The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

by Holly Ringland

  ‘Sorry flowers,’ Ruby said. ‘From people who pick them as souvenirs, take them home to wherever they come from, then start to believe their bad luck in life is a curse for ignoring our culture.’ She gestured to the shelves behind her, filled with similar boxes.

  Alice leant over the open box.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Ruby said.

  Riffling through, Alice reeled at the volume of dried flowers people had picked and returned. Envelopes bearing postage stamps from all over the world contained letters begging forgiveness, begging to be free of ‘the curse’. A handwritten one caught her eye. As Alice opened it, a dried and shrivelled desert pea fell into her palm. She read, aloud.

  ‘“My husband got sick as soon as we left Kililpitjara. When we got home to Italy, we found out he has cancer. A few days later our son was in a bus accident. And then our house flooded. Please accept our deepest apologies for not respecting your beautiful country on our visit. Please free us from any more tragedy. We are so deeply sorry for picking the flowers from the crater and taking what wasn’t ours to take.”’ Alice rocked back on her heels, incredulous. ‘They’re all the same thing? Asking for forgiveness and freedom from “the curse”?’

  Ruby nodded. ‘“The curse”, a myth that’s travelled around the world for as long as minga have been coming here.’

  ‘But it’s … not real?’ Alice asked slowly.

  ‘No!’ Ruby snorted. ‘It’s not real. It’s just a trick guilt plays on guilty people’s minds.’

  Alice’s thoughts drifted to June’s slurred confession the night she left Thornfield. ‘We can’t hide when we’ve done wrong,’ Alice said, ‘even if we try to bury it in the deepest parts of ourselves.’ Aware that Ruby was watching her closely, Alice put the letter back in the box and brushed her hands together. ‘Do you ever write back? Tell them “the curse” is something people have made up and isn’t anything to do with your culture?’

  ‘Ha!’ Ruby said drily. ‘I’ve got better things to do than run around after minga and do the work for them, teaching what they should have opened their eyes and ears to and learned when it was right in front of them.’

  Alice nodded, letting Ruby’s words sink in. ‘I just can’t believe there’s so many,’ she said, going through the envelopes once more.

  ‘This is why we’re so worried about malukuru becoming endangered. Worse, there’s even more stories in the roof at headquarters. We’ve started having meetings to figure out what to do with them. There’s a couple of university fellas interested in cataloguing all the stories. But they’ll have to be quick. We’re running out of storage.’

  A childhood conversation with her mother came to mind. A fire can be like a spell of sorts to transform one thing into another.

  ‘Maybe you could burn them,’ Alice blurted.

  Ruby studied her face appreciatively. ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  By the time Alice got home that night she could barely keep her eyes open. She stumbled through her front door, flicked on the air conditioning, and stood under the cold shower watching as the water turned red.

  She’d worked with Lulu after lunch. Ruby showed you the sorry flowers? she’d said when they were out in the field together, after Alice described her morning. Alice nodded. Man, you must have done something right, chica. Ruby doesn’t show anyone those flowers unless they’re in her good books.

  Standing under the shower, replaying Lulu’s words, Alice flushed with pleasure. She’d done something right.

  Later Alice shared with Pip a veggie burger she’d brought home from the cafe, and flopped into bed before the sun set. The warm air carried the rich scent of baked earth and the sweet end of her first day.

  Her dreams were filled with visions of June. Every time her grandmother opened her mouth to speak to Alice, a torrent of brown and withered dried flowers gushed out.

  Ruby stood on her patio in the setting sun, watching rainbows catch in the spray while she watered her pot plants. The mineral-rich smell of the damp red dirt took her straight to the memory of her mother and aunties, like a song. The sky gathered a palette of pink clay, ochre and grey stone. Ruby’s trio of dogs raced each other along her back fence, their ears flattened in joy. The mellowest part of the day always made them the silliest.

  Once she’d hung up the hose she took her axe into the yard and cut down some wanari branches. Wanari was the best for cooking fires; it burned the hottest. She piled the wood in the pit, sucking the blood from her finger when she got a splinter. After she raked together dry desert-oak needles, skinny twigs and sticks, she stuffed them into the gaps between the branches. A few matches later, her fire was roaring.

  Ruby sat on a log with her pen and notebook, and relaxed her shoulders. Once she was settled, she closed her eyes. The weight of her missing family settled around her. Ever since she was a child, when she was taken from her mother, the one constant in her life was the present absence of her family. It was a visible kind of invisibility; all Ruby could ever see were those not there with her.

  While her dinner cooked on a skillet over the fire and the sky started to darken, Ruby uncapped her pen and opened her notebook.

  She watched the flames. She waited.

  The stars swirled, the dogs dozed, and the warm desert breeze blew. She waited.

  The new poem came down from the stars, looking for her as most of her poems did. It tumbled over the sand dunes and fluttered across her mother’s country, bringing earth, smoke, love and sorrow.

  there are always seeds that thread us

  and carried on the wind set us apart

  does the wind come from the origins

  or the mother or the father

  will my origins be blown away

  or remain in distance if I leave

  will the wind stand breathless

  shall I remain to die broken from home

  Ruby put her pen down and rubbed her hands. They were shaking, as they always did when her ancestors gave her a poem. After a moment, she picked it up again and wrote Seeds at the top of the page.

  She seasoned and turned her malu steak, and slathered more garlic butter on her fried potatoes. Sat back and watched the flames dance. Smoke plumes curled into the sky.

  As Ruby served up her dinner her mind wandered back to showing Alice the shelves of sorry flowers. Ruby had seen more people come and go through Kililpitjara than she’d written poems in her notebooks. She could pick those who were lost and aimless from those who were true and searching as easily as she pulled ticks from her dogs. When she’d first noticed Sarah moving Alice in, all shaky and pale-faced, Ruby hadn’t given her a second thought. But after their morning together, Ruby changed her mind. She saw something in Alice Hart, the kind of grit one survivor recognises in another. Ruby didn’t know what Alice was looking for, but it burned in her brightly enough to leave fire in her eyes.

  22

  Spinifex

  Meaning: Dangerous pleasures

  Triodia | Central Australia

  Tjanpi (Pit.) is a tough, spiky grass dominating much of Australia’s interior red sand country, thriving on the poorest, most arid soils the desert has to offer. Tussock-forming, its roots go deep, often as far down as three metres. Certain types are used by Anangu to make a resin adhesive.

  Alice threw herself into her life at Kililpitjara. She continued training with Ruby, studying the stories of the land, and became inseparable from Lulu, working the same roster ten days on and four days off. Alice listened deeply and learned from both women. With a strong voice, she guided tourists into the crater day in and day out, telling them its story and inviting them to help protect the Heart Garden. She got such a thrill when she saw understanding in visitors’ eyes. As the weeks passed, she felt sure no one on any of her walks picked a desert pea.

  After work, as the days began to cool, Alice and Lulu took to walking the fire trails, or lounging on each other’s patios, drinking strong coffee and eating Lulu’s homemade chilli chocolate. Under gemstone skies, Lulu told
Alice stories about her grandmother, a woman with turquoise rings on every finger and hair so thick she snapped combs in half trying to tame it. What about you, Alice? Tell me about your family. Alice was too scared to tell her the truth. Stories rolled freely off her tongue, about her mother and father, her seven brothers, the games they played growing up, the adventures they had together, their happy home by the sea. The stories came so easily they didn’t feel like lies. They were as real as real could be to Alice; they were the worlds she’d grown up in, from the pages of her books.

  Late at night, when she was alone, Alice worked on her notebooks of flowers. They had become her solace and salve, her pressed and sketched flowers; her stories. Of childhood memories; loneliness and confusion; the life she’d lived without her mother; resentment, grief, fear and guilt. Her unfulfilled dreams. Her penance. Her yearning to be consumed by love.

  After a few months, Alice no longer felt so glaringly incompetent. She knew everyone at the park by name, and had the vital information memorised: which days the food deliveries came in by road train and how many return trips from Parksville to the tourist resort she could make before her truck’s fuel light flicked on. Kililpitjara became a place where Alice felt safe. There was no past there. No one knew about her life among the sugar cane or her life among flowers. In the desert, she could just be. Her job left her with aching muscles, blistered knuckles and a sense of bodily exhaustion so great that she no longer dreamed of fire. She was fascinated by the desert: its colours, its vast space, the staggering and strange beauty of it. When she wasn’t on sunrise patrol, Alice spent her mornings with Pip hiking up to the viewing platform. Tears always sprang to her eyes at the sight of the desert peas; she relied on them to keep her centred, to keep her whole. Although Alice taught Pip some of Harry’s old assistance commands, she had no reason to use them. She didn’t have another blackout. The only time her heart raced was when she was near Dylan Rivers.

  One afternoon, at the end of their ten-day roster, Alice and Lulu were in the work yard washing their work utes. They had music playing loudly and were dreaming up plans for their four days off together when Dylan drove through the security gate. Alice slid her sunglasses down over her eyes.

  ‘Kungkas,’ Dylan said as he drove up beside them, winding down his window. ‘How’s it going?’

  Alice nodded. A small smile. She couldn’t speak. Lulu glanced at her and then at Dylan. ‘We’re on day ten, so all good,’ she said to him coolly.

  ‘Jealous,’ he said. ‘I’m only halfway.’ He didn’t take his eyes off Alice. His blatancy made her uncomfortable; she felt he could see right through to her heart and what it was made of: salt, native flowers, stories, and a hopeless yearning for him. When Lulu had told her he had a girlfriend, Julie, a tour guide based out of town, Alice was sick with envy.

  ‘Up to anything on your days off?’ he asked.

  She could smell his skin, the cologne he wore, fresh and sweet, reminding her of unfurling green leaves. She wanted to run, to get into his ute with him and just go, through as many sunrises and sunsets as it took to get to the west coast, where they could tumble from the red dust onto the white sand and start over by the turquoise sea. She was good at beginning again.

  ‘Aren’t we, Alice?’ Lulu’s pointed question interrupted her reverie. Having no idea what she was talking about, Alice nodded and smiled vacantly.

  ‘Cool. Well, I’m off. Have a good one.’ As Dylan drove away he raised his hand in a slow wave. Silver rings on his fingers and strands of leather tied around his wrist.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Lulu said, her voice low and serious. ‘That’s messy. There’s nothing but pain there. Don’t do it.’

  Alice turned her face away. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Dylan’s profile as he drove out of the work yard. The tail lights of his ute pierced the fading light.

  ‘He’s great as a mate, chica,’ Lulu warned. ‘But anything more than that? You’re no safer than the girl in the fairytale who wanders into a dark wood.’

  Alice was grateful for the low light, hoping it hid her face. Lulu dipped her sponge in the suds bucket and began scrubbing the windscreen.

  ‘You’ve slept with him, haven’t you?’ Alice asked quietly.

  Lulu glanced at her. Cast her eyes away. ‘I just don’t want you to get hurt.’

  Alice’s head was spinning. She couldn’t bear the thought of them together, of him being with anyone but her.

  Lulu wiped the windscreen down and dunked the sponge back in the bucket, sighing. ‘I don’t know what you’ve left behind but I know you’ve come here to put yourself back together,’ she said. ‘So do it, chica. You keep banging on about how much you love my place and would love yours to be like it, but you keep living like you’re a nun. Decorate. Embellish. Use your weekends for adventures, go exploring. There’s so much more around here than just the crater, like, there’s a gorge not far from here that you have to see at sunset to believe. So, grow. Please. Grow your life here.’ Lulu pointed to her heart. ‘Don’t give everything you’ve got to someone who isn’t worth it.’

  Alice fidgeted. She hadn’t talked to anyone about what she’d left behind and yet Lulu had figured her out.

  After they’d packed up they drove home together under a dusky watercolour sky. ‘Wanna come over for dinner?’ Lulu said too brightly. ‘I’m making cheesy enchiladas. With extra guacamole.’

  Alice snorted. ‘No. I do not. Not at all.’

  As they pulled into Lulu’s driveway, their earlier conversation niggled at Alice. She nodded and laughed along with Lulu’s jokes throughout the evening but couldn’t stop wondering: had Lulu and Dylan slept together? Why wouldn’t she answer directly?

  Later, getting ready for bed, Alice told herself to just let it go. As Lulu had reminded her, she hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about her life before the desert. Alice knew as well as anyone that some stories were best left untold.

  Alice tried her hardest to heed Lulu’s words. Went into the resort village on truck delivery day, and filled a trolley with pot plants, a hammock, a box of fairy lights, and some solar-powered garden lamps. From the park workshop she scavenged a stack of crates and leftover paint. She painted the crates green, turned them upside down, and used them as pot plant stands; hammered the garden lamps deep into the red dirt in her backyard, strung up her hammock, and wound her rope of fairy lights around the beams of her back patio. She gathered treasures like a bower bird and told herself it was all for her own wellbeing. It was all to nurture her sense of self.

  She spent hours internet shopping. Bought new bed sheets with a butterfly-print doona cover, a butterfly-print shower curtain, and a tablecloth patterned in monarch butterflies. She found an aromatherapy website and bought a burner, a year’s supply of tea light candles, and a blend of essential oils. After staring at her bookshelf one night, empty but for her notebooks from Agnes Bluff, Alice found an online bookshop and ordered whatever her pay cheque allowed. When the boxes came, she unpacked them and placed each book on the shelf, as gently as if they were seedlings. Especially the stories about selkies.

  As he was on the opposite roster, Alice didn’t have any reason to see Dylan. If they passed each other on the road or in the work yard, she ducked her head. To keep herself busy, whenever she wasn’t on sunset patrol, Alice started walking Pip around the crater in the afternoons. They walked to Kututu Puli to watch the sun set on the lichen-covered red boulders. With enough determination, she could work and walk the raw burn of love out of her system. Maybe her feeling for him really was a fever. Maybe she could break it.

  On her next day off Alice roamed her house restlessly. Lulu and Aiden were busy. Ruby wasn’t home. Alice had been for her morning and afternoon walks, cleaned, and driven into town to buy Pip a new chew toy. By six o’clock the sky was dark enough to flick her fairy lights on and finally surrender to the thoughts of Dylan she’d been resisting all day.

  Alice went outside into the smoky purple dusk. Ever si
nce the first night she’d turned her fairy lights on, they’d been tiny secret beacons of her heart. When she lay in bed watching them shine, she was consumed by hope that the fragile little lights she’d strung in the darkness somehow reached him across the dunes, somehow spoke to him all the things she could not say.

  A loud rapping knock on the front door made her jump. Pip sniffed the air, barking.

  ‘Coming,’ Alice called, rushing through the house. Could it be? She flung the door open.

  ‘Happy housewarming!’ Lulu and Aiden sang in unison.

  ‘Oh!’ Alice startled. ‘You guys!’ She smiled widely enough to hide her crushing disappointment.

  In one arm Lulu held an oven dish of tacos oozing melted cheese and heaped with guacamole. In the other she cradled the colourful Mexican vase that Alice often commented on, filled with freshly cut desert roses. Alice remembered the handwritten entry in the Thornfield Dictionary. Peace. Beside Lulu, Aiden carried the Frida Kahlo print Alice always ogled most at their house, and a six-pack of Coronas.

  ‘For you, chica,’ Lulu said, grinning as she and Aiden offered their gifts. ‘We know you’ve been working so hard to make your house a home, and wanted to celebrate with you.’

  ‘Speechless,’ Alice croaked, choking up. ‘Come in, come in, you wonderful, cheeky buggers.’ She sniffled, stepping aside to let them in. As she was closing the door, Pip yapped. ‘What?’ Alice asked her. She yapped again at the door. For a moment Alice was giddy with hope. But when she swung the door open, it was Ruby who stepped into the light.

  ‘You need to get your outdoor light fixed, Pinta-Pinta,’ Ruby said, walking inside with a fresh loaf of bread that smelled warm and garlicky. ‘I baked.’ She handed the loaf to Alice with a nod and went to sit with Lulu and Aiden at the table. Alice took the bread and Lulu’s tacos into the kitchen, willing herself to keep smiling. Willing herself not to cry because her beautiful, kind friends weren’t Dylan turning up at her door. She busied herself pouring drinks and finding plates, overwhelmed by deep gratitude, and deeper foolishness.