Lyrebird Hill

by Anna Romer

  Carsten grunted and buried his face against my neck. Reaching down, he grasped a handful of my nightgown and dragged up the hem to my waist. I felt a shudder of heat as his skin pressed against mine. He forced his knee between my legs, and when he dropped his full weight on me and began to move, I let out a huff of surprise.

  I thought about the snakes, and the memory of the gunshot blast that had ended their union, unable to forget the bloodied mess that had become of them.

  Carsten went still. The bed creaked as he rolled off me. For a time, he sat on the edge of the mattress, his head in his hands. I lay very still, not understanding. I had grown up on a farm, where rams climbed on ewes, and stallions went over the mares, and shearers’ dogs always seemed to be on heat. Of course, I reasoned that the human act must certainly be far more genteel than the goings on of a farmyard, but as far as I could tell, Carsten’s attempt had not been successful.

  The lamp came on. Carsten stood and trod across the room. His body was lean and pale, downy with soft dark hair. He dragged on his trousers and collected his shirt from the back of the chair.

  I sat up. ‘Carsten? Did I do something wrong?’

  A handful of minutes passed. Carsten lingered in the dark, his unbuttoned shirt hanging open, the moonlight shining on his face. His cheeks gleamed, as if they were wet.

  ‘It’s nothing you’ve done,’ he finally said in a thick voice. ‘Go to sleep, it’s been a long day. I’m tired, that’s all. So very tired.’

  He tucked in his shirt and buttoned it, then reached for his waistcoat. He put on his shoes, then picked up his watch and chain from the desk but didn’t slip it into his pocket straightaway. Instead he cradled it in his palm, moving into a patch of moonlight the better to see, rubbing his thumb over its face as though engulfed by memory.

  I thought I heard him murmur a name, and felt a spark of hopefulness that the subject of his thoughts was me. But before I had a chance to ask, he turned on his heel and went out the bedroom door, closing it silently behind him.

  For a long time I lay still. My nightdress was bunched around my thighs, and I sensed a chill creeping into the room. A feeling of unease crept over me; Carsten had said little, but displeasure had radiated from him like gusts of foul air. I felt tainted by it, grubby and heartsore, yet unable to pinpoint exactly what had gone wrong between us.

  After a while, I began to shiver. Getting out of bed, I collected my shawl and went to the window. The moon was full, gleaming through the trees, as bright as a sovereign. The downstairs clock struck midnight.

  Below in the garden, a blur of white made me look down.

  A woman was hurrying along the path. Like me, she was dressed only in a nightgown. Her feet were bare, and her dark hair cascaded over her shoulders.

  Adele.

  She stumbled, and began to cough, that same chest rattle I had heard earlier on the stairs. Then she recovered herself and rushed on. Reaching her arms in front of her, she began to snatch at the air as if trying to catch something that danced invisibly just ahead of her. In a heartbeat, she was gone.

  For a long while I stood there, waiting for her to return. When she didn’t, I grew worried. Going to the door, I pressed my ear to the cold wood and listened for any sounds of disturbance. Somewhere along the hallway a door clicked softly shut . . . but there were no raised voices, no rushing footfall, no indication of things amiss.

  Back at the window, I searched the dark garden. The trees moved gently, their leaves stirred by a night breeze. Stars glittered in the inky sky. I waited, my feet growing numb on the icy floor, my breathing shallow, my neck stiff with tension.

  Then a man appeared. I recognised Lucien Fells immediately. He made haste along the pathway as Adele had done, but when he was directly below my window, he looked up. I froze, and if he saw me he made no show of it. Instead he rushed on, taking the same fork in the path that Adele had taken.

  I stood at the window until my feet grew numb. My room had grown dark, the candle long burned away, but outside the sky had begun to lighten. The grandfather clock downstairs rumbled out another hour. My eyes were gritty from searching the garden’s dark shadows, but I knew that if I turned away now and climbed into my bed, sleep would never come.

  I waited at the window until dawn finally crested the horizon.

  Still, Lucien and Adele did not return.

  7

  The best therapy for a broken heart is love.

  – ROB THISTLETON, LET GO AND LIVE

  Ruby, May 2013

  The air was cold and damp, still heavy with the weight of rain. I followed the steep driveway downhill into the valley. I could smell river water, and the spicy tang of trampled gum leaves, and as I emerged through the trees I found myself in a scene straight from childhood.

  The garden was overgrown with wildflowers: purple peas, white ammobium daisies and native bluebells springing up among clumps of silvery grass. Beyond the garden was bushland. Feathery cassinia and ferns formed a thick understorey beneath contorted salmon gums and upright black ironbarks. Leaves fluttered gently in the uppermost boughs, ablaze with dawn light. Further down the slope, I saw the glint of water.

  In the midst of this wild garden was a spacious double-storey stone house surrounded by a deep verandah. Wisteria snaked up peeling posts, each trunk as thick as my arm; leafy brackets grew up onto the roof, and the ground below was littered with fallen leaves.

  The verandah decking looked recently swept, but an air of emptiness hung over the place. I saw no sign of a car, and all the windows were shut tight despite the sunshine. I wiped my muddy trainers on the bristle mat, then mounted the steps and offloaded my overnight bag. Then I knocked on the front door.

  ‘Esther? It’s Ruby Cardel, are you there?’

  I waited to hear footsteps, but when none came I knocked again. Finches twittered in the grevillea, and the river burbled over its stony bed . . . but the house lay in silence.

  I went around and knocked on the back door, but it was clear no one was home. Going down the steps, I wandered into the garden. The vegie patch was still in the same spot, halfway down the slope to the river. Its wire fence was buckled, and the posts were split by harsh weather. Huge mounds of zucchini and rambling pumpkin dominated the garden beds, and the crops growing between them – onions and eggplant, beans and tomatoes – were thriving.

  Shivering in the morning air, I went back onto the verandah and cupped my eyes against the kitchen window. Inside lay a gloomy stillness. But as my eyes adjusted, my heart gave a lurch.

  There was our old dining table, with the same mismatched wooden chairs, where Mum and Jamie and I had sat to eat breakfast. On the table beside a jar of wilting roses sat a big floral teapot; nearby was a book with a gardening glove marking the page, a wooden bowl containing a mound of shrivelled apples.

  My stomach rumbled; the hollow ache I’d managed to ignore until now reminded me I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime the day before.

  I wiped my breath-fog off the kitchen window.

  On the long walk here, I hadn’t seen any cars; if Esther had driven into Armidale this morning, surely our paths would have crossed? I recalled the headlights I’d seen last night, and wondered if that had been her; maybe she’d gone on holiday?

  Cupping my face again, I peered back into the kitchen.

  The bowl of withered apples didn’t appeal, but I spied a kettle. And surely there was a biscuit tin lurking in one of those cupboards.

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  Esther wouldn’t want me to starve; there might be an awkward moment if she arrived home and found me ransacking her larder, but we’d probably just have a good old laugh about it. Besides, I was starting to feel faint.

  Returning to the back verandah, I slipped out of my muddy runners and rolled the legs of my sodden track pants. I gave the door handle a twist and found it open – but I didn’t go straight in. For an eternal moment, I teetered in that doorway, my pulse skipping lightly, my breath shallow. This had o
nce been my home; Jamie’s home, too. The last time I had stepped across this threshold I was thirteen years old, haunted by my sister’s death, and confused by my mother’s apparent rejection of me.

  I was now thirty; not all that much else had changed.

  The old house’s dizzying silence crashed around me. Still I stood there, half-expecting to hear voices drifting along the hallway, or echoing from the upstairs rooms. Jamie’s bright chatter, my mother’s tinkling laughter. Maybe even my own adolescent voice, piping like a now-extinct bird from the back room. When I took a tentative breath, memory threw back the aromas of tea brewed bitterly strong, and freshly baked blackberry muffins and homemade sour cream.

  In the kitchen, I found a full pantry.

  Cans of beans, tomatoes, corn. Mushrooms, tuna. Peaches and apricot halves in syrup. Boxes of crackers, jars of jam and chutney. Grabbing a tin of peaches, I rummaged in the drawer for a can opener, then a spoon. I stood at the sink and ate, and I do believe those peaches were the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted. Going back to the pantry, I examined the array of tins. My stomach grumbled softly, urging me to open more peaches, but the apricots looked good, too, and would probably go down well with a few of those crackers . . . and, forgive me for hallucinating, but was that a packet of Iced VoVos—

  A muffled hum broke the stillness. I went to the window. The sky was brilliant blue; no trace remained of yesterday’s thunderstorm. Sunlight cascaded through the trees, gilding the leaves and turning the grass to silver.

  A car motor, then?

  I cleared the evidence of my crime: rinsed and dried the spoon, wiped the opener and crammed it back in its crowded drawer, deposited the empty peach tin in what I hoped was a recycle bin under the sink. Then I flew across the kitchen, down the hall and out the door, my stomach churning in protest.

  Outside, my hearing sharpened. The sound was only marginally louder. There was no sign of a car, and no accompanying dust cloud. The noise seemed to come from overhead.

  I examined the sky. A streak of white trailed across the pristine blue. It was a plane, quietly travelling to some port of civilisation. A few seconds later it vanished, and its faraway drone dwindled to silence.

  I returned to the kitchen.

  There was a gas stove, and I rummaged for matches then set the kettle on the flame. Opening the apricots, I reclaimed my spoon and tucked in while the water boiled. Then I rinsed the floral teapot, freshening it with swills of scalding water. When the tea was made, I loaded a tray with the pot, a cup, a jar of sugar and the packet of biscuits, and headed out to the verandah.

  The sun – and a full belly – had made me sleepy. The mud on my track pants had dried, and I’d brushed the worst of it off my legs and feet. Settling back against the warm stones, I yawned. Before long, I was drifting.

  In the haze of half-sleep, I could hear someone digging.

  It was Mum. She was under the walnut tree, jabbing a shovel into the compacted soil around the roots. She wore jeans and a colourful tie-dyed blouse. Strange. She never went in the garden in her good clothes. And why was she crying? I could hear her sobs, see the puffy redness of her face.

  She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, then kneeled beside the hole. From near the trunk of the walnut tree, she picked up what appeared to be a large flat biscuit tin and placed it in the ground. Again she wiped her eyes, then got to her feet and began shovelling dirt back into the hole. Crying, crying all the while.

  I shook my head to clear the dream, and when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was the walnut tree. The smooth bark of its contorted limbs glowed silver in the dappled morning sunlight, and shadows darkened the patchy grass at its base. It was far from the serene picture-postcard Mum had painted; the real garden around me was an overgrown shambles, and the screech of lorikeets and chatter of finches was anything but tranquil. Once, Mum had loved the wildness of this garden. I couldn’t help wondering if her painting reflected a need to pare away the disorder and somehow make sense of Jamie’s death; or at least portray our wilderness home as a place of harmony and stillness, a safe place that belonged on the lid of a chocolate box.

  Or a biscuit tin.

  I stood suddenly, remembering another element of the painting: the small, grave-like mound beneath the tree. There was no mound now, just grass littered with leaves and a few blackened pods.

  Going around the house, I found the old barn. Native sarsaparilla rambled up its sides, but its stone walls and wide door were exactly as I remembered. At the far end, to my right, were three old stable stalls, now chock-full of wheelbarrows and garden tools and rolls of chain link fencing. Parked in front of the stalls was a beautifully restored vintage Morris Minor.

  I was about to go in search of a spade when a noisy rumble entered the stillness. I ducked around the side of the house and stood in the shade of a red gum, waiting for the vehicle to appear.

  A moment later a battered ute burst through the trees and clattered past, finally coming to rest in front of the barn. A man climbed out, followed closely by a pair of red kelpies. Leaving the car door open, he walked unsteadily to the house and sat on the verandah steps. The dogs bounded up to him, sniffing and whining as he sank his head in his hands.

  Esther hadn’t mentioned that she lived with anyone. Perhaps he was a relative; a nephew or grandson. Whoever he was, I knew I should have alerted him to my presence, but my mouth was suddenly dry. If I called out, the dogs would see me and rush over. Already they were sniffing beneath the kitchen window, noses keen to the ground. Any moment now they’d catch my scent.

  The scar on my shoulder began to itch, a painful pricking that made me want to scratch until I drew blood. I took a fortifying breath, but instead of making a move towards the man as I’d planned, I shuffled deeper into the shade, wishing myself invisible.

  Please don’t see me.

  Rob always said my dog phobia was normal, after the attack when I was a kid, but he’d also pointed out that I was using my fear as an emotional crutch, an excuse to avoid responsibility for the way my life was – for my anxiety and overeating and worrying. According to Rob, fears stemming from childhood were the hardest to let go of; and yet often they were the most irrational, too.

  One of the dogs let out a question-mark whine. Then its head jerked in my direction. It gave a surprised, angry-sounding bark. Then, like demonic shadows from my own personal hell, both creatures began racing up the slope towards me.

  My scream was brief, but shrill enough to crack glass.

  The man shot to his feet and saw me. ‘Stop!’

  I froze in place. Even if I’d wanted to run, my legs were suddenly trembling so hard I wouldn’t have managed two steps.

  Then I realised his command had been directed at the dogs. They had halted in their tracks a couple of metres from where I stood. They continued to bark, but neither made a move to come any closer.

  ‘Old Boy, Bardo,’ the man said sharply.

  The barking ceased. The man strode past the dogs and lifted his hand in greeting.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  I might have asked the same of him. His hair was a shaggy mess of light brown, streaked gold at the tips. His square face was half-hidden behind a beard. Most striking of all were his eyes; they were red-rimmed as if he’d been crying, but the irises were a pure bright kingfisher blue.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, glancing at the dogs. ‘I got a bit of a shock, that’s all.’

  ‘They’re harmless,’ he said, scrubbing his palms over his face. ‘Bark’s worse than their bite, and all that.’

  Under the beard, he had a friendly face; a bit weathered, freckled by the sun, a generous mouth, and cheeks dimpled with laugh lines. But it was his eyes that got me – not just the colour, but the way they were regarding me, warmly, almost intimately as if—

  Impossible. I was sure I’d never seen him before. He was probably only staring because of my dishevelled appearance. My shoes and track pants were covered in mud, and after spending
the night in the car, I’d been so intent on getting to Lyrebird Hill that I’d neglected to brush my hair. And if I’d bothered to check the mirror, I knew I would have found raccoon-like mascara-eyes.

  ‘This’ll sound crazy,’ he said, ‘but we’ve met before, haven’t we?’

  I stared at him in surprise. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Was he flirting? I took a closer look, taking in the wide mouth, the windswept hair, and threadbare T-shirt and jeans; there was something about him, but I couldn’t be sure.

  He shook his head, apparently embarrassed, and it was suddenly clear to me that he hadn’t been flirting, but genuinely curious. He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes crinkled up in a friendly way. My heart did a double-beat. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, or maybe his regretful little half-smile sparked – not recognition exactly – rather, a tiny ember of wishing that I had met him before.

  ‘Are you a relative of Esther’s?’ I asked.

  ‘A friend,’ he said quietly. ‘I live on the next property. That is, I bought a hundred acres off Esther a few years back. I run a small nursery business – native trees, that sort of thing. On my days off, I’m Esther’s gardener. At least I was,’ he added quietly.

  I was about to ask what he meant, when his gaze sharpened suddenly on my face. He smiled – an almost shy smile – and dimples appeared in his cheeks.

  ‘Ruby?’

  I blinked. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t—’

  ‘I’m Pete,’ he said. He must have registered my lost look, because he quickly added, ‘We were at school together.’

  I smiled, relieved. At least now I had a reference point.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, shaking my hand in an oddly formal gesture, grasping my fingers snugly in his. ‘I don’t expect you to remember me. I was only in the area for six months. Esther told me ages ago that you lost your memory after your sister died. I never got to tell you how sorry I was about that.’