the lid and started.

  As the hours went past, I often wondered if someday Grandma had intended to come here and sort these things out for herself. There was no apparent system at all: the first box was filled with old vinyl records, cookbooks, and birthday cards. The second box contained half a dozen paperbacks, a bundle of business correspondence from the fifties, and sleeve upon sleeve of photos, the kind of photos that aren’t good enough to make their way into an album. Here was my mum as a blurry teenager; Uncle Mike just out of shot, one skinny arm outstretched for a basketball hoop. The idea of Uncle Mike as a skinny person amazed me, and I looked at it for a long time. And the others: my mum and my uncle in their teens. The passage of time. I remembered myself as a teenager, and it seemed recent. The time from the start of my career at seventeen to the end of it at thirty-two had gone in a blink.

  And now what, Emma, now what?

  Damn Monica. Why did she have to get sick? I wasn’t good on my own. My thoughts turned in on themselves. I wished I had a radio. I wished I’d brought my iPod. Something to distract me. But I’d resolutely left everything behind. Three weeks. I was here only three weeks.

  I cast a glance at the roomful of boxes behind me. Even if I were here only a short period of time, I could still make myself comfortable. Buy a radio, a portable phone, a proper vacuum cleaner rather than that primitive push-along carpet sweeper Monica so bravely used.

  But wasn’t that settling in? The thought made me feel trapped. This wasn’t London. This wasn’t my life.

  As I wiped away tears, I realized I hadn’t given in to them for a while. Was I growing accepting of my situation? I couldn’t bear the thought.

  Still, having a few comforts would be practical. I dragged myself to my feet and decided I’d w
alk into town, buy those things I needed. The exercise would be good for me, for my knee.

  The day was sunnier than I’d expected, and I chased the shade all the way down the road. My knee ached, but I kept going, concentrating on the muscles around the joint.

  The driver who’d brought me to Wildflower Hill from the airport had driven me right through Lewinford, but I hadn’t yet been in the town. The main street was lined with archaic shopfronts of stone. But off and around the corner was a large grocery store with its own carpark, and a complex of shops. Some were empty, one was for the local member; then there were a craft shop, a flower shop, an electronics store, a vet, a café, a newsagent, and a chemist.

  I bought a tiny vacuum cleaner, a CD player, and a portable phone—the only one in stock, and its box was covered in dust—at the electronics store, then signed for them to be delivered and went next door to the florist. I’d always loved fresh flowers, and the ones Monica had brought were already wilting.

  The florist herself was an ancient woman with knotted hands. I ordered two bouquets: one of white lilies because I loved the smell, and one of mixed colors for the kitchen. I tried to take pleasure in the feeling of nesting, even if it was only on a small scale.

  “Anything else, dear?” the ancient florist asked me.

  I shook my head, and offered my credit card, and watched her as she made the transaction. Then I started to think that perhaps she had lived in this town her whole life; perhaps she’d known Grandma. And perhaps she could tell me about the photograph.

  “Actually,” I said, “there is one other thing. My grandmother used to live up at Wildflower Hill in the thirties. I don’t suppose you knew her?”

  “Beattie Blaxland? You’re her granddaughter?” She glanced at my name on my credit card to double-check, then smiled widely. “I’m so pleased to meet you. You’re the ballerina?”

  “I am. I was.” A pang in my chest. “I injured myself. I can’t dance anymore.”

  She clicked her tongue. “That’s a shame. Lewinford is proud of you, and we were proud of your gran, too. Nobody ever saw her, though. I think she came down only once or twice in the last sixty years.”

  “So you didn’t know her?”

  “No, love. I grew up a long way north of here. Only moved here when I married.”

  “Your husband? Did he know Beattie?”

  She shook her head sadly. “He died a long time ago. Before I had a mind to ask.”

  “Is there anyone around who might have known her when she lived here?”

  “I dare say there are one or two. You should be asking Penelope Sykes. She runs the local historical society. She’s recorded a lot of old stories on tapes and is busy transcribing them one by one. Here, I’ll give you her number.”

  Clutching Penelope Sykes’s number in one hand and with two bunches of flowers under my arm, I paused outside the café. The coffee smelled good, but even bad coffee smells good. I was spoiled forever by the cafés in London and in Sydney.

  As I was deciding. I heard my name. I glanced around to see Patrick approaching from the car park.

  “Oh, hello,” I said, smiling.

  “How did you get to town?” he asked. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. I surmised from the time that he had just finished work. I couldn’t remember any teacher I’d ever had in high school dressed so casually, but then my mother did insist on my going to expensive private schools.

  “I walked. I had to buy a few things.”

  He indicated the open door of the coffee shop. “Are you having a coffee?”

  “I . . . can’t decide.” I smiled weakly. “I’m a little fussy.”

  “They make great coffee. I stop here every afternoon.”

  I didn’t know whether to trust him, and he could tell. But he didn’t seem to take offense.

  “Come on, I’ll buy you one,” he said. “Then I can run you home, if you like.”

  “Really? That would be nice. The lift home, I mean. And the coffee. They would both be nice.” I realized I was rambling, stopped myself. Followed him into the café.

  He bought two takeaway lattes, and damn him, he was right. The coffee was superb. Then he opened up his little Mazda for me and told me to wait in comfort while he went to fetch my electrical goods and canceled my delivery.

  I sat gratefully in the car, my leg stretched out the open door while I waited. On the floor of the car, I saw a bunch of black-and-white leaflets held together by a rubber band. The word “dance” caught my eye, so I picked up the bundle and slid one out.

  I realized straightaway that this was the dance troupe Patrick played piano for, the Hollyhocks. One glance at the picture alerted me to the fact that he hadn’t told me everything about the “really special” kids: most of them had Down’s syndrome. I felt so small. Such enormous, embarrassing guilt. And I grew angry at him for putting me in that position.

  Patrick was back, loading my things into the trunk of his car. I pulled my leg in, took a moment to get comfortable. Then he was behind the wheel, pulling out of the car park.

  “Was I right about the coffee?” he said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the dancing kids were disabled?”

  He glanced at me, then back at the road. “You’re angry.”

  “I feel like you made a fool out of me.”

  “Look, Emma. I know you’re injured. I didn’t want to cause you any pain. I thought if I told you everything about the Hollyhocks, then you might feel pressured to come and see them. It’s a long drive to Hobart, especially for somebody with a sore knee who isn’t used to the distances.” He offered me a smile. “Don’t feel bad that you said no.”

  But I did feel bad. I felt like the worst kind of selfish diva. It would cost me only a mildly aching knee to go to Hobart, to meet these kids and talk to them about dancing. “I’ll come,” I said.

  He was shaking his head already. “No, absolutely not. You said you couldn’t travel.”

  “I’ll be fine if I can take a few rest stops on the way.”

  “I won’t hear of it, Emma. I’d feel like I imposed too much on you. You’re here only a short time, and Monica’s off sick for a few days. You have so much to do.”

  “Really, I’ll come. When do they rehearse again?”

  He fought with himself silently, then said, “Every Saturday morning from ten until twelve. That’s a flyer for their concert coming up in a couple of months.”

  “What time will you pick me up?”

  He was reluctant, I could tell, but he also dearly wanted me to come. “If you insist . . .”

  “I do insist.”

  “Around eight, then. That’ll give us plenty of time for a short rest along the way and to get a coffee when we get to Hobart.”

  “Great. Fine.”

  He waited a few moments. Then said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said quickly, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. “I’m sure.”

  I had no CDs to play, so I relied on the radio. I found a classical music station that played jazz in the evenings, poured myself a glass of wine, and sat down with a box to be sorted. This one was old, the cardboard falling apart ungracefully. Inside were old—very old—ledgers of the business here at Wildflower Hill. Thin exercise books with yellowed pages all covered in neat ink. I carefully tried to follow the transactions but wasn’t at all sure what they meant. I recognized Beattie’s handwriting in the columns, but there was also other handwriting. Not as measured as Beattie’s. A man’s handwriting, I imagined. But what man?

  I shook myself. Imagination getting away with me again. Beattie hadn’t run the whole farm alone; she would have had employees.

  I pulled book after book out of the cupboard, thinking about the woman from the historical society. Would she want all these? Perhaps she could make sense of them. It seemed a shame to throw them away. But I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to involve myself with a community organization. I didn’t want visitors.

  Then I found a folder hel
d together with red ribbon. In it were dozens of contracts for the buying and selling of items. Furniture. Sheep. Even a contract for a piece of land that Beattie had sold off in 1934. And at the bottom of the pile was the contract for Wildflower Hill itself.

  November 1934; the sale to Beatrice Alison Blaxland from Raphael William James Blanchard. For the sum of zero pounds.

  I looked at this figure for a long time. Somebody named Raphael William James Blanchard had given Grandma Wildflower Hill. Only that couldn’t be right, because Mum had told me differently. Wildflower Hill was a run-down business, losing money badly during the Depression. Beattie had inherited a small sum from an old uncle. The rest of the money she’d borrowed from the bank and had to struggle terribly to pay it off in those first years.

  I itched to call Mum. Ask her if she knew who Raphael Blanchard was. But I thought about the photograph and knew I had to be careful. Mum was drawn to drama like ants are drawn to honey. Besides, there were other ways of finding out who he was.

  By the time I’d waited for it to be breakfast time in London and a decent hour to call, I’d convinced myself that the man with my grandmother in the photograph was this Raphael Blanchard, that they had a secret love child, that he’d given Beattie the property to keep her quiet . . . Of course, none of this fit with what I knew about Grandma, but the more wine I drank, the more plausible it became.

  I phoned Adelaide. “Did I wake you?” I said.

  “No.” She yawned. “Um . . . yes. I don’t have to lie to you anymore if you’re annoying, given that you’re not my boss, right?”

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I need help. I’m looking for information about somebody named Raphael Blanchard. I have no Internet connection here. Could you Google him for me?”

  “Is he a dancer?” She yawned again.

  “No. Why are you so tired?”

  “The Flying Fascist had a party last night.”