Mallawindy

by Joy Dettman

  ‘No. I’ve got to get back to work.’

  ‘You’ll come again, Ann Elizabeth?’

  ‘If you’ll have me.’

  ‘My dear, dear girl, how can you ask me that? Lord, if you only knew what it means to me to have you here. I loved you, darling. I did, so much. You were my own little girl for that month. It was the happiest of my life.’

  ‘I loved being here with you.’

  ‘I’ll contact you as soon as I get back to Melbourne, Ann. You leave me a phone number, and I’ll call you the minute I get in.’

  ‘Does Uncle Sam spend much time at Narrawee?’

  ‘He’s happier at Toorak, but he’ll be here in June. We have an open day in June, and a party in the evening. It may be good for both of you to meet again.’

  Ann went to the cellar before she left the next morning. She went only as far as the landing, where she stood looking down at the place where it had all begun. Nothing. No scent of apples, no scent of earthen floor. Just another dusty storeroom, its floor cemented now, a bright white globe hanging overhead. She glanced at the steep steps. Wooden. Old. She shivered, and turned away.

  At ten, she left May at the airport and waved her away, then she drove back to the city where she searched the skyline for the tallest building. She had no business in its foyer but walked confidently to the wall of lifts. A door opened. Nonchalantly she stepped inside, hitting the top floor button and waiting for the doors to close.

  ‘I’m cured,’ she said. ‘I was locked in a cellar and I got out. I was cut and bruised, but I healed. I am healed. I went back for you, little Annie, and I let you out. You’re safe now. It’s over. There will be no more voices in my head. We are one. We are whole again, and now it is time to get on with life.’

  But the sliding, sickening, sucking shut of doors siphoned the air from her lungs as she spoke. ‘The light is on,’ she said, staring at it. ‘It is not black. There is no more black place. I am not afraid of lifts. I was locked for a day in a cellar. So what. I got out.’ Then there was no more air to make words and no conscious mind to form words. The black void was coming for her.

  Lungs empty, muscles in arms and legs, weak with need of air, blood screamed in her ears while staring eyes watched figures move above a door. Illusory door. Meaningless figures, changing. Each second was a year, each minute a decade, until all movement stopped and her knees gave way. Only her hands, gripping the hand rail, prevented her falling to the floor.

  And eons passed while new suns were born and died and a gap opened, then widened. Two businessmen stood talking. Smiling. ‘Going down?’ one said.

  Ann sprang from her steel tomb, almost knocking a briefcase-bearing male from his feet. Instinct guided her to the stairwell and down, down. Sandals tap-tapping on the concrete steps, her eyes not focusing, she ran blind, ran scared, ran in circles of never-ending steps.

  Doors confronted her at each level.

  Seventeen. Sixteen. Fifteen.

  None would open. Doors never opened.

  Twelve. Eleven. Ten.

  Apples. Red juicy apples. Eating apples while the sun went down, and the sun went down.

  Eight. Seven.

  She might run in circles until the flesh was gone, but her bones would continue their mad flight down, down, forever down.

  Red overalls.

  Three.

  Two.

  Heart-shaped bib.

  Blood on the golden curls.

  Blank eyes staring.

  Long bloody-red worms.

  And then there was no door. Free exit to the milling crowd.

  Scatter the milling crowd. Run for freedom. Run for air.

  Black bitumen. High heels drove deep into melting tar, and the black city smell seeped into her nostrils and down to her lungs.

  Deep gasping breaths. Fill the black. Kill the black. Too many breaths. Too fast. Light-headed now. Too much fear. Too much oxygen.

  ‘Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ. Too long. Too long. I can’t cure it in a day.’

  Or in a week, or in a year, or in one hundred years. We are lost between fairyland and the demons den, Annie Blue Dress. You search for answers and gather in lies. Cinderella dressed in yella played with the worms in a musty cellar. Fly away Annie Blue Dress. Fly away home.

  america calling

  June 1985

  Roger rang her twice a week from America. Easy to talk on the telephone. No eyes to meet. Easy to get away. Just hang up the phone.

  ‘Mom’s knitting baby clothes,’ he opened the conversation.

  ‘Any grandchild she ever had would be certified at birth.’

  ‘But what a grandchild. Roger Wilkenson grown longer in his son. Annie Wilkenson, long self-willed daughter.’

  ‘There is a girl in the flat downstairs who is over six foot. Would you like an introduction? Oh, and before I forget. You said you’d be here in June, didn’t you?’

  ‘Planning a June wedding, my lovely?’

  ‘I’ve got an invitation to a party in Narrawee, for Ann and friend. Want to see it?’

  ‘You’re a master at the alteration of subject matter, but yes, I would be interested to see your Narrawee.’

  ‘I’m hanging up, Roge. It’s very late.’

  ‘Not here, it isn’t.’

  Ann had been back to Narrawee twice and she’d visited May once at the Toorak flat. They talked for hours at night on the phone, and Ann learned much of her father, much about his youth. May, Sam and Jack, had been childhood friends, May said. Her father and old John Burton always planned that their properties would be joined by marriage. Just a matter of which son she wed. The boys knew it too.

  ‘I told the boys I wanted to marry both of them. I was around ten at the time, and they said I couldn’t marry two people, so I’d have to decide which one I liked best. They blindfolded me, then took it in turns to kiss me. “Okay, which one of us is the best kisser? First or second,” they said. I couldn’t decide, or wouldn’t. I think I liked the game too well.

  ‘They were a pair of pranksters as boys. Jack, always the daredevil. Ride like a demon, he could. His mother adored him, but she was an invalid for years, and her husband was a womanising old coot. The boys always knew about his women. Towards the end, he used to bring them home, entertain them in his room while his poor wife was dying downstairs.

  ‘They were older then, and changing. Sam attempted to hide from his mother’s illness, but Jack denied it. He’d force her to eat, he’d carry her outside, sit her on the balcony in the sun. He adored her, and grew to hate his father.

  ‘Sam withdrew. He hid his feelings. Few ever knew what Sam was thinking in those days, but Jack could hide nothing, and he had such a temper.’

  ‘He hasn’t altered much,’ Ann commented.

  May laughed. ‘Always a villain was my Jack, but a lovable villain. His mother died when he was eighteen, and he left home. I didn’t see him again until after he’d married your mother and had a son. So, the decision was made for me. I married Sam. We knew there would be no child to pass the land t o , ’ May said.

  The couple they’d employed to manage the two properties were now past retirement age. May said she doubted she would be able to replace them when they decided to leave. ‘I’ll be too old soon to continue this nomadic life. Perhaps I’ll move back to Narrawee permanently in a year or two, Ann. I loved it. Always wanted to own it. I had a nice comfortable home as a girl, but Narrawee was always my Camelot.’

  So much history. So much Ann had never known, and May knew it all.

  The house had been built by the first Samuel Burton, back in 1857; it was huge, but not functional. Ann’s grandfather had been a second son, and a Melbourne lawyer until his older brother died without issue, so the younger son inherited. He and Eliza had renovated it, but that was fifty years ago. Everything was antiquated. The bathrooms were mouldy. Narrawee was a time warp – in more ways than one. The only place to sit in the winter was in the kitchen with the old wood fire tossing out its heat.
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br />   It was the third Saturday in June, one of those bitter days when the clouds refused to lift and the chill of the earth crept through the soles of shoes. The garden was at its worst, the roses stiff with thorns.

  ‘Why have their open day in June?’ Roger asked. He had flown from summer to the depths of winter, and he wanted his summer back.

  ‘I asked the same question. It was Eliza’s birthday – my grandmother’s birthday. May says it’s a chance to light all the fires and turn all the lights on. Bring the old place to life for a day.’

  ‘So your father inherits if he outlives his brother. How old is Sam?’

  ‘Fifty-four I think, going on fifty-five.’

  ‘And they live away from Narrawee?’

  ‘For most of the year. May travels a lot. But she’s been in Melbourne for months now, at the Toorak flat. It’s old too, but it’s been renovated recently. It’s very classy.’

  Maybe that’s the way to go, Ann thought. Two houses, on opposite sides of the world. Marry him, make his mother happy. Buy a flat in Melbourne and flit backwards and forwards across the ocean.

  She’d been pleased to see him when he flew in yesterday. He had become a good friend. Perhaps friendship might be a safer foundation for marriage than love.

  She glanced at him as they stepped from the warm car to the cold earth.

  ‘You, when seen against your natural backdrop, are the fabric from which my most fantastic dreams are woven. We could make it work. Fly home with me.’

  She shrugged. Maybe they could make it work. She’d make the rules. Spend time with May, leave Roger to do whatever he did when he wasn’t with her.

  Ann’s first sight of her uncle was from a distance. He was waving away a bus load of tourists. She took the opportunity to study him without being studied, and to grow accustomed to the idea of being near him, to ride down the panic his name always brought with it. He looked so much like her father. His stance, his walk. She grasped Roger’s hand as her uncle came towards them, but his first welcome was brief.

  ‘I won’t shake your hand,’ he said, showing a bandaged wrist and a hand held high in a sling. ‘Came off a nag yesterday.’

  There was still a crowd at the property. May called him away.

  Roger and Ann wandered the grounds alone until the last car was gone. ‘So, that’s over for another year,’ May said. ‘There were more than last year, dear.’

  ‘What about these two? Did you get their money?’

  ‘Oh, they looked so poverty stricken. I thought we’d give them a complimentary pass,’ May said. ‘Let’s get inside. I’m freezing.’ May linked arms with Ann and they walked up the front steps behind the men.

  Roger was at home in any company. Ann listened to their voices. Sam’s held her father’s tone, but it was softer, more cultured. His moustache was grey/white now, and his hair, completely grey, was thick; it fell over brow and collar. He wore tinted, gold-rimmed glasses, and a heavy gold chain at his throat. In his denim jacket and jeans, he had the appearance of an ageing bohemian. Maybe the years hadn’t been as kind to him as they had to Jack; still she hadn’t seen her father for eight years. He may have aged too, put on weight, allowed his hair to go grey.

  Sam held the front door wide, and as Ann stepped in, he said, ‘So, have you decided yet which one of us is the better looking, Ann Elizabeth?’

  ‘Oh, you, of course, Uncle Sam,’ she replied.

  ‘You’ve got thirty minutes in which to give Roger the grand tour, Sam,’ May said, then she turned to Ann. ‘You come with me, Ann. I must show you old Samuel’s portrait. We had it restored, and they did a wonderful job.’

  Their guests were due, the old house was alive with light and caterers. May wandered from room to room, touching a flower here, straightening a chair there, supervising the workers.

  ‘I love June in this place,’ she said. ‘How I love to see all the lights burning again and the noise of people. This is where I want to grow old. I was envious of this house when I was a young girl. Why don’t we live here all the time?’

  He shook his head. ‘Where are our visitors?’

  ‘Out there. Look at her.’ They stood together before long glass doors that opened out onto a courtyard. Roger was smoking. Ann had a cigarette in her hand. She looked relaxed, at peace with the funny little man.

  ‘She’s her father’s daughter, May.’

  ‘Oh, yes. When I saw her at the door that day, I recognised her immediately. I loved her, you know. How I loved the strength and the independence of that little one.’

  ‘Has she remembered anything new?’

  ‘No, but she’s still obsessed by Ted Crow. She keeps coming back to him all the time. She says she has no mental image of him, that he’s like a character she’s read about in an old story book without pictures.’

  ‘Selective memory.’

  ‘Possibly,’ May said. ‘Look at those long Burton limbs. She reminds me of that photograph of your grandmother as a bride.’

  ‘The wild black Celtic strain.’

  ‘She belongs here, in this house with all of the lights burning. I feel so much better since she returned. I can see her and her children in these rooms when we are gone.’

  ‘You’re disregarding Jack.’

  ‘I never disregard Jack, but he is not long for this world, my dear. I’m convinced that the day is fast approaching when we will see no more of Jack.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it. He’s a determined bastard, May,’ he replied, turning to snatch a savoury as one of the workers walked by with a tray.

  ‘Better for us if he wasn’t so determined. We cannot continue this way.’

  ‘Poor old Jack. Life didn’t deal him much of a hand – ’

  ‘Poor old May too. When is it her turn for some peace of mind? Sooner or later we have to stop this ridiculous life we lead. I want to live here, and with a full-time husband. It’s just a case of making the decision, and carrying it through.’

  ‘It gets to me. I can take it for a while, then it starts eating at my gut. Small town people never forget. They remember, May. They look at me, and they remember, and my guts turn to water and I have to get out.’

  They were silent then, and stood looking out the window at the odd couple.

  ‘He seems pleasant enough, but not at all what I expected. She speaks about him quite fondly. I had this image of some fine tall American boy with a crew cut. But he’s old. He’s far too old for her, and so horribly plain.’

  ‘He’s a fairy. I’ll give you ten to one odds, May.’

  ‘I hope for her sake you are wrong. He told me he was going to marry her.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She didn’t comment. How is that bandage?’

  ‘It’s okay. Stop fussing.’

  ‘What did you do with the sling? Go and get it. I wish you’d be more careful of yourself.’

  ‘You just don’t want Jack to get the property.’ He laughed.

  May and Sam were a handsome, well-matched pair. May’s hand constantly touched, smoothed his hair, slipped around his waist. His hand was on her shoulder, claiming her. Jack and Ellie never touched.

  ‘They seem such good friends, don’t they? They’ve been married for over thirty years, and they still like each other.’ Ann spoke her thought aloud.

  ‘And they are still lovers,’ Roger replied. ‘She can’t keep her hands off him.’

  ‘I dare say it’s because they don’t have to live day after day together. Every meeting is a honeymoon.’

  The guests were mainly local and fifty-plus, the party was a dry affair in more ways than one. Ann sat on the couch, watching faces, watching people, and remembering the party she’d gone to with David, remembering the ring he’d bought for her.

  All so long ago. No chance of May’s punch being spiked with vermouth. Sam and May didn’t drink. Ann looked at her uncle’s left hand. He wore no wedding ring. He used to wear a ring.

  Rings and parties seemed to go together. She couldn�
�t get her brain away from rings tonight. Something spoken of often, had a way of creeping up on you, becoming reality. This house, its history, had given her substance, given her identity. Niece of Narrawee. Great-great-granddaughter of old Samuel. Pride?

  Ann Wilkenson, diamonds dripping off her ears. Maybe she could do it. This morning she stood with Roger in front of a jewellers, actually looking at diamonds, actually considering the possibility – until she sighted the black onyx ring and went cold on the idea.

  Her eyes refused to leave her uncle tonight. It wasn’t a conscious thing. Perhaps she was attempting to over-write old memories with the new. She stared at his back while he spoke to one of the local men. She heard his laugh. It was a pleasant laugh. She hadn’t been looking forward to re-meeting Sam, but he’d surprised her. Ellie always said he had beautiful manners.

  Like visiting royalty, everyone wanted his ear tonight, and he was in his element, moving from group to group, neglecting no one. A wonderful host.

  It would be nice to be so confident, to have it all, she thought; and she would have it all at Roger’s side. Hold his hand and be brave. Tell him all her secrets. Get them all out of her head. He wouldn’t flinch. Maybe he had some secrets of his own.

  Through half-closed eyes, she stared at Sam’s back, trying to bring to mind the younger Sam of twenty years ago. He’d possessed an uncontrolled energy then, couldn’t sit still. And his eyes. She remembered his eyes. Now he wore pink-tinted glasses that disguised their chill. His hair had always been worn long, though dark as her father’s then, but he’d been slimmer than her father.

  Roger returned to her side. ‘Where is your mind wandering to, pretty lady?’

  ‘He came off a nag,’ she said. ‘I can remember him trotting a horse around the paddock, Liza sitting in front of him. I had a Shetland pony. Liza wouldn’t ride it. Tiny.’ Her brow creased and her hand rose, massaging her brow. ‘And his roses. The garden was his thing. He lived in the garden. He won prizes with his roses at the Melbourne Show.’ She paused, catching the edge of Roger’s yawn. ‘Am I boring you?’