Wildflower Hill

by Kimberley Freeman

  “So how did it go with Mina?” he asked after his first sip of coffee.

  “She did great. So focused. I didn’t realize she could be capable of that.”

  “All of the kids are different. They have a varied range of abilities,” he said. “Nothing surprises me about them anymore.” He smiled. “So she likes her dance?”

  I nodded. “Real ballet,” I said.

  “It looked great, what you showed me.”

  I squirmed a little. “Very simplified. Dew Drop was my first role. It’s quite demanding, in reality.” I realized I was bragging, but couldn’t stop myself. I wanted him to know what a big deal I had been when I could dance. But my desperation to impress made me sad, and I fell silent.

  He let me sit there quietly for a few moments, then he said, “Emma, I’ve seen you dance.”

  I lifted my head to meet his eyes. “You have?”

  “Monica has a DVD. You were a hero of hers when she was a teenager. Everyone knew about you because of the connection your grandmother had to town, and the newsagent stocked a couple of DVDs with you in them. I must have seen you dancing Giselle about a hundred times.”

  I glowed with pride. “I had no idea Monica was a fan.”

  “She made me swear not to tell you, in case you thought she was a dork.”

  I laughed at this. “She wanted to dance?”

  “She tried it for a while when she was small, but she never really got the hang of it. Tall and gangly, like me.” He made a fuss of stirring his coffee, not looking directly at me. “You dance beautifully.”

  “Danced,” I said. “Past tense.” I thought about my changing body. Already the edges of my muscles were softening, and a comfortable layer of fat was creeping over everything.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to make you feel sad.”

  Then our lunch came and we got off the topic of me, which was both a blessing and a disappointment. I did want to hear more about how beautifully I’d danced, especially from him. But the thought aroused in me such a keen sadness, of things lost that couldn’t be found again.

  Patrick dropped me home around 3:30, and I found myself alone and disconsolate, with a wishing feeling in my chest. Trouble was, I wasn’t at all sure what to wish for anymore.

  My grandmother had kept every sketch and every pattern of every item of clothing she had ever made, and they were all filed at Blaxland Wool’s head office in North Sydney. Usually, there was a display in the foyer of the building, behind glass and under white downlighting. So the last thing I expected to find in the boxes was a tracing-paper pattern.

  I nearly tore it, vigorously emptying a box I thought contained only cockroach-stained Georgette Heyer novels. It was Sunday, very early. I’d been awake at the first caw of the crow. A dream had woken me. My mother was in it, but she wasn’t really my mother; a big tidal wave was coming, and I had to find a photograph in a box to prove who she was before the wave hit. I’d woken up just as the sky had grown dark with the coming wall of water.

  It unsettled me.

  So here I was, pulling out a folded pattern, thinking about how it would go in the collection back in Sydney. Then I unfolded it to look at it, and it was clearly for a child. A little girl. It was a small dress.

  Curious, I kept digging. In the bottom of the box, I found eleven similar tracing-paper patterns. All for a child. Little tops and skirts and pinafores.

  My grandmother had never designed children’s wear. She was known as an icon of women’s work wear. I laid them all out and looked at them for a long time. Yes, she could have made these things for a neighbor or a friend or . . . But I kept thinking of the little girl in the photograph. Were these for her? Who was she?

  And why wasn’t I just calling my mother to ask? She might be able to clear it up in seconds.

  Or not. If Grandma had a secret first family, Mum would be upset if she found out. And then she’d want to come here.

  Carefully, I refolded the patterns and put them on top of the piano.

  I admitted that I wasn’t just cleaning out boxes to find Grandma’s story. I was on a hunt for evidence. I slowed down to half speed, scrutinizing every notebook, every letter, every business record. I examined old invoices for sheep bought and wool sold, to see if they yielded any clues. They didn’t, but I kept looking.

  * * *

  With her usual almost supernatural prescience, my mother called that evening to see how I was doing.

  “Oh, fine,” I said vaguely, sitting on the bottom stair and stretching my knee out. “There’s still a lot more to do.”

  “I expected you home today.”

  “Ah. You didn’t go to the airport, did you?”

  “No. But I changed the sheets on your bed.”

  I felt guilty, but it wasn’t new for me to feel guilty where Louise Blaxland-Hunter was concerned. “I’ll be a few more weeks. Maybe six.”

  She sounded horrified. “How much is there to do?”

  “I’m going slower than I thought, and I really quite like it here. I’ve even made friends. Don’t be shocked.”

  Mum laughed.

  “I’ll definitely be home for Christmas, though,” I said.

  “That will be lovely. Our first Christmas with you in a long time.”

  “Hey, Mum, could you send down my stuff, please? The things I brought with me from London?” I could use my laptop, perhaps even my mobile phone. And I did have other clothes apart from jeans and T-shirts.

  We chatted for a while, and then—foolishly—I ventured a question. “Mum, how much do you know about what Grandma did when she lived down here?”

  “She ran the sheep farm. She kept the books, but she used to go out mustering, too. I never believed her until I saw her ride a horse one time at a friend’s property. She must have been fifty by then but very comfortable in the saddle.”

  “I can’t imagine it.”

  “She was graceful.” There was a smile in Mum’s voice.

  “Anything else? Did she have any friends? Boyfriends?”

  “I doubt it, love. She wouldn’t have had time. Besides, Granddad was her first love.”

  “Really? She was in her thirties when she met him.”

  That little thinking pause that my mother did. A few moments of silence that weren’t mute so much as calculating. “Why do you ask?” she said smoothly.

  “No reason,” I said, not nearly so smoothly. And she was on to me.

  “Em, if you know something I don’t . . .”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “Why are you asking about Grandma’s past?”

  “Because I’m here in her big old house and thinking about whether she lived here alone. Thinking about if she was lonely.”

  “Are you lonely? Do you need me to come down there?” she said. “Do you need some help sorting things out? Really, you shouldn’t stay too much longer. You belong up here with us in Sydney. I can help you get through it quicker. I can be on a plane tomorrow, bring your things down with me.”

  I was well used to her persuasions; I’d heard them a thousand times in London.

  “No, Mum, I’m fine. Just send my stuff down. I’m enjoying being by myself. I need the time to think. Don’t come.” Please don’t come.

  She smelled a rat, though, and I wished I’d said nothing. At least not to Mum. I wondered whether, if I prodded Uncle Mike the right way, I might get better information.

  It took until Thursday for my things to arrive.

  “What have you got there?” Monica asked curiously as the courier van backed down my driveway.

  “My things. Clothes, bits and pieces I brought from London.” I peeled open the tape and flipped open the first box, kneeling gingerly.

  “You’re settling in, then?”

  “Not really, I . . . well, for a while.” I pulled out the clothes on top and set them aside on the floor of the hallway.

  “Let me turn over the main bedroom for you. Have the nice room.”

&
nbsp; I shook my head. “All the rooms are nice. I’m fine where I am. Look, my laptop.” I pulled out the laptop and rested it on the floor. “I thought maybe I could get connected to the Internet.”

  “I can call the phone company,” she offered. “You’ll need a modem.”

  “That would be great,” I replied. I found my mobile phone. Dead as a doornail. I rummaged farther for the charger but couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even remember bringing it from England. It was probably still plugged into the wall there.

  Monica took the phone from me. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

  I smiled at her, thinking of what Patrick had told me: her teenage case of hero worship. “You are so fabulous, Monica. But I really should learn how to do some of this stuff myself. I always had a PA, so that meant I never had to be organized or figure out how things work. I just danced.”

  “That’s good, though.”

  “In some ways. In others, it meant I was allowed to fall out of the world. That made it much harder to cope when I had my accident.” From the kitchen, I could hear the kettle whistling. Monica had put it on before the courier arrived.

  “I’ll get it,” Monica said. “Tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee,” I replied. “Make it strong.” The front door was still open, and a wide strip of sunlight crept into my lap as I unpacked the box. A flock of cockatoos screeched past, but then there was silence in their wake. I was growing to love the silence, the absence of traffic noise particularly.

  In the box, I found a plastic bag with the Blaxland Wool logo on it. Curious, I opened it up. Inside was my tiara from Swan Lake, the one I’d told Dad to throw away. He never was good at taking instructions, I suppose. Years of being bossed by Mum made him immune. Monica returned, and we sat together on the floor drinking coffee.

  “What does it say about me,” I asked, “that my whole life fits in four boxes, while my grandmother’s takes up a whole house?”

  “It doesn’t say anything,” Monica replied. “You had a different kind of life.”

  In the next box, I found a photo of Josh and me in a cracked frame. I wasn’t prepared for it. I pulled it slowly out into the light.

  “Who’s that?” Monica asked.

  It took a moment for me to speak. “That’s Josh,” I said. “That’s my ex.”

  “Your ex?”

  “Yes, only I didn’t want him to be ex. He left me right before my accident.”

  “You still love him?” There was a frown in her voice, and I glanced up to see that she was scrutinizing me very closely.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “Perhaps. He’s always on my mind.” Though I was beginning to forget. Forget the way his face moved when he smiled, forget the way his skin smelled when he came out of the shower, forget the exact timbre of his laugh . . .

  Monica grew quiet, and I wondered why my talk of Josh upset her so. We drank our coffee in silence as I pulled out some of my dancing awards. Mum hadn’t been selective at all: she had literally sent all of my things.

  “Can you think of a place I can put these?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  “You’re usually so good at that kind of thing.”

  She climbed to her feet. “I’ll go clean up the kitchen,” she said shortly.

  I looked at the photo of Josh on the floor, then back at Monica. She was acting as though she were jealous. Then it all clicked into place. She was jealous: on behalf of Patrick. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I was torn between wanting to reassure her and not wanting to lie. I did still love Josh. At least I thought I did. I couldn’t broach the topic, so I pretended I hadn’t noticed her anger.

  But I did curse myself for going against my instincts and making friends with people down here. People were so complex and unpredictable.

  Myself included.

  I knew if I waited until around eight o’clock on Saturday night, I’d have a good chance of getting Uncle Mike while he was sauced. He loved his beer but was prudent enough to partake only on weekends.

  Uncle Mike lived alone. My auntie Donna had left him when I was still small, and since then he’d had a string of “lady friends” but hadn’t settled down with anyone.

  “Uncle Mike?” I said when he picked up the phone. “It’s Emma.”

  “My favorite niece!” he boomed. “Just having a few beers. Why don’t you pop over?”

  “I’m in Tasmania,” I replied.

  “Still? Louise didn’t tell me that.”

  “There’s a lot more work involved in clearing up this place than I’d thought.”

  “You should pay someone to do it for you, sell the place, and use the money to get yourself a nice little flat in Sydney. I’m seeing a lady who’s in real estate. She can help you find something.”

  I let him talk and offer me advice for a while, warming him up, I suppose. I did love my uncle Mike, but he was a terrible know-it-all. Finally, he drew breath long enough for me to speak again. “Hey, Uncle Mike, what do you know about Grandma’s life down here in Tassie?”

  “Sheep,” he said.

  “Beyond that, I mean. Her personal life. Did she live alone?”

  I heard a faint scratching noise and surmised this was Uncle Mike rubbing his stubbly chin: a good sign. He usually did this right before he revealed something he shouldn’t. “Well,” he said slowly, “I don’t really know. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m finding bits and pieces in the boxes down here that make me wonder if she had a special . . . friend.”

  “Look, I wouldn’t be surprised. Not that I know anything for sure, but when I was about sixteen, I eavesdropped on an argument between your nana and granddad.”

  “And?”

  “I just remember him saying to her, ‘You’re not telling me something, Beattie,’ and she was completely silent. Then he said, ‘If something you’ve done in the past is going to come back and bite us on the bum, I need to know.’ But she said nothing; wouldn’t answer him.”

  My granddad never would have said the word “bum,” so that was an embellishment, but the rest of it pricked my interest. “Really?”

  “Can’t remember the exact words, but it was definitely that she hadn’t told him something about her past, and he was worried. He was tense. That was just before the 1966 election, and his seat was pretty marginal. He only just hung on that year.”

  “So, what did you think he meant?” I asked.

  “Don’t really know, Em. Earlier that year, Mum had gone away for a while. Just off on her own, down to Tassie. Dad didn’t tell us what was going on, but Louise and I kind of understood that it was a trial separation. She came back, and they seemed fine and got on okay. Haven’t really thought of it much since.”

  I turned this over in my head. Granddad accusing Grandma of past secrets. A photo of a child in her arms and a collection of children’s dress patterns. A lover. A farm given to her for free by minor English nobility. For the first time, I realized I wasn’t involved in idle speculation. Grandma really did have a secret past in this house, but I couldn’t pin all the pieces together.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Beautiful weather came. Clear, clear skies, sunshine, warm breezes, and wildflowers everywhere. God’s own weather, if you believed in that kind of thing. All at once it seemed a crime to be inside. Patrick had come by to take more things to the dump and help shift all the remaining unpacked boxes into the front storeroom. He’d been tense, and he said it was because the school where the Hollyhocks practiced had said they couldn’t have the hall for the next two weeks, and this was going to make their rehearsal time for the concert much shorter. I wondered if Monica had said something to him, if he couldn’t meet my eye because he knew that I was in love with somebody else.

  The house was almost completely cleaned out; it was certainly in salable condition. It looked like somebody lived there. Monica was in the process of cleaning up the cottage properly. A few boxes still remained in the little front storeroom, but the weather
was too glorious to be inside during the day. I saved sorting them for nighttime and made a start on the gardens instead.

  The garden beds around the front entrance were my first project. I had almost zero gardening abilities but had watched Josh tend to his pots on the terrace and had gotten the basic idea. I trimmed and weeded with the sunshine in my hair, thinking about nothing for long stretches of time. A pile of green waste piled up behind me, and I wished I had a cat or a dog to lie on the path in the sun and keep me company. I heard the phone ring somewhere in the house, but with my knee, I couldn’t rush about for phones anymore, so I let it go.

  I was contemplating clearing up the deadfall under the cabbage gum when a car eased up the driveway. I stood and stretched my leg, recognizing Penelope Sykes’s car. Another unannounced visit. Or perhaps that had been her on the phone. Immediately, I felt ashamed of myself. Why did I always think the worst of everyone? Why couldn’t I just be friendly? I overcompensated.

  “Hello!” I said, waving as she got out of the car.

  She smiled cautiously as she approached. “I did try to call.”

  “I’m just about to have a cuppa. Would you like one?”

  “I won’t stay.”

  I was determined that she would stay, that I would make a better impression on her. “I insist,” I said, taking her elbow.

  Penelope allowed herself to be brought inside and seated at the table while I made tea.

  “I’ve got something for you,” she said, sliding a book across the table to me. “I was putting away all those records you gave me in my prewar file, and I found this. Had forgotten I even had it.”

  I picked up the book. It was printed on thick, shiny paper, with a slightly crooked cover. Self-published. The title was Life of a Godly Woman. I winced.

  “It’s as boring as it looks,” Penelope said, carefully pouring milk into her teacup. “But you should read between the two Post-it notes I’ve put in there.”