Poet's Cottage

by Josephine Pennicott

  The milkman initially broke the news to Mother. Early on Monday morning he had delivered our usual bottle and butter, and I could hear them talking for several minutes on the front doorstep as I lay in bed. Mother would never have encouraged idle chat with the milkman; I realised that something of great importance must have occurred. At first I assumed they were gossiping over the train accident, but Mother’s tone seemed too wildly excited for it to be this alone. I lay waiting for her tread on the floorboards as she came to tell me her news.

  Pencubitt had never known a horror this great. We were used to death – too many young men had died in the Great War – but never had there been a savage killing on our doorstep. Murder was something that happened in novels or in cities. Local looked at local with a new wariness and some people decided to leave, convinced that a maniac was on the loose. Doors that had always been unlocked were now secured. Shock and fear draped the town like a heavy veil.

  The funeral was held on a day when snow was piled high in treacherous streets. As disliked as Pearl had been, the entire town wished to farewell her. The police presence was a reminder that the killer was still at large and newspaper men were unruly in their eagerness to record details.

  Never have I seen a man more grief-stricken than Maxwell: standing in the church his shoulders shook and he groaned and sobbed loudly. It was terrible to witness; I almost felt humiliated for him. We weren’t used to such demonstrations from our menfolk. But Maxwell, as everybody said later, had always been different, a bit softer than most men in Pencubitt. Sensitive and too kind-hearted for his own good, most sniffed.

  Marguerite, poor lamb, was pale, shaking and holding on to Maxwell in her anguish. I couldn’t imagine how painful it must be for one of such tender years to have lost her mother.

  By contrast, Thomasina was silent and dry-eyed. I would have been surprised if she displayed any other reaction. Little was known of shock in those days and nobody would have thought the child should have been counselled. It was Thomasina who had witnessed the killing, but nobody could make sense of her account. She kept babbling that she’d seen the devil they kept in the cellar eating her mother. She was restless throughout the service, hopping from one foot to another, glancing around her with a strange half-smile as if amused that her mother lay in the white rose-covered casket at the front of the church. I’ve always believed Thomasina hated her mother. Perhaps she was justified. However, she was also a most strange and unlikable child, who grew into an equally difficult young woman. She declined to be interviewed for this book, although she did send me a rather obscene letter with paranoid ramblings and shocking language. Thomasina may not have inherited her mother’s good looks, but she did perpetrate some of the more negative aspects of her personality.

  Father Kelly stumbled several times over the sermon. He told Mother later that his nerves had got the better of him and he was unable to do full service to God. He wasn’t used to such a large crowd. I suspect that perhaps his emotions got the better of him too as he had harboured a secret desire for Pearl. Perhaps he had even loved her in his own way. He was never quite the same after burying her and soon took to drinking more openly in town.

  I had been to several funerals in Pencubitt but never one that had attracted attention Australia-wide. The newspaper men behaved disgracefully. Several people wrote to the papers afterwards complaining about their disrespectful shouting at Maxwell to ‘Look this way, sir,’ as their cameras flashed, and elbowing mourners out of the way to get a clear shot of the two little girls. Beauty always attracts interest, but beauty slain before its natural time incites behaviour unseemly and maniacal. You would have sworn Pearl was Olive Thomas with all the clamour.

  As I stood shivering in my black coat, hat and gloves, it occurred to me that Pearl would have loved the drama and attention. She would have posed for the photographers with that mocking smile on her elfin face. It was her moment of glory, one she was never to appreciate.

  Pearl would have been horrified to see her old foe Edgar Cabret, the illustrator of her books, make the journey from Sydney to attend her funeral. He was flanked by another gentleman whom I later learned was her publisher. Edgar’s flamboyant style of dress attracted plenty of attention; he was quite the dandy in a black suit and tails with a large fob watch pinned to his vest. He had long silver hair and beard and a walking stick with a carved Kenny Kookaburra head. And, to my sly amusement, he sported a gold bow tie – the source of many of his rows with Pearl over the years. But really it was most kind of the distinguished artist to travel so far to our little sea-fishing village to pay his respects. It also showed how highly Pearl’s publishers valued her, although tragically it was too late for her to know.

  Piled onto her beautiful white casket were more flowers than I had ever seen before; it seemed every rose in Tasmania was buried with Pearl that day, and I’ll never forget the powerful scent. It was like a beautiful fairytale funeral – it seemed impossible Pearl was really dead inside that casket. Surely she must be sleeping in her grave of flowers until her prince awoke her. Except that Pearl was more a cruel, narcissistic queen who would order a woodsman to kill her stepdaughter and return with her heart as proof, fearful of another usurping her beauty.

  There was much wild talk of the state of her body. It was reported that her neck had been nearly severed, and there were dozens of stab wounds – I heard over forty, but a nurse at the hospital later claimed it was more like sixty. She had clearly fought hard against her killer; I could only imagine her terror as she had struggled in that tiny, dark cellar. As usual her gramophone had been playing, making any screams more difficult to hear.

  Standing beside Mother at the gravesite, I glanced at the other mourners. So many familiar faces next to people I had never seen before. Many who crowded around that seaside grave were just curious ghouls keen to witness the burial of somebody beautiful and famous. There were a few people sobbing, but most had an unhealthy glow in their eyes, morbidly excited over the drama. Locals were preening in front of the newsmen as if they were the true object of interest.

  I looked in vain for the man I believed I had seen in the foggy street on my way home from Poet’s Cottage. What would I have done if I had seen him? I couldn’t help harbouring a suspicion that whoever had killed Pearl was present, that someone amongst us was secretly thinking himself superior to the rest. Violet and Mrs Bydrenbaugh stood together; Violet’s face was obscured by her black veil but I could see she was weeping. She had been possibly Pearl’s closest friend. Her mother removed her veil at one stage with a black-gloved hand and stared at me as if to say: It came to pass. Everything the medium said has come to pass.

  Clods of dark earth tumbled onto the casket, intensifying Maxwell’s cries of distress. ‘Pearl! Don’t leave me! God, don’t leave me, Pearl!’ Either he tried to throw himself into the open grave or else he had slipped on mud or ice. It was difficult to judge exactly what was happening, it was all one terrible blur. The newsmen went crazy with their cameras and even pushed pregnant Lottie Byrnes out of the way in their haste to capture his grief.

  Arthur Stephens and a couple of fishermen held Maxwell back. ‘For God’s sake! Think of your little ones, man!’ I heard Arthur saying. ‘The girls don’t need to see this!’

  Marguerite was screaming and a local woman moved to pick her up. ‘I want my mummy!’ she cried repeatedly.

  Thomasina reached for her father’s hand. ‘It’s alright, Daddy,’ she said, quiet and composed. ‘I’ll look after you now. It’s alright. Don’t cry.’

  Women wept at the sight of the two little girls. My heart felt as if it would break for Marguerite. Thomasina glared around at us as if we were all intruding on some private moment. It was a most unsettling reaction from a child, and several of us later agreed that Thomasina ‘wasn’t quite right in the head’.

  The landscape around us was bleak and frozen in the snow of its winter sleep. The trees were stark black against the grey sky, the ocean was a cruel silver before us
. The wind that came in from the open sea contained shards of ice. Caught up in the human drama, we barely noticed it.

  I did not weep at Pearl’s grave as they buried her. Mother did, however – because of the poor little girls, she said later. And because Pearl was in hell rather than safely in the arms of the Lord. I longed to release the tears locked inside me but I stayed strong for the sake of Maxwell and the girls. I believed they would need me to assist them in starting again without Pearl. I also thought that Maxwell would have no idea of how to care for two little girls, but I was proved wrong. Soon after the funeral, Maxwell left for Europe with his daughters. I didn’t see them again for several years, until, his ghosts at rest, he returned to Poet’s Cottage.

  It was eleven years later when Maxwell, Thomasina and Marguerite finally came home to Pencubitt. They arrived unexpectedly in the spring of 1947.

  I was working in my front garden when I felt the presence of people standing over me. I kept digging for a few minutes as I fussed over my newly planted rosebush, hoping whoever it was would move on. It was not uncommon for passers-by to admire the garden, where I spent most of my days when not pursuing my other creative interests. I can remember my pleasure in all the new growth; the lavender was flourishing, daffodils and myriad tulips, poppies, daisies and irises surrounded me. Finally I looked up to see the sunlight enshrouding them; looking down on me were Maxwell and his daughters.

  Maxwell had aged, but his kind, lined face was still handsome, indeed even more so than that of the young boy I had played with when we were children. His eyes were as caring as ever, even if there was a new dimension of sadness in them. He stared at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, as if I were a ghost who had no right to be outside Seagull Cottage. And in that moment, I finally saw what my heart had known all along. I saw it in his nervous smile, in his eyes. Love. A love that was pure, deep, and echoed in my own.

  Maxwell later confessed he had believed if he took his daughters to the opposite end of the earth and made a home for them in the Mother Country, he would escape the guilt he felt over Pearl’s terrible death. He couldn’t bear the memory of leaving the house on that black day in 1936, leaving Pearl with such harsh words and abandoning her to her fate. And he had felt he couldn’t live in a small community where behind the familiar faces of neighbours and friends might lurk a predator. Every time he saw someone in Pencubitt he would wonder if he was looking into the eyes of the murderer who Pearl had welcomed into Poet’s Cottage that day. But of course we didn’t discuss this on the lovely spring morning of Maxwell’s homecoming, but that, and much, much more, in the many happy years that followed.

  Both the girls were now young ladies. At twenty and eighteen respectively, Thomasina and Marguerite seemed very different to me. However I was soon to discover that Thomasina was as feisty and as difficult to get along with as ever. Even on that spring morning it was as if a small thundercloud had appeared. But Marguerite was a beauty, luminous and smiling. She had clearly inherited the best qualities of both her parents.

  ‘What did I tell you? Of course she’s still alive! I knew she would be here.’ Thomasina was the first to break the silence. Marguerite hushed her – but then looked to her father and then to me, sensing the energy between us with a wary frown.

  ‘Don’t you remember us?’ Thomasina asked.

  Marguerite looked at Maxwell. ‘Daddy?’

  Her question broke the spell. I stood, brushing the soil from my dress and wishing I had taken the trouble to fix my hair and make-up that morning. But how could I have foreseen that that ordinary, wonderful spring day was the one?

  Maxwell took a step towards me. His eyes were filled with yearning. ‘Birdie?’ he said.

  I could have told Maxwell that you can never escape your ghosts – or your destiny – no matter how far you journey. Tatlows always return to the island, and Poet’s Cottage had finally called him home to Pencubitt. On 11 June, 1936, the day Teddy died, the sea had given me a premonition, an inner knowing that Maxwell would one day be mine. That was why, after Mother’s death, I could never sell Seagull Cottage, despite some good offers – and how lonely and empty those years had seemed. I had tended my garden and watched the seasons pass, the tides ebb and flow, storms break and snow fall. I had watched changes make their mark on our small fishing village, altering the town and the landscape around me. People came and went, but everything seemed to have perfect balance and perfect timing. I stayed, listening to my heart. Maxwell had forgotten that Tatlows always return.

  But I hadn’t.

  And I was waiting for him.

  Thomasina remained in Pencubitt, but seemed unable to settle in any one place in the town. She was never happy in Poet’s Cottage and it was leased out several times, though eventually she resettled herself in a building out the back. She has always been a contrary and challenging person. She hated both her old home and me, and yet she remained near both of us.

  As soon as she could, Marguerite left Tasmania. I don’t think she could ever tolerate living in the town where her mother had been killed and, as hard as we tried, she never really accepted Maxwell and I being together. She eventually settled in Sydney, where she married a teacher by the name of Peter Parsons. She returned only once to Pencubitt, with a baby girl a few months old in her arms.

  Motherhood did not seem to have helped Marguerite reconcile with Maxwell about his relationship with me – quite the opposite. In fact it had clearly stirred up feelings about Pearl that had long been dormant. Marguerite and her father quarrelled bitterly on that brief visit, and many harsh words were spoken on both sides. Marguerite accused Maxwell and myself of not supporting Pearl, and of carrying on some kind of wild affair behind her back. She claimed Maxwell should have had a doctor examine Pearl’s mental state. She blamed me for the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, and for her mother’s deterioration in Poet’s Cottage. I, the great Tricky, apparently schemed my way into their lives, slithering around the Tatlows, trying to claim Maxwell for my own. I couldn’t believe the sight of beautiful Marguerite – such a well-behaved, accepting child – screaming like a harridan at the pair of us about events so long in the past! There was no reasoning with her: she reminded me too much of her mother. I even felt a superstitious dread that Pearl had returned via her daughter to cast her scorn and judgment upon myself and Maxwell.

  In vain, I tried to explain about my plans for Webweaver and how I wanted her to have the full story of my relationship with her mother – but mention of the project only incensed her further.

  ‘Your version, Tricky!’ she spat at me while her husband tried to remove the baby from her arms and calm her down. ‘Whatever you say, it’s your version. She named you well, you lying old bitch!’

  That day broke Maxwell’s heart. For his beloved younger daughter to put on such a scene was too much for his gentle nature. He did try several times to reunite with Marguerite, but her letters remained formal and reserved. We heard that she was no longer with Mr Parsons, but why their relationship didn’t last we never discovered.

  And thanks to Marguerite, and as much as he still loved me, there crept a new shadow between Maxwell and me. Perhaps it was my imagination, but at times I found him studying me with a slight frown, as if puzzling over something that nagged at him.

  Once Maxwell had returned and we had settled into our new life together, I began the first draft of Webweaver. At first I was tentative, reluctant to involve him for fear it would revive too many unhappy memories. And Maxwell did not wish to involve himself either, preferring to pursue his new hobbies of birdwatching and gardening. But he did provide me with the address of Pearl’s brother, Benjamin Whistler. I had noticed Mr Whistler at Pearl’s funeral, my attention caught by the fact that he was in a wheelchair and accompanied by a nurse, but in my shocked state we had barely exchanged a dozen words at the time. However, I now wrote to him at his nursing home in Hobart, and his reply shed some light on Pearl’s early life. He requested I not publish this
letter until the death of his remaining sister, Ruth, a request with which I have complied. The letter, which I include below, offered a fascinating insight into Pearl for those like me who only knew her for a short time or for strangers intrigued by the enigma that was Pearl Tatlow, the famous children’s author.

  After reading it, I regretted deeply that in the short time I knew her, I didn’t think to delve deeper. How ironic that I, with so much interest in history and the stories behind our oldest buildings, failed to display any curiosity in my flesh-and-blood friend Pearl. Yes, I do think of her as a friend, despite her poor treatment of me at times. As you grow older, memory tends to cast a softer and rosier hue on all that has been. It becomes far easier to forgive. You recognise people are often sharing the same pain. You become kinder, less likely to judge as harshly as you did when younger. This type of wisdom, of course, frequently comes too late.

  Dear Miss Birdie,

  Thank you very much for your kind note and flowers. It’s most appreciated. It’s some comfort to know that Pearl had a friend as kind and pleasant as yourself. She went about with some rather unsavoury characters when she was younger and so I’m relieved to see she matured in the years I didn’t know her.

  I’m not sure if I can be of much help to you, Miss Birdie, as I wasn’t that close to my sister. I was estranged from Pearly for many years before her death. I think she was reluctant to acknowledge me, to tell you the truth. Pearl liked to put on airs and graces, something she got from Dad. I did attempt to contact her when she was in Hobart and I heard she was getting married to Maxwell, but she wouldn’t have a bar of it.