by Kim Kane
‘No, that’s a lyrebird,’ said Bea. ‘Well, I think it is.’
‘It must be in there,’ said Gert, pointing at some bushes. ‘Madeleine and I saw one the other day. Imo used to call them lie-birds because they fib all the time—’
‘Gert, don’t say that. You are mean.’ Imo picked up a twig and pretended to inhale smoke from it.
The bell rang again, only this time from down near the house, not the bush.
‘Which one was that?’ Elfriede shook her head. ‘I don’t know whether it was the lie-bird or the gong, but it sounded like it was beaten with purpose. Ought you girls to go back? I don’t want to be branded a bad influence.’
The fact that Elfriede seemed to be scared of Nanny too made Madeleine feel better. She pulled on her stockings, which kept catching on her damp feet.
Elfriede stood. ‘Where’s Charlie?’ She took Imo’s hand and linked her spare arm through Bea’s.
‘Oh, she’s always disappearing,’ grumbled Gert.
‘Is she likely to be far?’ Elfriede looked over her shoulders.
‘We should find her. Nanny will be furious if she’s missing again.’ Nobody said anything. ‘Nanny will be livid,’ Gert repeated, a little bit louder this time. There was still no response. ‘Shall Madeleine and I find her, then?’ asked Gert eventually.
‘Oh, yes, do that please, darlings, will you? I do not want anybody offside, especially Nanny.’
Elfriede guided Bea back across the grass. She was holding Imo’s hand. The gravel crunched as the trio of cousins stepped onto the path: two tall, one short. Madeleine watched as they walked down past the kitchen garden towards the front of the house, chattering and laughing, hat rims bumping. Not one of them looked back.
Gert led Madeleine around the back of the house to check the garage, but there was no sign of Charlie, so they continued on around the other side of the house, across the drive and down past the side of the tennis court. Madeleine had to keep stopping to pull at her bodice, which was a bit like a rash – at best, uncomfortable; at worst, so maddening that she could think of nothing else.
‘Are you okay?’
‘It’s just really itchy,’ said Madeleine. ‘I’ve had chicken pox that were comfier.’
‘I can’t believe we haven’t done that yet. I promise that we shall sneak into Hen’s room the next time she’s out.’
Madeleine smiled. ‘That would be super.’
The girls walked towards the broad, bow-shaped lake they had run past on Madeleine’s first day and turned right onto the path that encircled it.
‘It’s ornamental,’ said Gert. ‘I’m not mad on the lake in winter – it can be so blowy on windy days.’
A breeze ripped across the lake as she spoke. Madeleine could see the wind in the surface of the water, which was thick and muddy like hot chocolate. The girls wandered past a little bone-coloured jetty, which had a tiny rowboat moored to it.
‘Do you row?’ asked Madeleine.
‘Rarely. It’s mainly for guests. Mummy’s very nervous about the water.’
The lake had a tiny almost-island, which was connected to the shore by a ribbon of land hanging down its middle like that funny finger of flesh at the back of Madeleine’s mouth.
‘Can we go out on the island?’
‘Sometimes. The land bridge tends to disappear in the spring rain, but it’s been such a dry winter that it’s secure at the moment. You haven’t even seen the best bit yet – come and see the grotto; that’s just down over there, another place Charlie likes to hide.’
Gert led Madeleine along the top of the lake and then down a path that headed past the empty tree and the small orchard they’d seen earlier.
The girls then veered off onto another, narrower path, this one hedged with thick, leafy plants no taller than their ankles and lines of brown stones identical to those in the fence. At its end, the path spiralled like a snailshell and opened into a cave.
‘This,’ said Gert, ‘is the grotto.’
The grotto was like half an igloo, its walls made out of more of the heaped brown stone. It had a natural rock ceiling, which hung down low over a stone table and stools. Most startlingly, every surface – walls, roof, floor, stools and table – was lined with a patchwork of photos, cards, shells and all manner of keepsakes, set in rows. Charlie stood on one of the stools, pasting a piece of paper onto the back wall. Millie was curled in a ball on the floor beneath her.
‘Charlie! There you are,’ said Gert.
‘I wanted to include this.’ Gert and Madeleine moved closer. The paper Charlie was pasting up was a photo of Elfriede, with a tiny signature of the photographer in its corner. Elfriede stared out at them, serene.
‘Where did you get it?’ asked Gert.
‘Elfriede gave it to Mummy. I think it was intended for a frame, but I’m sure Mummy won’t mind. I can always peel it off.’
Gert shook her head. ‘Well, don’t blame me if Mummy’s cross.’ The picture was already starting to pucker with the wet glue.
Madeleine thought of the endless pictures the kids in her class simply printed up at home. She looked about. The grotto seemed like a sort of three-dimensional scrapbook, where the girls stuck all the things that interested them or that they cared about.
Newspaper articles featured heavily:
Plague! Over 60,000 rats killed in Sydney.
Hissing and stamping suffragists disrupt parliament!
There were a few photos of the children, two in frames and two pasted up. Next to Elfriede was a newspaper article with a cartoon drawing of a woman. She was as muscly as a greyhound, with glasses, a hooked nose and a wonky, frizzy bun. She wore a tight dress and stockings that were baggy around her knees.
‘Is that Aunt Hen?’ asked Madeleine. ‘What’s she doing?’ ‘Campaigning. Mummy says it’s a dreadful shame she’s gone that way; that her father would be horrified to see her flopping about in tea dresses all day, and that all Aunt Hen’s suffragist arguments are irrelevant anyway, as wives have been influencing their husbands and sons for years. Mummy says she feels like a queen, as all the servants – even Nanny – come under her. But I stuck Aunt Hen up anyway. She is family.’ The paper was yellow from the gum Gert had used.
‘Cook calls Aunt Hen the Mad Maiden Hen,’ Charlie interjected. ‘Says she’s a right ma’s mope. And Mummy’s angry that Aunt Hen doesn’t have a calling card. But Aunt Hen says that if people want to see her, they will. I say that her fingernails are often blacker than mine. I do like that.’
Charlie pulled at an unravelling thread on the hem of her sleeve.
‘What do you think, Gert?’ asked Madeleine.
‘I think that Cook hates change almost as much as Nanny, which is very odd for the Irish. They’re meant to be revolutionaries. Still, she makes good scones. I don’t know, maybe Aunt Hen is a bit mad? And it is embarrassing for Daddy. There he is, trying to build a respectable new nation, helping to write all the documents, and she’s waving banners on the steps of parliament trying to stop him.’
‘She’s not trying to stop him, though, is she?’ said Madeleine. ‘She’s just making sure women are included. What seems mad to me is that women now don’t have the vote. I mean, it’s not like we’re goldfish – we’re future prime ministers, judges and governors-general.’
‘Madeleine, you are terribly funny.’ Charlie dipped her brush in the paste again.
Madeleine continued circling the small cave. There were dolls’ shoes and a dried corsage (from Bea’s season, Gert said), invitations and a few clippings of cartoons of the girls’ father looking puffed up in his waistcoat and frowning at official functions.
‘At night,’ said Gert, ‘you can wave a candle and all the little bits of mirror reflect the light, winking and twinkling. It’s terribly exotic. Not our idea – Daddy read about it being done in India, where maharajas do it for their wives.’
Madeleine hadn’t noticed the mirrors – but when she looked closer, she realised that there were frag
ments everywhere. ‘It’s incredible,’ she said. ‘All of it – I’ve never seen anything like it. Did you build it?’
‘No, it was here before. We think it was built for prayer’ – Charlie pointed to a niche on the far wall – ‘but Daddy was happy for us to use it.’
Gert led Madeleine to the niche. It was filled with lines and lines of teeth.
‘This is the very best bit!’ Gert gloated. ‘There are fifteen of them: all milk teeth, mainly, but one of Bea’s grown-up molars is here, too. You can see the root.’
‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Mine!’ Gert looked proud.
Charlie pulled out her notebook. ‘Oh, I must have dropped my pencil back at the pond. Do you have one, Gert?’
‘No – and go and fetch it. Daddy will be livid if you lose another.’
Charlie put her brush back in the paste bottle, which said fish glue on it. ‘See you back at the house, then!’ She ran off, the laces of her muddy boots flapping about her skinny, straight calves.
Madeleine rubbed her fingertip over the pointy end of an eyetooth. ‘It’s amazing,’ she said again softly. ‘I’ve been here, you know – in my time.’
‘Have you really? With whom? It still exists in the future?’ Gert asked excitedly. ‘I’m thrilled. We’ve put so much work into it!’
Madeleine didn’t have the heart to tell her it would be all littered with muddy Coke bottles by Maddison 4 Kai.
Suddenly an idea struck Madeleine the way brilliant ideas sometimes did – just shot from clear out of nowhere.
‘Gert, I was at the grotto when I came back here. Maybe this is the link? Maybe, just maybe, we could bring Bea’s shoes here, and maybe, just maybe, this will be like the TARDIS and take me home? The teeth might be the key to getting back!’
‘Splendid idea!’ Gert shook her head in agreement. ‘Well, there can certainly be no harm in trying.’
‘Let’s get the shoes and do it right now!’ Madeleine was filled with a wild and sudden hope.
The girls ran back past the lake and up the hill to the house, where Bea and Elfriede were sitting in cane chairs on the verandah. Their laughter was cut off by Nanny, who launched around the side of the house waving a gong stick, Imo at her side.
‘Children, nursery tea will be served at five o’ clock on the dot.’ Madeleine’s heart sank. So much for heading straight back to the grotto with the shoes. ‘Miss Beatrice, you may dine later with the adults, of course. Miss Charlotte, where is your left boot?’
The girls spun around. Charlie was hobbling behind them, now in only one very grey stocking.
‘How on earth did you end up behind us?’ Madeleine exclaimed.
‘Good evening, Miss von Fürstenburg.’ Nanny nodded warmly at Elfriede and herded everybody inside.
Elfriede winked over her shoulder at Charlie. ‘You shall have to tell me what you’ve done with that boot later.’
Elfriede was great, thought Madeleine. Really great.
Gert’s demeanour had changed suddenly. She moped all the way up the stairs.
‘What’s the matter?’ whispered Madeleine, alarmed, wondering if she’d figured out something wrong with their plan for the grotto.
‘Nothing,’ said Gert dully.
They climbed another three steps.
‘It’s just typical, really,’ Gert blurted. ‘It’s always like this.’
‘Like what?’ Gert was being very cryptic, thought Madeleine.
‘Haven’t you noticed how Elfriede’s favour is orbiting? First Imo was the favourite, which is always the case; then Bea, and now Charlie. Never me. No matter how hard I try, I am never the favourite.’
Madeleine had noticed. It was hard not to. There was something about Gert that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, but that everyone sensed – something annoying. It was as if she were smelly or scratchy, when in fact she was neither.
‘It’s the same at school. The harder I try, the fewer friends I have. I never get invited to play tennis or lacrosse or to go to recitals. I don’t understand it.’
‘Well, you’re my favourite,’ said Madeleine.
Gert smiled at her – a deep, trusting smile. She linked her arm through Madeleine’s and squeezed it. ‘That’s the most generous thing anyone has ever said to me.’
Madeleine squeezed back. Gert could be irritating, but she was also kind, very kind. For now, that seemed more important than anything.
Nanny poured water into an enamel tub in front of the shifting coals in the nursery fireplace that night, and Madeleine was treated to her first proper bath.
‘Can’t we have a bath in the bathroom?’ whinged Gert. ‘This is for babies.’
‘Your mother would rather we left the bathroom for Elfriede,’ said Nanny.
Madeleine had hated baths and showers as a kid, but she’d grown to quite like them lately, and while having her back scratched down by Nanny’s rough cloth was a little less relaxing than anything she was accustomed to, she’d missed the warmth.
In bed in the dark afterwards, Madeleine could think of nothing but her own family. She thought of Teddy with his knees draped over the end of the couch, eating cheese on toast and playing chess on his laptop and scrabble on his phone with seventy-nine-year-old billionaires from Russia. She thought of her mum’s goodnight kisses, with breath that smelled like the gum she chewed to stay awake while she studied, and her dad with his shaven, nuggety cyclist legs. She thought of Mum Crum and her house that smelt of swampy soup and plaster dust.
It didn’t matter that everybody here was good and kind and that she was having fun. This homesickness was a real thing, an actual ache. Madeleine was surprised by its muscle. She turned into her pillow and started to cry.
‘Madeleine,’ whispered Gert. ‘Are you all right?’ She padded over and sat on the floor by Madeleine’s bed. ‘Please, Madeleine. Please don’t cry. We shall get you home.’
‘But how?’ Madeleine asked. ‘We couldn’t even manage to get back to the grotto today, and I’m sure it won’t work even if we do. I hate feeling so useless. I can never change anything. Not back home. Not here. I’m like a gumnut on the ocean, and I’m sick of it.’
‘Don’t you like it here?’
Madeleine sat up and looked at Gert. ‘I had such a fun day. Elfriede is so sophisticated, and I’ve never had sisters – and the bath tonight was special here in the nursery, but it’s only made me sadder. If I knew I were only here for a short stay it would be wonderful – but it’s the not knowing how long I’m here for that makes it hard.’
Gert got up and sat on the edge of Madeleine’s bed. She rubbed her shoulder. ‘The grotto, then.’ She thumped Madeleine on the back. ‘Shall we try it now?’
‘What?’ Madeleine wiped her nose along the sleeve of her nightgown.
‘We shall go tonight. It’s a clear night, and it’s not wet.’
‘But we need Bea’s dress slippers.’
‘Wait here.’
Before Madeleine could stop her, Gert walked into Charlie and Imo’s room. She returned moments later, the old sparkly shoes visible under her arm in the pink glow of the fire.
Madeleine smiled. Just seeing the shoes made her feel closer to home. It gave her something to hold onto.
Gert handed them to her. ‘Mummy and Daddy have not yet retired for the evening, but we shall go later. I’ll stay awake.’
Madeleine lay back on her pillow. ‘Gert?’
‘Mmmm?’
‘Thank you.’
Later that night, when nothing stirred, the girls sneaked down the skinny wooden servants’ staircase in their nighties, boots in hand. The stairs were uncarpeted and as creaky as old-man knees; they were so small compared to the rest of the house that they looked like they were made for five-year-old kids or hobbits.
Gert held an unlit candle with a folded wick. The gas lamps were on downstairs, and the whole house had a sort of garlicky smell.
Madeleine put her hand over her mouth and nose. ‘It stinks!’<
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‘That’s the gas,’ whispered Gert as the girls crept down the butler’s pantry and through the back door.
Outside, the girls pulled on their boots and stood still. The night sky was pinned with thousands of stars, but beyond the house the garden looked as black as pitch. The night was so cold and so silent that it had a smell and a density all its own.
Madeleine followed Gert along the gravel path down towards the lake and the grotto beyond. They stuck to the sides, picking their way silently through the bracken. The leaves of the flowers were black and shiny in the reflected candlelight. A pair of possums started fighting in a tree above the girls, hissing and belching. Gert hissed back, and they yelped and scuttled off.
Madeleine shivered in her nightie and wished she’d brought a shawl. You know you’ve been in the olden days too long when you’re wishing for a shawl rather than a parka, she thought.
They reached the grotto more quickly than Madeleine had expected. It wasn’t warm, but it felt warmer than outside because it smelt of earth and stone. Gert pulled a small silver box containing matches from her sleeve and lit her candle again. In the flickering light, the girls’ breath was smoke. Gert waved the light around the little stone room and the mirror chips stuck to the wall winked back. It was beautiful but terrifying, thought Madeleine, staring right into a doll’s eye gummed to the wall.
Madeleine held Bea’s shoes out in front of her, one resting on each upturned palm, the silver sparkles dancing in the dim light.
‘It must have been beautiful to watch these on Bea’s feet,’ she said to Gert.
Gert held her candle closer to the shoes. ‘When she was presented she looked like a princess. We all sat downstairs, and she came floating down, with the longest train and three feathers on her head, and I . . . well, I thought of my own debut, and how I will never look like that no matter how beautiful my dress or slippers.’
‘Yes, you will,’ said Madeleine. ‘It’s amazing what they can do with make-up and lighting.’
‘No, I won’t,’ said Gert, ‘and sometimes that’s really difficult.’
‘But who cares, really? It’s only part of the package. You’ve got a million other strengths,’ said Madeleine. ‘You’re kind and brave, and I don’t know any other kid who would spit back at possums in the middle of the night.’