Tumbledown Manor

by Helen Brown

  Lisa wondered what life had been like for servants at Trumperton Manor. She hoped her ancestors had treated them fairly.

  ‘That was put up after the original servants’ quarters burned down in the early 1900s,’ Beverley explained. ‘Those weatherboards have got white ants, I reckon.’

  Either country land agents were more honest than their urban colleagues, or Beverley was still in training.

  ‘What about the stables?’

  ‘Nothing much there,’ Beverley said quickly.

  ‘Is there room to park a car under cover?’

  ‘Let’s concentrate on the house.’

  Lisa wondered why Beverley was unwilling to open the stables. Maybe it housed a dynasty of rats or worse. She’d never recovered from the time her cousin Trevor from Bendigo chased her with a snake. It was probably harmless, but she was only six or seven at the time.

  ‘I’ve saved the best for last,’ Beverley said, clattering up the staircase.

  Lisa ran her hand over the smooth balustrade and tingled at the thought of Alexander doing exactly the same thing.

  ‘Great for sliding down,’ James said.

  Honestly. How old was this kid, twenty-six? No generation had been better educated or taken so long to grow up.

  They paused at a small landing under the leadlight window. ‘Four bedrooms and a bathroom up there,’ Beverley said. The stairs twisted in a dogleg to reach a space on the upper floor.

  Beverley led them up the stairs to a set of double doors that opened onto a long room. The tall windows were draped with curtains so ragged they were practically translucent. The fireplace was handsomely carved with a built-in mirror that was speckled with age. Lisa tried to imagine the scenes that mirror had reflected.

  ‘The old ballroom,’ Beverley said, opening French doors onto a generous balcony formed by the portico beneath. ‘I reckon you could make it the master bedroom.’

  Stepping outside and gazing across the valley, the group inhaled a single breath. The mist had lifted and the hills were drenched in amber. A tinge of lemon outlined the hills before dissolving into limitless blue sky.

  ‘Spectacular,’ breathed Ted.

  The air exploded with husky screeches. A flock of cockatoos spiralled off a gum tree to regroup on the paddock below.

  ‘Greedy buggers,’ Beverley said. ‘They scoff all the crops.’

  Lisa craned her neck to identify the parrot from the other day. Maybe he’d learnt to fly again. But the larrikin skydivers looked all the same.

  ‘Doesn’t it have a heritage order?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Not that anyone talks about. If I were you I’d flatten it and subdivide. People are flooding into Castlemaine these days. All the city slickers are wanting a tree change. Pick the best bit of land and put up a nice place for yourself, throw in six or seven houses around it and you’ll be set for life. I’ll sell them off the plan for you.’

  Lisa glanced towards the gum trees opposite the driveway entrance. A spiral of smoke rose from a chimney in the depths of the silvery forest. So that’s where the manor’s current owners lived. She wondered if they might be open to some creative negotiation.

  A hunched figure hobbled towards the roadside letterbox. Lisa raised a hand. The old woman looked up, but didn’t respond.

  ‘They’re keen to sell,’ Beverley added. ‘If you can top the other offer, it’s yours.’

  Lisa sensed it was time to play her trump card.

  ‘We have family connections to this place, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ Beverley’s interest was piqued.

  ‘Yes, my grandfather, I mean our grandfather,’ she nodded towards Maxine, who’d wandered off to the other end of the balcony. ‘Was a Trumperton.’

  Lisa waited for Beverley’s reaction. It wasn’t the warm recognition she’d expected. ‘I thought they died out,’ Beverley said, inspecting the heel of her boot.

  ‘Who, the Trumpertons? Well I suppose technically the name died with Dad. But we’re still here.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought it’d be great to bring the house back into the family . . .’

  The agent eased the ridiculous piece of footwear off her leg. She turned it upside down and shook it. A pebble flew out and rolled across the mosaic tiles. ‘You were thinking of living here alone?’ she asked.

  ‘I write for a living and . . .’

  ‘Wouldn’t you rattle around in it? I mean, for one person . . . I sure as hell wouldn’t do it. They reckon the place is haunted. And in any case, the other offer’s a very good one. It’s already underway, so technically the house isn’t really for sale at all . . .’

  What was wrong with the woman? ‘But you said the deal’s not signed,’ Lisa said. ‘Isn’t it your job to get the best price?’

  ‘Your ideas just seem a little fanciful, that’s all,’ Beverley replied.

  ‘Thank God someone’s talking sense!’ Maxine flounced past and strode inside. ‘It’s freezing out here.’

  ‘I can’t believe you think it’s okay to pull this magnificent place down,’ Lisa said, aware her tone was becoming strident.

  Beverley’s lip curled with amusement. ‘I don’t know if you realise it, coming from—where did you say?’

  ‘New York . . . but I’m from here, really. Well not here. I was born in Melbourne.’

  Beverley gazed glumly down at her clipboard. She drew a line of frowning faces on her clipboard with her diamante-encrusted pen. ‘We’ve been in drought for years. The land’s drier than a lizard’s dick.’

  ‘But you said your ex could help?’

  ‘Actually he’s flat out landscaping the new medical centre.’

  The change in Beverley’s mood was extraordinary.

  ‘Is it true there was a scandal here?’ Lisa asked quietly.

  Beverley turned pinker than her jacket. ‘Every house has stories,’ she said, clicking her pen.

  ‘What happened?’

  Across the valley a kookaburra cackled like a lunatic.

  ‘I don’t know the details.’

  The woman was frustrating beyond words. Lisa walked over to Ted and James, who were locked in conversation.

  ‘A developer’s going to tear it down and cover the land in McMansions,’ she said, her heart thudding.

  Ted’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘We can’t let it happen,’ she said. ‘This house is our heritage.’

  Ted and James looked at each other. ‘If you buy it, we’ll help fix it up,’ Ted said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Weekends, holidays that sort of thing . . .’

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll fling a few paintbrushes around.’ James nodded in agreement.

  Lisa felt a frisson of excitement.

  ‘We’ll help you move in. Your stuff will fit in the Kombi.’

  Lisa willed her thoughts into slow motion. Her mathematical calculations always erred on the optimistic. The asking price for Trumperton Manor couldn’t be much more than the townhouse. The renovations would cost a bomb, but she could just about live in the old house as it stood. Maybe she could enrol in DIY night classes. The mortgage would be a stretch. On the other hand, Three Sisters: Charlotte had been sold to Germany.

  Setting her jaw, she strode back to Beverley. ‘What’s the offer you have on the table?’

  Chapter 10

  The developer was unwilling to lose the battle for Trumperton Manor. Every time Beverley phoned, the price went up another five thousand dollars. Just when Lisa couldn’t go any higher and prepared herself for the worst, her opposition slunk away. Apparently his backer had suddenly become a ‘person of interest’ to the federal police and he’d taken himself and his bank account off to Asia.

  Lisa couldn’t wait to visit Aunt Caroline in the nursing home to share the wonderful news. But the old woman spent most of the time wittering about cruising the Med on the royal yacht Britannia with Queen Elizabeth and that handsome Prince Philip. When Lisa interrupted Aunt C
aroline to shout for the third time that she’d bought Trumperton Manor, the old girl finally fixed her with a vivid blue eye. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’ she said, before changing the subject.

  The day after the Wrights finally accepted her offer, Lisa bought a battered green Camry station wagon. It had belonged to a friend of Ted’s who was moving to Berlin to do a PhD in immunology. The brakes were soft, but Ted assured her it was in good nick.

  The Camry smelt of dog and old socks. The back third of the vehicle looked particularly worn. Maybe it had doubled as a meth lab. But with the back seats down, there was heaps of space for whatever country people stowed in their vehicles. Pitchforks?

  Once Lisa got the hang of the hand-shift gears, she rattled through the streets of Camberwell with an irrational sense of freedom. She’d always pitied people who gave their cars names, but the rust bucket was screaming to be christened, so secretly she named it Dino, after the Flintstone’s pet dinosaur.

  Maxine was far from overjoyed to have ‘that thing’ parked outside her house. She was in an almost permanent grump these days, though she was kind enough to offer up an assortment of cobwebby kitchen chairs, an old wardrobe and a twenty-year old fridge. She also threw in the old oak table that’d languished in the shed for decades.

  Lisa melted at the sight of the furniture she’d grown up with. Its borer-ridden surface had witnessed countless family rows. She found the extension boards nestled in the shadows behind Gordon’s workbench. With the boards in place, the table could seat ten or twelve.

  For the remaining month, Lisa did her best to make herself invisible. She shut herself away with the sea captain for hours on end, hunched over her computer, tapping away. Even though she was behind schedule with the book, sentences were starting to trickle. Buying the manor had somehow knocked the edges off her writer’s block.

  Much as Lisa worshipped the Brontë sisters, one aspect of their work wore her down—the men. From Heathcliff to Mr Rochester, the men were mostly brutes who were kinder to their dogs than to women. They bathed in the power that went with their wealth and could brood and take off with floozies as they pleased. Meanwhile, the female characters’ piercing intelligence did little to rescue the women from their horrific lives.

  Lisa wanted to make the male characters in Three Sisters more appealing to the twenty-first century reader. Emily’s earl was turning out to be more of a metrosexual. Frederick the stablehand had the sort of well-sculpted body she’d seen in gyms.

  ‘Someone’s here to see you,’ Maxine announced, sweeping into the room and pulling back the Jolly Roger curtains. Lisa checked the calendar on her phone. Twenty-three days to go.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That bastard.’

  ‘Jake?’ Lisa said, incredulous. Wasn’t Australia far enough away to avoid seeing him?

  Maxine crossed her arms, as though confirming the death of a family pet. ‘Thinks he can turn up out of nowhere. I’m not having him on the property.’

  Lisa peered through the netting. Her heart melted momentarily at the sight of Jake standing in the driveway. Rugged up in a black parka, he was barking into his phone. Same old Jake. Physically in one place, mentally somewhere else.

  ‘He refuses to leave,’ Maxine says.

  Lisa glanced in the mirror and scrunched her hair. Her eyes were amphibious from hours of computer time. In the hallway were Maxine’s ugg boots, lying like a pair of discarded pups. Lisa dived into them before walking down the frost-lined path.

  Jake slid his phone into his pocket and flashed a smile designed to turn babies and little old ladies to mush. ‘You’ve gone native,’ he said. ‘Never thought I’d see you in those things.’

  ‘Not mine,’ she said, glancing down at the ugg boots. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was in the neighbourhood. Singapore, to be exact. Thought I might as well drop by.’ Jake treated aeroplanes like country busses. He was immune to jet lag.

  ‘Have you seen Portia?’

  ‘Last week. She’s getting heaps of work in animal costumes.’

  ‘Like the Lion King?’

  ‘No. Kids’ parties.’

  ‘Is she eating?’

  ‘Dunno. She ate something when I saw her last week . . . It was green, I think.’

  Clearly Jake was too focused on his own life to worry about his daughter’s health. He’d certainly been looking after himself. His teeth had an unnatural glow and his hair seemed darker. The distinguished grey around his temples had vanished.

  ‘How’s . . . Belle?’

  ‘Amazing!’ He hugged his chest and scuffed his feet in imaginary snow. ‘Everything’s great. I feel so . . . energised. We’ve started jogging.’

  Jake hated running.

  ‘We’re thinking of doing a half-marathon.’

  ‘Good on you.’

  ‘She took me to hot yoga. It’s spiritual, all that sweating, you know. They wouldn’t let me out till I fainted.’

  Jake was talking to her as if she was his mother. She played along and gave him the approval he hungered for. ‘Looks like you’ve lost weight, too,’ she said.

  ‘High-protein diet.’

  He used to make fun of her protein bars.

  ‘Works wonders,’ he added. ‘Apart from the constipation.’

  ‘That’s what the kids would call TMI,’ Lisa said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Too much information to share with an ex-wife.’

  ‘Oh. I guess you are now. What’s this I hear about you buying a dump in the country?’

  He’d been talking to Ted.

  ‘You should’ve rented first. I mean, how long is Ted going to stay in Australia, really? I know he says now that he wants to stay, but it won’t last.’

  Lisa looked up at a bird shivering on a wire. She’d had enough of other people’s advice. Besides, Jake had relinquished his right to offer any. ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ he sighed. ‘No fun being an old bull in a paddock of ambitious calves.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time to leave the farm.’

  ‘Seems I’ve been banned from the dragon’s lair,’ he said. Jake gazed up at the curtains twitching in Maxine’s window. ‘There’s a good looking café on the corner. Don’t suppose you’re free for lunch?’

  To drink coffee with Jake, to laugh with him and talk about the kids . . . Her brain kicked in just in time. ‘No thanks. I’m working.’ She turned and scurried up the path.

  Maxine greeted her at the door.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How long’s he here for?’

  ‘Forgot to ask.’

  Settled back at the computer, a fresh plotline flashed into Lisa’s brain. An older man, a parson from a nearby parish, would take a shine to Emily. She would quickly see him for what he was—vain and insecure, his hair oily with black boot polish in a futile attempt to camouflage the grey.

  Chapter 11

  The receptionist at Hogan & Hogan handed Lisa an orange envelope. She fumbled for the outline of the key inside. It was hard to believe the scrap of ancient metal was hers. She asked to see Beverley in person, but the receptionist said the agent was away on important business at a spa in Daylesford.

  Clutching the envelope, Lisa hurried outside. Sharp morning air caught the back of her throat. A truck lumbered past. The black and white sheep dog on the back gave her a casual bark. Rush hour in Castlemaine.

  Dino was sprouting mops and brooms. With his knees jammed against the dashboard, Ted looked like a grasshopper about to be crushed. ‘That was quick,’ he said.

  Lisa glanced across the street to where James had double-parked the Kombi. It was a miracle the trailer and contents were still attached. The wardrobe and fridge stood to attention alongside her boxes from New York and a battered microwave oven Maxine had thrown in as a parting gift. Leaning against them was a queen-sized bed she’d picked up from a wholesale outlet. Behind it the legs of the old dining table thr
ew themselves up in horror.

  The lens of a video camera gleamed from inside the Kombi’s back window. She pulled her beanie over her ears and climbed into Dino. Though it was heartening the boys had brought friends, she was hardly ecstatic about being filmed. Still, she couldn’t say no to poor Zack (she was getting better at remembering their names). A film student, he had the deranged idea to make a documentary on what he called her ‘lifestyle change’. With his flaxen hair twisted up in a girlish bun, Zack needed all the help he could get.

  The Kombi followed them down familiar roads until they reached the gates of the manor.

  ‘Wait!’ Ted said, peering up at the ‘sold’ sticker slapped across the sign.

  Lisa was still adjusting to the eccentricities of Dino’s brakes. As the car glided to a standstill, Ted leapt out and beckoned his mates. James and Zack emerged from the Kombi with a couple of laughing girls.

  Lisa was thrilled to have met the girls at last. They were just the type of earthy young women she’d imagined Ted being attracted to. Heidi wore red-framed glasses and polka-dot tights. Part-way through a vet science degree, she had the sort of zany style Lisa had noticed in Ted’s previous girlfriends. But when Heidi leapt onto James and demanded to be piggybacked, it was obvious those two were an item.

  Ted seemed closer to Stella, whose curls were tied up in a bright-yellow scarf. Stella’s vibe was softer, more feminine. She was training to be an occupational therapist. Curiosity aside, Lisa was just grateful the girls had shown up at the modest hourly rate she could afford.

  Wielding his camera, Zack arranged the group under the sign, placing Lisa in the centre. ‘Action!’ he called.

  Did anyone say ‘action’ anymore?

  Lisa brandished the key and bared her teeth at the camera. Ted and James shimmied up the fence post and dismantled the sign—the muscle strength of the under thirties really was awe-inspiring.

  Zack then jogged ahead and stood at the bend in the driveway to film the convoy’s arrival. He was wearing purple corduroy trousers and an orange paisley shirt. The pinstriped waistcoat looked as if it had seen better days in the members’ stand at the Melbourne Cup. Strands of hair had struggled free of his man-bun to float on the breeze. He could easily be mistaken for a girl, she thought. Maybe amateur scientists were right when they claimed all the oestrogen in the water systems was obliterating the male species.