Stone Castles

by Trish Morey

  Never, that’s when.

  She needed to get back to New York. She was unravelling back here. Forgetting. And she couldn’t afford to forget.

  Or forgive.

  He didn’t pull up near the house as she’d been expecting – perhaps naively. He pulled up behind it, near the shed.

  It was a place they’d spent hours as children, as young adults.

  A place she remembered in excruciating detail.

  Images from the past flashed through her mind, crowding out the present in a flood of memories. They’d danced together out here, to old records they’d bought in second hand shops. They’d kissed and ended up on one of the old sofas. They’d given each other their virginity and afterwards, he’d kissed the tears of wonder from her eyes and told her he loved her. Right there. In that shed.

  Crap. Today was fast becoming an exercise in revisiting all the haunts of their shared past.

  Maybe she should have asked him where he’d stored the furniture all this time. Maybe she wouldn’t have come if she’d known. She’d just assumed it was in the house.

  She’d never once imagined he’d leave it out here.

  But then, why would he want her stuff in his house? If the old place had been in such dreadful condition, maybe what was left of the furniture was only fit for a shed, but in that case, why had they bothered keeping it?

  Maybe they should have just trashed it. Then she wouldn’t have to be here at all, deciding whether or not it would be fit for use in the B&B.

  She cursed the fates that had brought her to this place. The fates that had mocked her plans to avoid Luke, and just kept right on mocking them.

  And then he opened the big sliding shed door and she held her breath as the dust motes danced in the slanting sun and that familiar scent hit her. Hay and dust and engine oil.

  It was like being in a time capsule.

  It was like snatching a memory of her past from the air and breathing it in. The sheds at their house, the ones she’d played around when she was a kid growing up – the sheds that were long gone – had smelled the same way.

  It was comforting and welcoming and warm but at the same time it was unsettling too, threatening to throw her off balance more than any wobbly rock on a mound of stones had done.

  Because she didn’t want to feel comfortable here.

  Not here, in Luke’s world, where so many ghosts of the past still resided.

  He snapped on a light and the sun’s rays and dust motes disappeared under the all-encompassing, shadow banishing fluoro lighting.

  And Pip sent up a silent prayer of thanks because it helped wipe the shadows from her mind too. She didn’t need pesky shadows or ghosts getting in the way of what she needed to do right now. Which was to look at furniture. Make decisions.

  She made decisions all the time. She analysed markets and trends and made recommendations to increase or reduce the bank’s exposure, decisions with implications in the multi-millions – if not billions – of dollars.

  She could make a simple decision or two now without coming over all weak-kneed about the past.

  And then she’d get the hell out.

  It was that easy.

  She stepped inside, avoiding looking at the old leather lounges with the wide arms where she’d rested her head too many times to count, and the old gramophone where they’d played the seventy-eights and thirty-threes they’d found, and concentrated on the tarpaulin-wrapped bundles she could see lined up against the other wall.

  ‘Is this them?’ she asked, venturing closer.

  ‘This is them.’ He pulled off the ropes and peeled one of the covers away.

  Pip’s hand went to her mouth as their old Singer treadle sewing machine was revealed. ‘Oh my god. Gran taught me how to sew on this.’ She checked it over, front and back, lifted the cover over the machine hanging upside down below. It had survived. That was so cool. Because she’d more than learned to sew on this machine. She’d won first prize with the dress she’d made on this machine during her school holidays, all the while cursing it and complaining because they didn’t have a decent electric sewing machine like all her friends.

  And she’d still won.

  ‘Hello, old friend,’ she said, tracing her fingers along the bevelled edges. ‘I’d forgotten about you.’

  She snapped a couple of photos on her phone to show Tracey and looked up to see Luke already peeling the tarp off the second item. She smiled when she realised what it was. Gran’s big old writing bureau. She remembered it sitting in pride of place in her gran’s room, next to the dressing table that they’d later taken to the nursing home. How hard it must have been to leave this. Next to the old pedal organ in the lounge, it was one of Gran’s favourite things.

  ‘The organ?’ she asked, suddenly worried, because whatever was under the third looked as big as a wardrobe. ‘What happened to the organ in the lounge room?’

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head and she sighed. But given the extent of the damage done to the house through its neglect, it was a wonder there was anything worth saving. How these pieces had survived was a miracle.

  She snapped a couple more quick photos and then slid the wooden cover up on the bureau, fingered a couple of envelopes that were still filed in one of the little compartments like they were just waiting for someone to finally deal with them, before putting them back. Gran’s old papers.

  ‘Treasure,’ she said, misting up as she pictured Gran sitting at the bureau, writing long letters in spidery script that always seemed to Pip more loops than handwriting. ‘It’s like finding treasure.’

  ‘And there’s this,’ he said, his voice thick, as if the dust lying over the tarps was getting to him. ‘It’s got a bit of water damage to the back, and a couple of the hinges could do with a bit of work, but it’s otherwise sound.’ He flicked back the tarp and her misty eyes grew damper.

  ‘Oh my.’ The kitchen dresser. It had three glass doors etched with gold arches like church windows, behind which the willow pattern crockery had been displayed. Below the glass doors were several hinged compartments where they’d kept the bread, the vegemite and jars of homemade plum and apricot jam, and the drawers for the cutlery.

  She remembered exactly where it had stood, tucked up against the thick stone chimney surrounding the old wood stove.

  She remembered fetching the bread and the vegemite and jam when she set the table for breakfast.

  She remembered like it had been yesterday, not fifteen years ago – a whole lifetime ago.

  She took a few photos to give Tracey an idea of its size and condition before pocketing the phone and just standing there, gazing at this familiar old piece of furniture that had been so much a part of her life back then.

  And then she opened one of the glass doors and the smell reached out long scented fingers and carried her back there, into their big kitchen with the sprawling table and her mum cutting slabs of fruitcake for Trent and their dad, who’d just come in thirsty and hungry from a stint in the paddocks to a feast of freshly baked scones and jam and cream and cake and with Gran serving up big cups of tea to everyone with milk straight from the cow.

  She closed her eyes and breathed it in and she was back there in that kitchen with them all. And the tears rolled unchecked down her face as she stood there, silently sobbing.

  ‘Pip?’

  ‘It’s a gift,’ she said turning to the man behind her, the man with the troubled blue eyes who had made this possible. ‘It’s the most unexpected, wonderful, magical gift. Thank you.’

  He hadn’t meant to be standing so close, but she’d started to cry and instinctively he’d moved forward, but then she’d turned and he was right there and she was looking up at him that way, her gorgeous blue eyes brimming with tears and he knew they were in dangerous waters and that if he took a dip in their depths he’d be lost forever, bu
t she was so close and so beautiful and her lips were right there, and all he wanted was one tiny taste.

  She almost breathed those words – ‘thank you’ – and he couldn’t help but watch her lips, slide a hand around her slim smooth neck, dip his mouth and brush his lips over hers. And he groaned, because she tasted of summer and sunshine and easy smiles, just the way he remembered.

  Just the way he liked it.

  His lips lingered on hers, and she sighed into his kiss and for a moment he thought he had her. For a moment he thought she was coming with him, wherever he was going because he didn’t know, only that it felt so good and it had been so long and he wanted to be back in that place.

  Until he felt her hands press hard up against his chest and she was pulling back her head and pushing him away.

  ‘No. Don’t. Let me go.’

  He didn’t want to let her go. ‘Pip –’

  ‘Let me go!’ She wheeled away, her eyes burning cold, her chest heaving, her voice like a rasping file. ‘That should not have happened.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know damned well why.’

  ‘Because of what happened in the past? Are you still mad about something that happened fifteen years ago, because you already dumped me for that.’ He clawed fingers through his hair. ‘Boy, you sure can hold a grudge.’

  ‘You know it’s more than that. It’s always been about more than that.’

  ‘Like what?’ His hand slashed through the air. ‘Lay it on the line, Pip, because frankly I’ve never quite understood what the hell happened back then. Let’s clear the air, once and for all.’

  ‘Okay, because it would be wrong, that’s why.’

  ‘No. It’s perfectly right. I’m a man and you’re a woman and all we were doing was sharing a kiss. What is your problem?

  ‘My problem, as you so eloquently put it, is that you might be my brother.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Luke’s guffaw echoed around the lofty heights of the shed, unsettling pigeons and sending them flapping. ‘What! Tell me you don’t really believe that claptrap?’

  ‘Is it claptrap though? Because you don’t know, and I sure as hell don’t know. So it’s possible, isn’t it, that we could be brother and sister.’

  ‘My dad and your mum? Come on, Pip. That’s mad.’

  ‘But that’s the thing. I don’t know! Nobody knows who my father really was and if they do, they’re not telling.’

  He reached for her. Somehow he had to make her see sense, but she held up her hands to stop him coming closer and he had to deliver his argument from where he stood, eight feet and a million miles separating them. ‘If our parents had had an affair, if my dad was your father, don’t you think your mum would have said something about us being friends if she thought there was any chance of us hooking up? Don’t you think they would have warned us off each other? Moved house or something? Moved states?’

  ‘That’s just it. She did warn me.’

  ‘About me? Specifically?’

  ‘She told me to be careful about who I –’ fell in love with ‘– paired up with.’ There were some things he didn’t need to hear. ‘So that’s what I’m doing.’

  His voice, when it came, was flat as a tack. ‘Being careful.’

  She didn’t care if it sounded ridiculous. If she sounded ridiculous.

  She remembered the day her mother had told her. She’d been helping her do the dishes and they’d been planning the menu for her parents’ wedding anniversary dinner that weekend. And still in the haze of discovering she loved Luke, she’d asked her mother whether it had been love at first sight when she’d met Gerald or something else. And it had seemed a funny thing for her mum to say when she and Dad were so in love, and when she’d asked her why, her mother had said, ‘Because it’s all too easy to fall in love with the wrong man.’ And for a moment she’d thought her mum was going to say something else, but then her kid brother Trent had bowled into the room and the moment was gone. The next day she’d been back at college in Adelaide and whatever her mum had been going to say was forgotten.

  ‘Why would she have told me that if she wasn’t trying to warn me about you?’

  ‘No, Pip. I don’t believe that. It could mean anything.’

  ‘Exactly my point!’

  ‘But not my dad! Not my dad and your mum. No way in the world!’

  She raised her chin. She didn’t want to believe anything could have happened between them either but they’d been friends a long time and how could she rule anything or anyone out, however unlikely or distasteful? ‘How do I know that? You’ve got blue eyes, haven’t you.’

  ‘What? And that makes us siblings? Lots of people have blue eyes, Pip. Tracey’s got blue eyes. The lady in the fish and chip shop’s got blue eyes. Half the bloody world’s got blue eyes. It doesn’t mean we all share the same biological father.’

  She shook her head. ‘That doesn’t change anything. Until I know who my real father was, I don’t know who’s a friend, who’s a relation. And how am I ever going to find out?’ She cocked her head, angry, remembering back to when the bottom had dropped out of her world twice in the same day, the first time overwhelmed with grief, the second with betrayal. ‘Although apparently plenty of people knew that it wasn’t Gerald, didn’t they? Plenty of people, including People. Who. I. Thought. Were. My. Friends.’ She spat the last words out like bullets.

  Luke raised his eyes to the roof and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Jesus, so we’re back to dredging that all up?’

  ‘The truth doesn’t go away, just because you want it to.’

  ‘So you’re still mad at me. You’ve never forgiven me. Because I walked into the laundry and overheard some poisoned whisper from the town busy body to my mum that you weren’t really Gerald’s daughter and I didn’t share it with you.’

  ‘Of course I’m still mad at you. I thought you were my friend – my best friend! How could you keep something like that from me?’

  ‘Would it have helped you to know what I’d heard was a rumour, and that I didn’t believe it myself? That I wasn’t even sure I’d heard it right? And how exactly would that have helped if I’d told you?’

  ‘At least then I wouldn’t have found out from a bitter and twisted line-up of old crows who couldn’t keep their mouths shut or their stage whispers to themselves. Don’t you understand? I sat with Gerald for seven days after that crash. Seven days of holding his hand and willing him to pull through only to lose him as well. And when I heard them talking I felt like I’d just buried my entire family only to find out I wasn’t who I thought I’d been. I didn’t know who I was. Because the man I’d sat beside for seven days while he clung to life wasn’t even my father.’

  ‘He was always your father, Pip,’ he said gruffly. ‘You couldn’t have had a better father.’

  ‘No. He was my dad. And you’re right. He was a good dad. The best. But I have a right to know who my biological father was. I need to know. Otherwise I don’t know who I am. Not really. All I know is I’m not a Martin.’

  ‘Gerald would be disappointed to hear you say that. He was proud as punch of you. Proud you’d won a scholarship to that fancy college in the city. Prouder still when you won that scholarship to Sydney Uni.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that? Why are you so angry with me? I loved him. But the fact remains, Gerald was not my biological father. And because you decided – by whatever twisted reasoning your mind came up with – to justify it, because you decided not to share with me knowledge about my identity that was fundamental to who I actually am, I lost any chance of finding out.’

  ‘For god’s sake, it was only a rumour! Why the hell would I want to upset you with something like that?’

  ‘It was something! And had I known, I could have asked questions. I could have got someone to explain what happened, how it happened. I could at le
ast have had a name to go by. If I’d been given the chance while people were still around to ask. But by the time I knew, they were all gone and Gran was halfway there.’

  His lips were set in a thin, grim line. ‘Maybe they just wanted to protect you.’

  ‘Lucky me! And so now I’m protecting myself. Take me back to the farm. You can drop me there.’

  ‘What about your car?’

  ‘I’ll get it some other time.’

  The mood was sullen on the way to the farm and Luke didn’t feel inclined to brighten it up any. His passenger was busy staring out her window and he was content to let her have at it. He had other stuff on his mind.

  Like that night fifteen years ago when he’d met her at the stone mounds and spread a rug on the ground and opened a cheap bottle of fizz and they’d made love under a blanket of stars. That night when he’d asked her to marry him and she’d told him yes, and that she’d turn down the scholarship to Sydney University and go to Adelaide Uni instead so they would still have every weekend and every holiday together.

  The stars had twinkled in the night sky above and the leaves had rustled on the trees and her skin had glowed silver under the light of the moon and stars, and the world had been a perfect place for a short time, until she’d called him in the early hours and told him that the police were at the house and begged him to come over.

  But she’d still been his then.

  He’d been her rock, she’d told him, dropping her off and picking her up from the hospital. He’d been her anchor in a world gone mad. She’d held on to her ailing gran and he’d held onto her, and he’d got her through the worst week of her life.

  He was going to be her anchor forever. That’s what he’d thought. Despite all the changes in her life, despite the losses, he’d still be there, holding her hand.

  Until that dark day she’d confronted him after the wake. Luke hadn’t wanted to leave early but his dad had wanted to get some work done before dark because there was rain coming and he’d promised he’d go around after they were done. But the skies had opened up before they’d finished and his dad was cursing up a storm and Pip had turned up in the middle of it after walking across the sodden paddocks with her T-shirt and shorts clinging to her and mascara streaming down her face. At first he’d blamed himself for leaving her, until he’d wrapped her in towels and sat her down on the old leather sofa in the shed and she’d told him what she’d heard.