Lyrebird Hill

by Anna Romer

Lucien smiled, his gaze full of green fire. The ugly whiplash scar on his face vanished into that smile, and I became aware only of the shining eyes that crinkled at the corners, the dimples bracketing his mouth, the fine cheekbones and brow framed by tendrils of bright red–gold hair.

  ‘I believe the same is true of horses,’ he said gently. ‘They bear no one any ill will. I’ve spent a great deal of time observing them. If a horse is tricky, I can guarantee you there has been a cruel master in its history.’

  I looked at Lucien from the corner of my eye, sensing that there was also a hidden meaning to his words, just as there had been to mine.

  ‘If I was a great artist like you,’ he went on, looking down at the grassy track we walked away, ‘then I would want to uncover the secret nature of things.’

  I gave him a sharp look. ‘What do you mean, secret nature?’

  A pink flush crept across his cheekbones. ‘I suppose I mean the spirit in us. The good. The truth that lies beneath the false face we show to the world. We aren’t like those orchids or vines you talked about. We are complicated. We are joy-seeking beings – and yet we bring harm to one another, lie and mistreat and prey on others’ weaknesses for our own ends. But deception is its own reward. The only ones we truly hurt are ourselves. We get distracted by the mask, and forget that our true nature is love—’

  These last sentences were spoken in a raspy whisper, but I clung to each word, enthralled by what he was saying. Once, Mee Mee had related a story about an old woman who killed and ate her son’s young wife. The son was heartbroken because he believed his wife had deserted him, and his mother continued that deception. In the end, the son learned the truth, and banished his mother into the submerged root system of an ancient red gum.

  Mee Mee’s meaning had been clear, just as Lucien’s meaning was now clear.

  Deception is its own reward.

  Lucien stopped walking and gave me a lopsided smile.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly. Splashes of colour danced on his cheekbones, glowing against his paleness and clashing with the copper tones of his hair. ‘I’ve run off my mouth and made a fool of myself. Now you see why I keep my own company.’

  I ventured a small smile. ‘I enjoyed your train of thought. It’s given me much to ponder.’

  He dragged his fingers through his hair. ‘You must think me a firebrand for ranting on that way.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Everyone else does.’

  ‘I’m not everyone else.’

  We stood regarding one another in the dappled sunlight. Adele was waiting at the house and I longed to see her; I knew I shouldn’t dally here in the company of my husband’s manservant. But my head felt so suddenly light, I feared the slightest movement would send me drifting up into the clouds like a feathery wisp.

  It wasn’t Lucien’s appearance that held me transfixed to the spot at that moment, but his words. Who was this wild boy who preferred the draughty stables to the warmth and comfort of a manor house? A boy who shrank from society, and yet spoke with such eloquent abandon of delving into the mysteries of human nature?

  ‘I liked what you said,’ I admitted. ‘I can see sense in it.’

  We walked on in silence. I was curious to hear more of his theorems, but already my mind was awhirl. I needed a quiet place to brew over what he’d said, absorb it. To absorb him.

  He was no longer the humble stable-hand; he was a young man aglow with passion, his hair on fire, his dark eyes full of the ferocity of the sea. The sight of him, the idea of him, the very existence of him sent shivers across my skin. My spirit rose, soaring free on wings of possibility. For a moment I was as he said, a joy-seeking being in full flight . . .

  But then my elation dimmed.

  How must I appear to him? Next to Adele I was plain and drab, bookish and thin. I was the moon, while Adele was the brilliant, radiant sun. Anyway, why was I thinking these thoughts? I was a married woman now. For better or worse, I was bound by law to a man I was swiftly coming to despise.

  We reached the perimeter of the garden. Shadows crawled among the birches. Through gaps in the tall straight trunks I could see the house, its stone walls glowing pale gold in the sunlight. And there on the eastern face was a tiny rectangular blot of darkness: my bedchamber window.

  I said my farewells to Lucien, who set out along the path to the stables, while I hurried towards the house. In the short span of time it took me to reach the verandah, my mood had darkened. My meeting in the glade with Lucien glowed in my mind’s eye like a bright gemstone, full of colour and light – contrasting all the more painfully with my memory of Carsten’s rough treatment of me.

  I paused in the shadows to glance back along the path. From this side of the house there was no view of the stable yard, just the copse of birches and the wilderness of garden beds between. Lucien was gone, but somehow he still lingered.

  I was dimly aware that a change had occurred. My customary prudence and good sense had broken formation and flapped away like a flock of southbound geese. Outwardly I looked the same, but inside my secret nature stirred. The blood of my mother’s people flowed through my veins; it was wild blood, blood that sang of open spaces and wide starry skies.

  Hugging my elbows, I went into the house.

  Carsten might take my body and do with it as he pleased, but he would never have my heart.

  I found Adele sitting in a patch of sun on the jasmine bench. She was staring vacantly at a book that must have fallen from her lap onto the grass. Her eyes were shadowed by dark circles, and her lips bitten.

  I rushed to her and kneeled at her feet. ‘Adele, look at you. You’re clearly unwell.’

  She shook her head and went to speak, but instead began to cough. Drawing out a handkerchief, she covered her mouth until the fit subsided. Finally, she looked at me with glassy eyes.

  ‘I’ll be better tomorrow once I’ve rested. The journey back from Launceston always tires me. Will you sit with me awhile?’

  It troubled me to see her ill, yet I sensed again that she did not wish to speak of what ailed her.

  ‘I shall do better than that,’ I told her, retrieving her fallen book.

  It was an English translation of Aucassin and Nicolette, a charming French tale to which Adele had recently introduced me. The cover was printed in red and black on Japanese vellum, and the etched title page displayed a headpiece of sea creatures holding a tiny book between their entwined tails.

  I opened to the page we had marked, and began to read.

  Nicolette came to the postern gate, and unbarred it, and went out through the streets of Biaucaire, keeping always on the shadowy side, for the moon was shining right clear, and so wandered she till she came to the tower where her lover lay. The tower was flanked with buttresses, and she cowered under one of them, wrapped in her mantle. Then thrust she her head through a crevice of the tower that was old and worn, and so heard she Aucassin wailing within, and making dole and lament for the sweet lady he loved so well.

  I stopped reading, overcome with emotion. Beside me, Adele had slipped into her own reverie, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her breath whispering in and out of her in soft sighs.

  At the far edge of the garden, the sun sank towards the horizon. Shadows crept along the pathways, moving stealthily across the grass towards the jasmine bench where we sat. When the dark came down and I could no longer see the page, I closed the book and rested my head back on the vine-covered lattice. I recalled Lucien’s words as we walked along the trail from the glade, and despite the beauty of what he’d said, a deep melancholy filled me.

  Deception is its own reward.

  In my heart, I felt the truth of his words; but it was a bitter truth, a truth that made me despair. I was riddled with deceptions. The lie behind which I hid my Aboriginal heritage; the false facade of my marriage. And now, most dangerously of all, my growing feelings for a man who could never be mine.

  9

  Happiness isn’t an elusive grail t
o be pursued; it’s simply a choice you make.

  – ROB THISTLETON, EMOTIONAL RESCUE

  Ruby, May 2013

  ‘How about that bath?’ Pete settled back beside me on the verandah seat. ‘I’ve just checked the water, and it’s nice and hot.’

  The brandy had taken the edge off my shock after hearing about Esther, and the tea had revived my spirits; even so, I felt weary and grubby from my night in the car and consequent trek through the mud.

  ‘A bath would be perfect.’

  I stood up, expecting to follow him along the verandah and back into the house, but instead he headed downhill across the garden. Mystified, I followed. When I’d lived here as a kid, Mum had boiled water on the gas cooker in the kitchen and bucketed it into an antique hip bath that had once belonged to Grampy James. I assumed that, after Esther moved in, she would have overseen the building of a new bathroom.

  As it turned out, that was exactly what she’d done.

  We walked down the hill a short way, then followed a narrow path into a grove of grevillea until we came to a small clearing. The clearing was surrounded on all sides by thick walls of bottlebrush, and cast into dappled shade by a lofty apple gum. In the centre was a huge claw-footed bathtub sitting on a base of granite pavers. Over the tub was a huge old shower rose, connected to a mad tangle of galvanised pipes and gate valves and pressure gauges. The pipes led uphill to a 44-gallon drum resting on a steel frame. Under the drum smouldered a wood fire, drifting smoke up into the clear sky. Further uphill was a rainwater tank, from which ran more pipes leading back downhill to the drum.

  ‘Esther’s donkey burner,’ Pete explained, indicating the drum. ‘A wood-fuelled hot-water system, courtesy of the river and a bit of ingenuity.’ He went across to the tub and wrenched on a huge brass tap. Steaming water gushed out and the bath began to fill.

  I gazed around in dismay. ‘But it’s outside.’

  Pete grinned. ‘There’s no one around for miles. Even if there was, they’d never see anything through the bottlebrush.’

  There’s you, I wanted to say. And the bottlebrush trees were all very well, but they weren’t walls. There was no door to lock. No roof. I looked up at the sky. What if a plane went overhead? And how was I supposed to undress in the open air, climb into a tub of steaming river water, and get even halfway clean while staying alert for prying eyes?

  ‘There’s a towel,’ Pete said, dazzling me with a smile, ‘and a fresh block of Esther’s handmade soap. I’ll leave you to it.’

  I stared after him. Then I went over and looked into the tub. The water was greenish, and smelled faintly of pebbles. At least the white towel was soft and fluffy. I picked up the chunk of soap and sniffed it. Roses and lavender.

  The bath was nearly full. Turning off the tap, I sat on the rim and slipped off my runners. Reluctant to muddy the fragrant water, I checked the gap in the hedge and then slid out of my filthy track pants. What the hell, I thought, and stripped down to bra and knickers. I dipped my toes in, then my feet. Hot, soothing water lapped my knees. I wet the soap and lathered it over my legs, and the heat of the water released the full heady perfume of roses.

  I scanned the wall of bottlebrush, and realised that Pete had been right: even if someone was standing on the other side, they wouldn’t have been able to see through the dense hedge of prickly foliage. I glanced at the break in the hedge, where Pete and I had entered the bathroom clearing. A dog sat there; I could just make out the reddy-brown haunches and white-tipped tail of the female, Bardo. Maybe it was the strangeness of bathing outdoors, or perhaps the weight of all I had on my mind – but her presence didn’t seem to faze me.

  Closing my eyes, I slid into the water and let myself drift.

  Despite my best efforts to ignore it, the heaviness under my rib cage persisted. Partly, it owed to Rob’s betrayal. My cheeks still flamed every time I thought about my discovery of the lipstick-smeared champagne glass in his bathroom. At the time, I’d been mute with shock – but my brain had since come alive with questions. Who was she? Where had they met, how long had Rob been seeing her? Did he love her, and if so why – why – had he kept insisting he loved me?

  Sighing out the tension, I sank deeper into the water.

  The ache in my chest was also for Esther.

  It pained me that she was gone; pained me that she had lain out in the storm, injured and cold and alone. I bitterly regretted that we’d never had the chance to catch up and continue our conversation, as we’d planned. My memories of Granny H were still vague for the most part, but they were slowly trickling back.

  Unlike my memories – or rather, non-memories – of Pete.

  We were at school together, he’d said. And he had seemed hazily familiar; but I must have known him the year Jamie died, because any real recall of him eluded me. Although, as I inhaled the fragrant steam, there was a stirring in the back of my mind, a shadow; a glimpse of darkness and trees and silhouettes moving stealthily through the night—

  I shut my eyes.

  And then, taking a breath, I let myself slide under the water.

  An hour later, I was sitting on the verandah blissing out. It felt good to be mud-free, wearing clean dry jeans and T-shirt, dozing in the sun, listening to the happy chatter of birds.

  I had almost drifted off when I became aware of a faint crunching noise. It sounded like gnawing.

  I looked across the grassy slope to where Pete was stoking the barbecue, feeding the glowing embers with twigs and leaves, sending great puffs of smoke billowing overhead. The kelpies – until now, ever-present in the vicinity – were absent. An uneasy prickling in my scalp told me they were nearby, but my careful scrutiny of the garden failed to detect them.

  Suddenly I needed to identify the sound, pigeonhole it, place it in the box marked ‘no threat’. Getting to my feet, I went down the verandah steps and around the side of the house. A bank of grevillea screened the house from the old stables, and the noise seemed to be coming from behind it.

  As I crept past the trees, I saw them.

  A pair of dogs with pelts that gleamed like dark honey, their legs and muzzles dipped in gold. The crunching sound was coming from them; each had a small carcass in its jaws, devouring it with evident relish.

  I rubbed my shoulder. Why was I even standing here? Why wasn’t I running helter-skelter back to the house, diving into bed and pulling the covers over my head?

  In the back of my mind, I heard Rob’s voice: This is just one of those curve balls life throws you once in a while. You’ve got to learn to deal with it.

  I stared hard at the dogs, forcing myself to watch. Suddenly, it was Rob they were feasting on. Rob dismembered, his magnificent gym-toned body torn asunder, his flesh ravenously devoured; Rob’s skeleton cracked apart and its marrow licked out by a pair of hungry dogs.

  ‘So well deserved,’ I muttered darkly, and in a murky, vengeful corner of my mind, I imagined I could hear the echo of his screams—

  ‘There you are.’

  I jerked around, my heart bounding.

  ‘Rabbits,’ Pete said, indicating the dogs with a tilt of his head. ‘That’s what they’re eating. I caught a couple this morning. You’re not squeamish, are you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Pete’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s not cruel, if that’s what you’re thinking. The rabbits don’t suffer. I use box traps, and wring their necks in a flash. It’s all very humane.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and touched my arm softly, briefly. His hair and beard glistened with droplets of water from his swim. ‘There’s bacon and eggs on the menu. Hope you’re hungry.’

  ‘Starving,’ I muttered.

  Leaving the dogs to their gruesome breakfast, I followed Pete back down the slope towards the house. On the way, we passed the chopping block where presumably Pete had butchered his catch: a length of tree stump, its top end scarred and stained with blood smears. Propped beside it was a small sharp-looking hatchet. Pete ke
pt walking and vanished ahead of me around the grevilleas, but I lingered. The scarred old block made me pause, its pitted surface holding me transfixed.

  ‘Ruby?’

  My mother’s voice drifted out of the past. Time seemed to slow, then teeter for a moment before looping back on itself, rewinding. The chopping block and hatchet hazed out, and I heard my mother calling, as if from far away.

  ‘Ruby?’

  I shrank lower, trying to be invisible. I was sitting on a flat boulder near the clothesline, out of view of the house. I’d spent the morning scrubbing grass stains out of my nighty and it was taking forever to dry. Which was okay by me; the worst time of the day was approaching, and all I wanted was to stay out of Mum’s way.

  ‘Ruby!’

  The kids at school thought Mum was weird. Most of their parents were farmers – sheep for wool, or beef cattle. They all thought Mum was crazy for owning three thousand acres without even attempting to make money off it.

  Which wasn’t true, because all our money came from the orchard or the vegetable garden. Every Saturday Mum collected a big box of vegies and another two boxes of Fowlers jars crammed with preserves – apricots in honey, halved peaches, last year’s apples cut into chunks and studded with cloves. It was my job to help Mum pack the boxes into her car early in the morning so she could take them to the growers’ market in Armidale. Armidale was a couple of hours’ drive from Lyrebird Hill, which meant that Mum wouldn’t be home until mid-afternoon. That was the good thing about Saturdays – I got to spend most of the day doing as I pleased. The bad thing was dreading what we invariably had for dinner: roast chicken.

  ‘Ruby, I know you can hear me!’

  To be honest, Mum was pretty weird. For one thing, she hated the modern world. She hated pollution and loud noise and garbage trucks and power lines. She even hated men – which always puzzled me because plenty of women contributed to the ecological disaster as well. Of course, Mum wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were tons of things she was mad about – batik dresses and incense and Joan Baez and steamed vegies – but there were days when her list of dislikes seemed to eclipse everything else.