Willow Tree Bend

by Kaye Dobbie

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Faith had said, trying not to sound desperate. ‘No one’s put ideas into my head. They’re my own ideas, Mum.’

  But the party had opened her eyes to what she was missing. People who spoke her language, who understood how she felt and what she wanted, and who related to her in a way her mother never could. And worst of all was the thought that one day she might end up here, at the cottage, in her mother’s shoes.

  ‘What did Hope say? About you leaving?’ Joe’s voice interrupted her thoughts, rising above the hum of his VC Valiant. He’d bought the car a few months ago and it was his pride and joy.

  ‘Why, what has she said to you?’

  Her sister, Hope, was still at school, but she often hung out at the milk bar, or the fish and chip shop next door. Faith suspected that it was Pete who was the attraction, although whenever she warned her sister about Pete’s flirtatious ways, she became irritatingly coy. Hope had been so upset when Faith told her she was leaving that she’d run off down to the old willow tree by the bend in the creek.

  The willow had always been the sisters’ special place. Somewhere to brood when life wasn’t going the way they wanted it to, or to share their secrets or current concerns, or just have a good laugh. This time it was Hope who sat alone within the winter-bare curtain of branches, looking miserable. Faith hadn’t followed her. Because what could she say? She wasn’t going to change her mind no matter how much Hope wanted her to. This was her chance to break free of her stifling life, and all of the dreams and expectations that Faith realised were not hers and that she did not want to fulfil.

  Joe replied in his measured way. ‘Your sister didn’t say much. I told her you’d probably be back in a couple of weeks.’

  Faith narrowed her eyes at him. The thing about Joe was that he was always so charmingly laid-back, you couldn’t be angry with him for long. So instead of sulking, she said, ‘Hope’s in the high school play this year, did you know? She’s the star and it’s a big deal for her. I’ve told her I’ll try to get back to see it, but …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I probably won’t want to.’

  Joe lifted an eyebrow in a way that always made her laugh. He had dark hair and blue eyes, which Faith didn’t think of as very Italian, but according to him that was because his grandparents had come from the north of the country, up near the Swiss border. He had a nice smile, too, and a few times she’d felt that if she gave him just a bit more encouragement he might ask her out.

  Yes, he was nice. Good-looking, dependable and, according to her mother, of the ‘right’ religion—her mother had always been a churchgoer. Knowing that Lily approved of Joe had the opposite effect on Faith. She’d choose to go out with any number of losers rather than him. Anyway, right now she was focused on her future. Melbourne, the Big Smoke. She was heading into the open arms of the city, and she didn’t want anything or anyone holding her back.

  She’d wanted to leave for quite some time now. The party had just brought it all to a head. There were days when she felt as if this place was slowly strangling her, and, as she’d tried to tell Joe, making it harder and harder to breathe. She might die if she stayed a moment longer, or worse, be so weighed down by the minutia of her life in this small country town that even if she had the opportunity to escape, she would no longer have the strength.

  Joe turned on the radio and a song from the Beatles’ White Album filled the car. Faith closed her eyes as the world slipped by outside the window. The familiar bushland and paddocks, the narrow road changing to asphalt, and then the highway. She listened to the music and didn’t want to talk anymore; her choice had been made.

  A slow curl of excitement began to unfurl in the pit of her stomach. Even remembering Hope’s teary rejection earlier today, and her mother’s sad face, couldn’t dampen it. Tomorrow she would wake up in Kitty’s room, and when she looked out of the window she wouldn’t see the slope running down to the creek and the old willow tree with its pendulous branches whispering in the breeze. She’d see busy streets with cars rushing past, and people moving forward with purpose.

  Her life was going to be very different from now on, and Faith couldn’t wait.

  SAMANTHA

  Monday 10 January 2000, Golden Gully, Victoria

  I straightened up as some corellas flew squawking overhead. My back might ache but I was smiling. Surely nothing was better than this? There before me was laid out my hard day’s work in the form of the newly planted front garden of a newly built house on the outskirts of town.

  The owners had heard of me through the local grapevine—Suzy, who managed the local supermarket, was good for getting the word out. We’d been to school together back in the dark ages and now she was married with four kids, unlike single, childless me.

  After she’d regaled my most recent client with stories of my brilliant garden designs, they’d requested I draw up some plans. Sometimes when I set out my vision of a client’s garden it was rejected or, worse, fell into a black hole. With the latter, I rarely found out what it was about my plans they disliked, which was frustrating, especially when I’d poured my heart and soul into them. In this case the client loved my ideas and, I hoped, my friendly professionalism. So much so that they had no hesitation in contracting me to put my plans into action.

  And, I smiled to myself again, they’d be pleased with the result, too. I’d been at pains to explain that you had to wait, and in these times of instant gratification, waiting could be a difficult ask. Give it a year or two and their garden would be just as they imagined it—a retreat from the hurry of their weekly lives in the city, and an idyll to escape to on the weekends.

  More and more people who’d moved into the Golden Gully district were weekenders, nine-to-fivers who were hoping to eventually retire full-time to the country. Green-changers, some of the locals called them.

  They were my bread and butter, and without the green-change movement Green Dreams, my fledgling garden design and landscaping business would have foundered long ago. Particularly during the hot, dry months of summer and the frosty cold winters. It had taken me a long time, and a lot of false turns, to discover my true calling, and I was determined to make it a success.

  A car horn tooted and I looked up as a dusty four-wheel drive came to a stop. My father was here, right on time. He really was the most reliable man I knew. I reminded myself that whatever had caused the ruction between him and my mother was none of my business. Faith could be difficult, it was true, but she was never intentionally unkind, and for her to go off like that, with all that was happening …

  I’d heard about middle-aged women unexpectedly wanting a complete life makeover, it’s just I never thought she’d be one of them.

  Of course I had asked Dad about it. Or tried to. Apart from him telling me it was Mum’s business and to leave it, I didn’t get much joy. Mum had rung me a couple of days ago, so I knew she was fine. I kept telling myself there was nothing to worry about and I would have believed it, if it hadn’t been for my increasing sense of misgiving.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘North Queensland,’ she said, after a hesitation, which made me wonder whether she was even going to tell me. Then, before I could ask her where in North Queensland, ‘I’m okay, everything is okay, don’t worry.’

  ‘But what about Hope? Will you be back in time? Dad’s freaking out—’ I broke off, not wanting to be disloyal to my father, and anyway, she must know how worried he was.

  ‘Things are difficult here, but I’ll try.’

  I attempted to get my head around that one. Faith, who always liked to be in control, wasn’t bothered by her sister arriving from the US and her not being there to boss everyone around? Not to mention her new line of desserts, which she had been working on for months and months, and were due to be released any day now.

  ‘Mum, what is it? You know you can tell me. Is something … has Dad …?’

  ‘This is nothing to do with your father, Sam. He hasn’t d
one anything wrong. It’s just something I have to do. Something from the past that I need to sort out. I’ll explain it when I see you.’

  ‘Explain what?’

  ‘Sam,’ she took a breath, ‘when you were born I held you in my arms and I felt as if I’d been handed a miracle. I still feel that.’

  My family didn’t say things like this. We loved each other, but we rarely spoke about how we felt. To hear these words from my mother was far more shocking than her telling me she was in North Queensland.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I whispered.

  And then I heard the waves in the background. Was she on a beach somewhere sipping a pina colada? The image flashed before my eyes: my mother in a bikini—she still had the figure for it—a flower in her blonde hair and a sun-bronzed surfie at her side. Suddenly I was angry and frightened, and as usual the combination brought out the worst in me.

  ‘You know this is so selfish,’ I said in a tight little voice. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t bother coming home after all.’

  That was when I hung up.

  Afterwards, I’d reminded myself that my parents were both adults, and whatever it was that had sent Mum off on this secret mission, well it was up to them to sort it out. Despite her odd words she had sounded fine, not as if she was having a breakdown or anything. No, the very idea was ludicrous. The only times I had seen her overwrought were when she was angry with me and my life choices. She’d wanted me to join her in the Cantani Desserts business, and when I refused it was as if I’d started World War III. Since then things had settled down and she’d come to accept that I wasn’t her and never would be.

  I had to make my own way in life, and therefore my own mistakes.

  Collecting together my tools, I walked towards the four-wheel drive. Dad got out to help me load them into the back. His blue eyes were narrowed, deepening the wrinkles in his lean, sun-browned face, and his short dark hair was sprinkled with grey. My father was a handsome man and I didn’t think I was biased in thinking so. It was a bit of a shame that when I looked into the mirror I always thought I resembled the Taylor side of the family, although I’d inherited his blue eyes.

  ‘Good day?’ he said, but it wasn’t really a question. Evidently, he could tell by the look of me that it had been.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ I smiled at him. ‘And thanks for picking me up, Dad. The garage rang to tell me my rust bucket should be ready by tomorrow, so I’m hoping you won’t need to come to my rescue again. Not for a while anyway.’

  The old ute had been giving me more grief than usual, but it ran on an oily rag, and as long as it was fixable I figured it was cheaper than spending money I didn’t have on buying something new and pretty.

  ‘You must have enough to do as it is,’ I added, as we climbed into the cabin. I meant with Mum not here, therefore giving him an opportunity to vent, but as usual my father kept his thoughts buried deep beneath his stoic exterior.

  ‘I’m managing.’

  I glanced at him, seeing the strain and the sleepless nights, and wondered about that. Had he and Mum ever been apart? I had a feeling they never had, not since their wedding day thirty years ago. Their love for each other was something I had taken for granted for so long it was a shock to imagine it might be starting to unravel.

  He backed down the driveway, twisting around to see where he was going. My gaze fell on his tanned wrist, and I noted with a sense of relief that he was still wearing the Rolex watch. I wasn’t sure why I’d been worried he might have taken it off, only that seeing it there as usual was comforting.

  Mum had given him the Rolex on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and according to her, she had saved up for months because she wanted it to be special. A gift he could keep. As Dad told it, he’d been totally blown away. He’d even shed a couple of tears, and seeing them together, smiling into each other’s eyes, I had never doubted their marriage was still as strong as ever.

  So, what was going on?

  I glanced sideways at him as we set off down the road. When Hope arrived with her camera crew in tow, would it be just me and Dad bearing the brunt? Hope would want us to play happy families, when the truth was she hadn’t been home in ten years. Did Dad find all of this as awkward as I did? Usually my father took things in his stride, but his sister-in-law’s imminent arrival, as well as Mum running away up north, had brought a haunted look to his eyes.

  It was true that a couple of times recently I’d interrupted words between my parents. As soon as they noticed me they’d gone into ‘cover-up mode’, as I called it, pretending everything was peachy. They should have been ASIO operatives, or actors like Hope. I’d shrugged it off because I had worries of my own. I was twenty-nine, for God’s sake. I had my own life, such as it was. And yet the idea of my parents’ marriage imploding left me wanting to squirm about in my seat like a little girl.

  Right now, Hope’s impending visit seemed like something we could really do without.

  My aunt was pretty much a stranger, to me anyway, and I’d never thought she and my mother were all that close. Not the clingy sort of sisterly love I’d seen displayed by other families. There was a wariness about them, a sense of things that had been left unspoken for so long that now they were unmentionable.

  I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times during the year my mother spoke to Hope on the phone. When she had a new movie or was making an appearance on television, we made the effort to see it. There was never the sort of sibling envy one might have expected. My mother smiled and took it all in her stride, giving the impression that she wasn’t jealous in the slightest. And it wasn’t an act—Mum honestly didn’t want to change places with her famous sister. She was happy in her own skin.

  Or at least she had been until she set off for the Sunshine State.

  I turned my mind back to the last time Hope came to visit. It had been a whirlwind trip, and I was eighteen and it hadn’t gone well. I’d still been going through my rebellious stage—yes, I was a late bloomer. I was standing there in my old torn jeans and dusty boots and halter top, and out of the blue in had walked Hope in a cloud of Shalimar. She had brought a suitcase full of designer clothes from the US, which she presented to me with a smug little smile. She’d expected me to be ecstatic, but I wasn’t that sort of girl. She must have wondered what was wrong with me. My boyfriend at the time had been more impressed by my glamorous and famous aunty than I had been.

  I admitted now that I’d been insensitive and ignorant and judgemental. At the time, Mum was furious with me, but she’d begun to see glimmers of maturity, as if I might finally be turning from a grungy caterpillar into a butterfly, so for that reason she hadn’t made too big a deal of it. Hope had no children of her own and didn’t understand, and although she’d pretended to laugh away my rejection, I knew I’d hurt her feelings. The memory still made me uncomfortable. I hadn’t lost my complete disdain for the high end of fashion, but if it happened today I’d accept the clothes and sell them on eBay. I needed the money after all.

  ‘How long will Hope be staying?’ I asked my father.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘You should ask Faith.’ And then he stopped and took a sharp breath, almost as if someone had struck him.

  I felt my worry ramping up by leaps and bounds. Maybe I was wrong and the situation was worse than I’d imagined! Why oh why had I told my mother not to come home?

  ‘Dad …?’

  ‘She said she’d like to take some time to catch up with us after the filming.’ His voice was measured, back to normal, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘The program’s Looking Back, right?’ I kept my gaze on him, and I noticed he had returned to cover-up mode.

  ‘Looking Back, yeah. Not something I would have thought Hope did all that often.’

  I was wondering what he meant, until his next words chased all those questions from my mind.

  ‘You know her plane is arriving day after tomorrow?’

  ‘So soon! It seemed weeks away.
’

  ‘Don’t worry, she’s being collected. She’ll see us when she gets here. No doubt we’ll receive our instructions.’ He half smiled to show he wasn’t really having a dig at Hope’s high-handed manner.

  ‘The town will go crazy.’

  It already had. People I knew, and those I didn’t, were asking me questions, eager to see her.

  ‘Yeah. Local girl returns to her humble roots. I can imagine the TV news headlines. Don’t be too hard on her, Sam, she is a pretty good actress.’

  ‘Is she still linked to that Hollywood director?’ I tapped my fingers on my knee. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I forget his name, too. Someone famous. You’ll have to ask her.’

  Definitely not. I wasn’t going to pry into my aunt’s personal life. Although I was grateful to her.

  When my grandmother, Lily Taylor, had decided it was too much for her living alone at the Willow Tree Bend property, she, Faith and Hope had put their heads together to decide what to do about it. Lily probably would have liked one of her daughters to carry on there, but Hope had her life overseas, and Faith was married to Joe and her business. Neither of them had ever expressed any desire to move back into the cottage.

  I didn’t know my grandfather, Rex Taylor. He’d walked out when Mum was little. They’d all lived in the cottage on the hill, and although in later years we’d visited often, Rex was never mentioned. It was as if Gran had wiped him from her memory. Mum said that was fine by her, he wasn’t a nice person, but she didn’t say much more than that. I did get the sense, though, that he’d been one of those men who couldn’t see a woman without trying to sleep with her.

  Dad’s large extended family was a different matter. When I was little we’d had many happy holidays with the Cantanis. Although Joe and Peter had been the only children of their parents, there were plenty of great uncles and aunts, as well as a matriarchal great-grandmother, and I’d sometimes found myself with more cousins than I knew what to do with. The original Cantani settlers lived further to the south, where most of the older descendants remained, but as time went on, and family members died or their children grew up and left home, they began to scatter and lose touch.