Lyrebird Hill

by Anna Romer

  He sighed, and glanced along the track, his gaze roaming the shadows. ‘I was an idiot, but when you walked out, I got a shock. I’ve spent the last week thinking about you. I don’t want to lose you, Ruby. You’re my world. Do you think you could try to forgive me . . . and come home?’

  I pinched my lips together, feeling their rawness. I had a flash of silvery moonlight, and a hillside belonging to a mythical realm, full of shadows and promise. I glanced along the track at the sky. It was turning light, the night escaping.

  Rob’s presence here seemed suddenly invasive.

  ‘You really hurt me,’ I told him. ‘I don’t think I can forgive you. Besides, I’m not ready to go home.’

  He studied me for a long time, then said quietly, ‘You’ve started remembering, haven’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘So what if I have? It’s not your problem anymore.’

  He stepped closer, his gaze sharpening. ‘Maybe not, but I still care about you, Ruby. And I still believe you’re treading dangerous ground by coming back here.’

  He had spoken those same words to me countless times before, but all of a sudden they sounded like a warning.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘It’s clear you’re nowhere near ready to cope with your suppressed memories . . . or with the shock of what you might remember.’

  He held my gaze, and I sensed that he wanted to say more but was holding back. His lips parted, and his eyes narrowed on my face. A feeling of unease swept over me, and I pulled my cardigan tighter across my chest.

  ‘I might be more ready than you think.’

  Rob let his gaze drift over to the house. ‘You’re out here alone, are you? Today, I mean,’ he added quickly.

  I didn’t answer straight away; it seemed crazy that I should feel guilty about kissing Pete on the hillside last night, when Rob had just admitted his own infidelity. Old habits, I thought ruefully . . . and guilt was certainly one of mine.

  Rob stepped closer, searching my face. I sensed that his uncanny body-language radar had switched to overdrive. Before I could move away, he reached towards me and cupped my cheek, pressing his thumb against my tender bottom lip. I flinched and stepped back.

  ‘Oh Ruby,’ he murmured, his voice husky with emotion. The pain of understanding dawned in his eyes, and his pupils grew dark. ‘Don’t give up on us so easily,’ he whispered. ‘I love you, babe. I couldn’t bear to lose you.’

  This was a side of Rob I rarely – if ever – saw. He had always been a master of drawing forth emotion from other people, meanwhile remaining calm in the midst of their teary outbursts. Seeing him like this, suddenly vulnerable, with welling eyes and uncertainty etched in his handsome features, made me hesitate.

  But only for a moment. Rob and I had crossed a bridge of mistrust, and now stood on opposite banks of a vast divide. For me, at least, there was no going back.

  ‘It’s too late, Rob,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘You’d better go.’

  Rob tensed, but then he nodded. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, babe.’

  Then he was striding back to his car, getting in, firing the engine and cruising slowly around the circular drive.

  I stood there shivering in the farmhouse’s shadow, hugging my cardigan about me, watching Rob’s Jag disappear along the track and into the trees, heading back to the outside world. As the silence settled back into place around me, Rob’s words replayed in my mind.

  You’re nowhere near ready to cope with the shock of what you might remember.

  But he was wrong. I wanted to remember, and suddenly I felt ready to deal with whatever those memories revealed.

  ‘Okay, Ruby, I’m going to count backwards from twenty and I’d like you to listen carefully to my voice. Are you comfortable?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good. Now settle back into your chair. Take a deep breath and let it out. Start to feel your limbs growing heavy and your eyes slowly drifting shut. That’s it. We’ll begin at twenty, feeling relaxed. Nineteen, letting go and drifting deeper . . . eighteen . . . seventeen . . .’

  Rob’s visit earlier that morning had rattled me. I wanted to prove him wrong, to prove that I was ready to face the past. So I hadn’t gone to Pete’s as I’d planned, but had instead taken Esther’s car and driven into Armidale. Hypnotherapy was a long shot. It might dredge up the truth, yet there was every chance I would emerge from the experience empty-handed. Even so, I was swamped by a feeling of urgency, and was ready to try anything.

  I was staring at the spot on the wall I’d chosen, but in my peripheral view I could see the deep red curtains drawn against the light, and the glass table upon which sat two tumblers and a jug of water. Nearby, seated on a huge leather armchair that matched the one I sat on, was Flora, the hypnotherapist I had picked out of the Yellow Pages. Her face was turned towards me, and her chair was pushed close to mine. I could have reached out and touched the sleeve of her smart pink suit. I didn’t, of course, because my arm suddenly felt like a lump of stone. As I settled deeper into my chair, her words seemed to echo from inside my head.

  ‘Fourteen . . . thirteen, your eyes are closed now, Ruby . . .’

  Darkness then, but I didn’t feel sleepy. Rather, I felt almost preternaturally alert, as if I were rigged up to a drip bag of coffee. I was twitchy, worrying I was doing it wrong, scared it wouldn’t work, and terrified that it would.

  ‘Nine . . . eight, you’re walking down a staircase, it’s very dark. Candles light your way. Seven, deeper now, the stairs are taking you very deep . . . six . . . five . . .’

  Rats moving in the shadows. The scurry of motion, the echoey drip-drip of water. A damp smell, like moss on a riverbank. But they were just weird random images that had nothing to do with the past. I wondered if I should tell Flora that her hypnosis wasn’t working; she might want to stop and try a different tack. I must have been one of those people who resisted any form of hypnotherapy, because I was fully alert, so on edge my blood was humming—

  ‘Three . . . two . . .’

  —and I was getting more jittery by the second. I really should tell Flora I wasn’t responding; what if something went wrong? I engaged my neck muscles and attempted to turn my head, and—

  ‘One.’

  —I was standing on the riverbank. Below me, the river rushed past. Trees swayed in the shimmering air, the sky was littered with remnant storm clouds. All around me, the landscape hazed into a blur of brightness and light.

  A human-like shape hovered before me. Slowly, it morphed into a girl, into Jamie. Her face was contorted as if she was shouting, but all I could hear was the hissing rush of the river. Jamie grabbed my arms, her fingers digging in as she tried to shove me away. I felt angry and afraid, and there was a great weight dragging at me, a shadow the size of the moon. As I tried to shake off the shadow, Jamie slipped from my grasp. She toppled backwards and her head cracked on the wall of stone behind her. I reached for her, but somehow her head hit the wall again. Her mouth opened, but her scream was silent and her head kept hitting the wall. Her face twisted in pain, and a bubble of blood came out of her mouth.

  ‘Ruby, I’m going to start bringing you back now.’

  The bright sunlight was suddenly blinding. Jamie began to dissolve into it, and I gripped her tighter, trying to hold onto her, but she was slipping—

  ‘Counting from five . . . four . . .’

  Struggling now, time was pulling me back to the present but I couldn’t leave Jamie. I blinked hard but could see nothing in the dazzling light. Groping for her in the haze, trying to find her, fearing she’d already gone.

  ‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . and – eyes open.’

  My lungs expanded suddenly, and I dragged in a gasp of air. The room was dark, stained red by the murky late-afternoon sunlight that seeped through the curtains. My face was wet, and as I pulled breath after breath into my airless lungs, I heard my mother’s voice inside my ear.

  There were so many questions. So much pokin
g and prodding and trying to get you to remember.

  Later, as I walked along the street to where I’d parked Esther’s car, my mother’s voice became more insistent. Other snippets drifted back, snatches of conversation I’d overlooked at the time, or deemed unimportant, now seemed darkly significant.

  . . . the notion of bad genes crossed my mind . . . I started thinking about your father’s death, and all the old guilt bubbled up . . .

  16

  Brenna, June 1898

  Cries drew me to the window. Flinging up the sash, I leaned out into the cold morning air and looked towards the stable yard.

  Adele was calling to Carsten, and the shrill edge to her voice had me ducking back inside, dragging my coat over my nightdress and rushing down the stairs. As I burst through into the garden, Adele’s distress reached a new pitch.

  ‘Stop it!’ she cried. ‘Carsten, you’ll kill him, please stop.’

  Tearing along the path, I reached the stable yard and met a wretched sight.

  Carsten held a stockwhip, and his shirt and trousers were flecked with blood.

  It took me a moment to notice the man slumped behind him, against the tether rail in front of the stable barn. He had crumpled to his knees and fallen forward. His hands were roped above his head; he was bare from the hips up, his strong, lean torso scored with deep gashes that oozed dark-coloured blood.

  ‘Lucien.’

  I raced towards him, but Carsten intercepted me, grabbing a handful of my loose hair. He jerked me to my knees and bent to meet me face to face.

  ‘Take a good look at your handiwork, Brenna. Do you think him so worthy of your artist’s brush now?’

  I could smell blood on him; salty, sweat-infused blood. Lucien’s blood. My hand shot up and I clawed my nails at his face. He flinched back with a cry, and it was only when I felt the sticky warmth of blood between my fingers that I realised I had broken his skin. Spiteful gladness filled me.

  ‘You wildcat,’ he spat and slapped me sideways into the dirt. Gravel bit my palms and knees and the wind tugged open my coat and whipped my nightdress.

  ‘I curse the day I married you,’ Carsten said. ‘My only solace is the pain I know is coming for you. Now get yourself back to the house, woman, before I take my lash to you, too.’

  He strode away, the whip coiled loosely in his fist; the leather tail quivered as if with its master’s agitation, its fine tip flicking droplets of blood onto the path in a sticky crimson trail.

  The shock of Carsten’s actions sent waves of unease rippling among us. No one said it aloud, but I knew from the silence that descended on the house that we were all thinking the same thing.

  If Carsten had turned his anger on Lucien, whom he loved, then what might he do to any of us?

  Lucien went about his duties in the stable yards without a nod or a word to anyone. Later, when I took him some salve I’d mixed from my store of dry herbs, he refused it and retreated to the dark safety of his barnyard lair. His eyes were huge and black in his pale face, his mouth set firm. Blood leaked through his clothes and dried into sweaty crusts, and at the end of the day he was forced to soak himself with water bucketed from the horses’ trough in order to peel off his shirt so he could bathe.

  I watched for him constantly.

  Always from the corner of my eye, as I dared not let Carsten see me looking. If the occasion arose for me to venture outside, I hurried along with my head bowed, as if finding fascination with the ground. But always, always, watching for him.

  Those blunt feelings aroused by my drawings had sharpened with time, honed by our stolen kisses in his barn dwelling, whetted by the feelings I now knew he reciprocated. At first his fractured beauty had inspired a challenge for my brush and pencils; now, upon more intimate acquaintance, I trembled just to see his shadow flit past me; I quaked to glimpse him moving about the distant stables. And on those brief occasions that I caught sight of his face, I ached with remorse, sick at heart to know his pain was my doing.

  Carsten’s suffering was clear. He looked suddenly old; his face had taken on a pinched aspect; he wore his mouth downcast, and his eyes had turned small and hard. Since that day in the stable yard when he had destroyed his only true friendship to spite me, he had become a human storm, torn by the black thunderclouds that churned within him. By all appearances he was filled with self loathing, regretting what he had done. And yet knowing Carsten as I now did, I feared that his underlying sentiments were not so noble; rather than reproach himself for what he had done, in truth my husband resented that law had restricted him from doing more.

  In the weeks that followed Carsten’s attack on Lucien, my husband had no business abroad, and his lingering presence kept us all on edge.

  I barely saw Adele. Since Lucien’s flogging, her health had suffered and she spent much of her time in her room.

  Quinn had begun to reek of drink. Port wine and cooking sherry, and occasionally of cough syrup. The breakfast eggs were served half-blackened, the coffee was lukewarm, the milk curdled, the bread stale. Carsten rumbled about throwing her out, but Quinn paid him no mind; she simply turned her deaf ear towards him and made herself scarce.

  Deliveries arrived in the early morning and were neglected. Hefty bags of flour and sugar and tea languished near the kitchen door, tripping us as we hurried in and out. Mail piled up on the table, and it wasn’t until late on a Friday afternoon that I found the time to go through it.

  One letter was addressed to me.

  I hadn’t received any correspondence for weeks, and was anxious to receive word from home. But the writing on the envelope was not that of my father. It had been penned in neat childlike handwriting, which could only mean it had come from my brother, Owen.

  Mystified, I tore it open.

  19 June 1898

  Dear Brenna,

  I am sorry to be the bearer of upsetting news. Fa Fa is unwell. The doc says his heart is weak, and fears for him. Please come home.

  Always yours,

  Owen

  I went to Carsten and showed him the letter, but he waved me away.

  ‘You’ll not be going anywhere.’

  ‘But my father’s ill. I must go to him.’

  ‘How can I trust you to return?’

  ‘Of course I’ll return. We have an agreement,’ I reminded him bitterly. ‘Or have you forgotten?’

  Carsten drew up to his full height and glared at me. ‘Your father got to keep his farm. In exchange, I gained a wife, who promised me a son. You’ll stay here, Brenna, until you give me one. After that, you can go to the devil.’

  I retreated to my bedroom and curled on the bed. At first I was too angry to cry. Darkness raged inside me, bruising my spirit as it thrashed from side to side. I had never felt hatred before, but suddenly I recognised it in myself.

  But as I thought of my father, the rage died. Tears began to leak from my eyes, hot frightened tears that stung my skin and turned my lashes brittle. My father was gravely ill and my brother alone to care for him; it was a long difficult ride for the Clearwater doctor, and I feared my father would not get the care he needed.

  Trees lashed outside my window, churned by the wind that shrieked up from the strait. A steady drizzle of icy rain battered the panes.

  I went along the hall a little way, then saw that the library door was cracked open; Carsten would be keeping watch, his ears alert, his pistol at the ready. He had included the household in his vigil, too: Adele had been given the order to sleep in my bed, to prevent me creeping out at night; Quinn had set herself up on a straw cot in the parlour, and would slumber, so she warned, with one eye open.

  But the flesh is no match for the spirit, as my father was fond of saying; somehow, despite my husband’s refusal to let me go, I resolved to defy him and find a way.

  The night of my escape, Adele fussed around in the kitchen while Quinn prepared Carsten’s nightcap; when the housekeeper was distracted by a pan of over-boiling milk, Adele placed a measure of laudanum in Carst
en’s drink as we had planned, and then stole back up to my room.

  We waited until midnight, when Adele risked a peek into the library. My husband’s snores drifted along the hall; he slept at his desk with his head on his arms, the empty mug at his side.

  Before the grandfather clock had finished chiming the hour, I crept down the stairs, past the lump of Quinn’s heavily sleeping body, through the night garden to the stables, where Lucien had prepared a swift black mare. He would ride with me to Launceston and see me safely on the steamer, and from there I would send word to Owen to meet me at the train once I arrived in Armidale.

  In a few days, I would be home.

  At Launceston, there was no time for a lingering goodbye.

  ‘Look after Adele,’ I told Lucien. ‘Don’t let her fret. I will return once I know my father is all right.’

  Lucien took my hand and kissed it. ‘Don’t despair,’ he whispered. ‘Our love has the power to create miracles. I will wait for you.’

  The cry came to board, and passengers began to migrate up the gangway, jostling and calling, their voices disembodied in the early mist. I felt myself tugged along, and a moment later Lucien was lost to me. I held him in my sights as long as I was able, and when the ship began to ease away from the pier, I watched his black-clad figure recede until it was a speck. And when the speck finally winked from my view, a sensation of loss folded over me.

  Going below deck, I unpacked my journal and turned to a new page.

  Tonight, I wrote, I had hoped to find solace in writing, but the words refuse to flow and the ink has dried on the nib of my pen. I find myself turning back through these pages, rereading the entry I made after meeting Lucien that sunny afternoon in the glade. If there is ever a moment of a person’s life that brings shelter in a time of inner storm, then that bright island of a day is mine.

  I took my black queen from my pocket and held her in my hand. She had never failed to soothe me; at least, not until now. But as the steamer forged across the reeling ocean, bringing distance between Lucien and me, the dark heaviness of loss did not abate. And as the day wore on, the burden of it became so leaden I thought I would die.